IV

The man whom Sue, in her mental _volte-face_, was now regarding as her

inseparable husband, lived still at Marygreen.

On the day before the tragedy of the children, Phillotson had seen both

her and Jude as they stood in the rain at Christminster watching the

procession to the theatre. But he had said nothing of it at the moment

to his companion Gillingham, who, being an old friend, was staying with

him at the village aforesaid, and had, indeed, suggested the day’s trip

to Christminster.

“What are you thinking of?” said Gillingham, as they went home. “The

university degree you never obtained?”

“No, no,” said Phillotson gruffly. “Of somebody I saw to-day.” In a

moment he added, “Susanna.”

“I saw her, too.”

“You said nothing.”

“I didn’t wish to draw your attention to her. But, as you did see her,

you should have said: ‘How d’ye do, my dear-that-was?’”

“Ah, well. I might have. But what do you think of this: I have good

reason for supposing that she was innocent when I divorced her—that I

was all wrong. Yes, indeed! Awkward, isn’t it?”

“She has taken care to set you right since, anyhow, apparently.”

“H’m. That’s a cheap sneer. I ought to have waited, unquestionably.”

At the end of the week, when Gillingham had gone back to his school

near Shaston, Phillotson, as was his custom, went to Alfredston market;

ruminating again on Arabella’s intelligence as he walked down the long

hill which he had known before Jude knew it, though his history had not

beaten so intensely upon its incline. Arrived in the town he bought his

usual weekly local paper; and when he had sat down in an inn to refresh

himself for the five miles’ walk back, he pulled the paper from his

pocket and read awhile. The account of the “strange suicide of a

stone-mason’s children” met his eye.

Unimpassioned as he was, it impressed him painfully, and puzzled him

not a little, for he could not understand the age of the elder child

being what it was stated to be. However, there was no doubt that the

newspaper report was in some way true.

“Their cup of sorrow is now full!” he said: and thought and thought of

Sue, and what she had gained by leaving him.

Arabella having made her home at Alfredston, and the schoolmaster

coming to market there every Saturday, it was not wonderful that in a

few weeks they met again—the precise time being just after her return

from Christminster, where she had stayed much longer than she had at

first intended, keeping an interested eye on Jude, though Jude had seen

no more of her. Phillotson was on his way homeward when he encountered

Arabella, and she was approaching the town.

“You like walking out this way, Mrs. Cartlett?” he said.

“I’ve just begun to again,” she replied. “It is where I lived as maid

and wife, and all the past things of my life that are interesting to my

feelings are mixed up with this road. And they have been stirred up in

me too, lately; for I’ve been visiting at Christminster. Yes; I’ve seen

Jude.”

“Ah! How do they bear their terrible affliction?”

“In a ve-ry strange way—ve-ry strange! She don’t live with him any

longer. I only heard of it as a certainty just before I left; though I

had thought things were drifting that way from their manner when I

called on them.”

“Not live with her husband? Why, I should have thought ’twould have

united them more.”

“He’s not her husband, after all. She has never really married him

although they have passed as man and wife so long. And now, instead of

this sad event making ’em hurry up, and get the thing done legally,

she’s took in a queer religious way, just as I was in my affliction at

losing Cartlett, only hers is of a more ’sterical sort than mine. And

she says, so I was told, that she’s your wife in the eye of Heaven and

the Church—yours only; and can’t be anybody else’s by any act of man.”

“Ah—indeed? … Separated, have they!”

“You see, the eldest boy was mine—”

“Oh—yours!”

“Yes, poor little fellow—born in lawful wedlock, thank God. And perhaps

she feels, over and above other things, that I ought to have been in

her place. I can’t say. However, as for me, I am soon off from here.

I’ve got Father to look after now, and we can’t live in such a hum-drum

place as this. I hope soon to be in a bar again at Christminster, or

some other big town.”

They parted. When Phillotson had ascended the hill a few steps he

stopped, hastened back, and called her.

“What is, or was, their address?”

Arabella gave it.

“Thank you. Good afternoon.”

Arabella smiled grimly as she resumed her way, and practised

dimple-making all along the road from where the pollard willows begin

to the old almshouses in the first street of the town.

Meanwhile Phillotson ascended to Marygreen, and for the first time

during a lengthened period he lived with a forward eye. On crossing

under the large trees of the green to the humble schoolhouse to which

he had been reduced he stood a moment, and pictured Sue coming out of

the door to meet him. No man had ever suffered more inconvenience from

his own charity, Christian or heathen, than Phillotson had done in

letting Sue go. He had been knocked about from pillar to post at the

hands of the virtuous almost beyond endurance; he had been nearly

starved, and was now dependent entirely upon the very small stipend

from the school of this village (where the parson had got ill-spoken of

for befriending him). He had often thought of Arabella’s remarks that

he should have been more severe with Sue, that her recalcitrant spirit

would soon have been broken. Yet such was his obstinate and illogical

disregard of opinion, and of the principles in which he had been

trained, that his convictions on the rightness of his course with his

wife had not been disturbed.

Principles which could be subverted by feeling in one direction were

liable to the same catastrophe in another. The instincts which had

allowed him to give Sue her liberty now enabled him to regard her as

none the worse for her life with Jude. He wished for her still, in his

curious way, if he did not love her, and, apart from policy, soon felt

that he would be gratified to have her again as his, always provided

that she came willingly.

But artifice was necessary, he had found, for stemming the cold and

inhumane blast of the world’s contempt. And here were the materials

ready made. By getting Sue back and remarrying her on the respectable

plea of having entertained erroneous views of her, and gained his

divorce wrongfully, he might acquire some comfort, resume his old

courses, perhaps return to the Shaston school, if not even to the

Church as a licentiate.

He thought he would write to Gillingham to inquire his views, and what

he thought of his, Phillotson’s, sending a letter to her. Gillingham

replied, naturally, that now she was gone it were best to let her be,

and considered that if she were anybody’s wife she was the wife of the

man to whom she had borne three children and owed such tragical

adventures. Probably, as his attachment to her seemed unusually strong,

the singular pair would make their union legal in course of time, and

all would be well, and decent, and in order.

“But they won’t—Sue won’t!” exclaimed Phillotson to himself.

“Gillingham is so matter of fact. She’s affected by Christminster

sentiment and teaching. I can see her views on the indissolubility of

marriage well enough, and I know where she got them. They are not mine;

but I shall make use of them to further mine.”

He wrote a brief reply to Gillingham. “I know I am entirely wrong, but

I don’t agree with you. As to her having lived with and had three

children by him, my feeling is (though I can advance no logical or

moral defence of it, on the old lines) that it has done little more

than finish her education. I shall write to her, and learn whether what

that woman said is true or no.”

As he had made up his mind to do this before he had written to his

friend, there had not been much reason for writing to the latter at

all. However, it was Phillotson’s way to act thus.

He accordingly addressed a carefully considered epistle to Sue, and,

knowing her emotional temperament, threw a Rhadamanthine strictness

into the lines here and there, carefully hiding his heterodox feelings,

not to frighten her. He stated that, it having come to his knowledge

that her views had considerably changed, he felt compelled to say that

his own, too, were largely modified by events subsequent to their

parting. He would not conceal from her that passionate love had little

to do with his communication. It arose from a wish to make their lives,

if not a success, at least no such disastrous failure as they

threatened to become, through his acting on what he had considered at

the time a principle of justice, charity, and reason.

To indulge one’s instinctive and uncontrolled sense of justice and

right, was not, he had found, permitted with impunity in an old

civilization like ours. It was necessary to act under an acquired and

cultivated sense of the same, if you wished to enjoy an average share

of comfort and honour; and to let crude loving kindness take care of

itself.

He suggested that she should come to him there at Marygreen.

On second thoughts he took out the last paragraph but one; and having

rewritten the letter he dispatched it immediately, and in some

excitement awaited the issue.

A few days after a figure moved through the white fog which enveloped

the Beersheba suburb of Christminster, towards the quarter in which

Jude Fawley had taken up his lodging since his division from Sue. A

timid knock sounded upon the door of his abode.

It was evening—so he was at home; and by a species of divination he

jumped up and rushed to the door himself.

“Will you come out with me? I would rather not come in. I want to—to

talk with you—and to go with you to the cemetery.”

It had been in the trembling accents of Sue that these words came. Jude

put on his hat. “It is dreary for you to be out,” he said. “But if you

prefer not to come in, I don’t mind.”

“Yes—I do. I shall not keep you long.”

Jude was too much affected to go on talking at first; she, too, was now

such a mere cluster of nerves that all initiatory power seemed to have

left her, and they proceeded through the fog like Acherontic shades for

a long while, without sound or gesture.

“I want to tell you,” she presently said, her voice now quick, now

slow, “so that you may not hear of it by chance. I am going back to

Richard. He has—so magnanimously—agreed to forgive all.”

“Going back? How can you go—”

“He is going to marry me again. That is for form’s sake, and to satisfy

the world, which does not see things as they are. But of course I _am_

his wife already. Nothing has changed that.”

He turned upon her with an anguish that was well-nigh fierce.

“But you are _my_ wife! Yes, you are. You know it. I have always

regretted that feint of ours in going away and pretending to come back

legally married, to save appearances. I loved you, and you loved me;

and we closed with each other; and that made the marriage. We still

love—you as well as I—_know_ it, Sue! Therefore our marriage is not

cancelled.”

“Yes; I know how you see it,” she answered with despairing

self-suppression. “But I am going to marry him again, as it would be

called by you. Strictly speaking you, too—don’t mind my saying it,

Jude!—you should take back—Arabella.”

“I should? Good God—what next! But how if you and I had married

legally, as we were on the point of doing?”

“I should have felt just the same—that ours was not a marriage. And I

would go back to Richard without repeating the sacrament, if he asked

me. But ‘the world and its ways have a certain worth’ (I suppose),

therefore I concede a repetition of the ceremony… Don’t crush all the

life out of me by satire and argument, I implore you! I was strongest

once, I know, and perhaps I treated you cruelly. But Jude, return good

for evil! I am the weaker now. Don’t retaliate upon me, but be kind. Oh

be kind to me—a poor wicked woman who is trying to mend!”

He shook his head hopelessly, his eyes wet. The blow of her bereavement

seemed to have destroyed her reasoning faculty. The once keen vision

was dimmed. “All wrong, all wrong!” he said huskily. “Error—perversity!

It drives me out of my senses. Do you care for him? Do you love him?

You know you don’t! It will be a fanatic prostitution—God forgive me,

yes—that’s what it will be!”

“I don’t love him—I must, must, own it, in deepest remorse! But I shall

try to learn to love him by obeying him.”

Jude argued, urged, implored; but her conviction was proof against all.

It seemed to be the one thing on earth on which she was firm, and that

her firmness in this had left her tottering in every other impulse and

wish she possessed.

“I have been considerate enough to let you know the whole truth, and to

tell it you myself,” she said in cut tones; “that you might not

consider yourself slighted by hearing of it at second hand. I have even

owned the extreme fact that I do not love him. I did not think you

would be so rough with me for doing so! I was going to ask you…”

“To give you away?”

“No. To send—my boxes to me—if you would. But I suppose you won’t.”

“Why, of course I will. What—isn’t he coming to fetch you—to marry you

from here? He won’t condescend to do that?”

“No—I won’t let him. I go to him voluntarily, just as I went away from

him. We are to be married at his little church at Marygreen.”

She was so sadly sweet in what he called her wrong-headedness that Jude

could not help being moved to tears more than once for pity of her. “I

never knew such a woman for doing impulsive penances, as you, Sue! No

sooner does one expect you to go straight on, as the one rational

proceeding, than you double round the corner!”

“Ah, well; let that go! … Jude, I must say good-bye! But I wanted you

to go to the cemetery with me. Let our farewell be there—beside the

graves of those who died to bring home to me the error of my views.”

They turned in the direction of the place, and the gate was opened to

them on application. Sue had been there often, and she knew the way to

the spot in the dark. They reached it, and stood still.

“It is here—I should like to part,” said she.

“So be it!”

“Don’t think me hard because I have acted on conviction. Your generous

devotion to me is unparalleled, Jude! Your worldly failure, if you have

failed, is to your credit rather than to your blame. Remember that the

best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly

good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man. The devoted

fail… ‘Charity seeketh not her own.’”

“In that chapter we are at one, ever beloved darling, and on it we’ll

part friends. Its verses will stand fast when all the rest that you

call religion has passed away!”

“Well—don’t discuss it. Good-bye, Jude; my fellow-sinner, and kindest

friend!”

“Good-bye, my mistaken wife. Good-bye!”

V

The next afternoon the familiar Christminster fog still hung over all

things. Sue’s slim shape was only just discernible going towards the

station.

Jude had no heart to go to his work that day. Neither could he go

anywhere in the direction by which she would be likely to pass. He went

in an opposite one, to a dreary, strange, flat scene, where boughs

dripped, and coughs and consumption lurked, and where he had never been

before.

“Sue’s gone from me—gone!” he murmured miserably.

She in the meantime had left by the train, and reached Alfredston Road,

where she entered the steam-tram and was conveyed into the town. It had

been her request to Phillotson that he should not meet her. She wished,

she said, to come to him voluntarily, to his very house and

hearthstone.

It was Friday evening, which had been chosen because the schoolmaster

was disengaged at four o’clock that day till the Monday morning

following. The little car she hired at the Bear to drive her to

Marygreen set her down at the end of the lane, half a mile from the

village, by her desire, and preceded her to the schoolhouse with such

portion of her luggage as she had brought. On its return she

encountered it, and asked the driver if he had found the master’s house

open. The man informed her that he had, and that her things had been

taken in by the schoolmaster himself.

She could now enter Marygreen without exciting much observation. She

crossed by the well and under the trees to the pretty new school on the

other side, and lifted the latch of the dwelling without knocking.

Phillotson stood in the middle of the room, awaiting her, as requested.

“I’ve come, Richard,” said she, looking pale and shaken, and sinking

into a chair. “I cannot believe—you forgive your—wife!”

“Everything, darling Susanna,” said Phillotson.

She started at the endearment, though it had been spoken advisedly

without fervour. Then she nerved herself again.

“My children—are dead—and it is right that they should be! I am

glad—almost. They were sin-begotten. They were sacrificed to teach me

how to live! Their death was the first stage of my purification. That’s

why they have not died in vain! … You will take me back?”

He was so stirred by her pitiful words and tone that he did more than

he had meant to do. He bent and kissed her cheek.

Sue imperceptibly shrank away, her flesh quivering under the touch of

his lips.

Phillotson’s heart sank, for desire was renascent in him. “You still

have an aversion to me!”

“Oh no, dear—I have been driving through the damp, and I was chilly!”

she said, with a hurried smile of apprehension. “When are we going to

have the marriage? Soon?”

“To-morrow morning, early, I thought—if you really wish. I am sending

round to the vicar to let him know you are come. I have told him all,

and he highly approves—he says it will bring our lives to a triumphant

and satisfactory issue. But—are you sure of yourself? It is not too

late to refuse now if—you think you can’t bring yourself to it, you

know?”

“Yes, yes, I can! I want it done quick. Tell him, tell him at once! My

strength is tried by the undertaking—I can’t wait long!”

“Have something to eat and drink then, and go over to your room at Mrs.

Edlin’s. I’ll tell the vicar half-past eight to-morrow, before anybody

is about—if that’s not too soon for you? My friend Gillingham is here

to help us in the ceremony. He’s been good enough to come all the way

from Shaston at great inconvenience to himself.”

Unlike a woman in ordinary, whose eye is so keen for material things,

Sue seemed to see nothing of the room they were in, or any detail of

her environment. But on moving across the parlour to put down her muff

she uttered a little “Oh!” and grew paler than before. Her look was

that of the condemned criminal who catches sight of his coffin.

“What?” said Phillotson.

The flap of the bureau chanced to be open, and in placing her muff upon

it her eye had caught a document which lay there. “Oh—only a—funny

surprise!” she said, trying to laugh away her cry as she came back to

the table.

“Ah! Yes,” said Phillotson. “The licence… It has just come.”

Gillingham now joined them from his room above, and Sue nervously made

herself agreeable to him by talking on whatever she thought likely to

interest him, except herself, though that interested him most of all.

She obediently ate some supper, and prepared to leave for her lodging

hard by. Phillotson crossed the green with her, bidding her good-night

at Mrs. Edlin’s door.

The old woman accompanied Sue to her temporary quarters, and helped her

to unpack. Among other things she laid out a night-gown tastefully

embroidered.

“Oh—I didn’t know _that_ was put in!” said Sue quickly. “I didn’t mean

it to be. Here is a different one.” She handed a new and absolutely

plain garment, of coarse and unbleached calico.

“But this is the prettiest,” said Mrs. Edlin. “That one is no better

than very sackcloth o’ Scripture!”

“Yes—I meant it to be. Give me the other.”

She took it, and began rending it with all her might, the tears

resounding through the house like a screech-owl.

“But my dear, dear!—whatever....”

“It is adulterous! It signifies what I don’t feel—I bought it long

ago—to please Jude. It must be destroyed!”

Mrs. Edlin lifted her hands, and Sue excitedly continued to tear the

linen into strips, laying the pieces in the fire.

“You med ha’ give it to me!” said the widow. “It do make my heart ache

to see such pretty open-work as that a-burned by the flames—not that

ornamental night-rails can be much use to a’ ould ’ooman like I. My

days for such be all past and gone!”

“It is an accursed thing—it reminds me of what I want to forget!” Sue

repeated. “It is only fit for the fire.”

“Lord, you be too strict! What do ye use such words for, and condemn to

hell your dear little innocent children that’s lost to ’ee! Upon my

life I don’t call that religion!”

Sue flung her face upon the bed, sobbing. “Oh, don’t, don’t! That kills

me!” She remained shaken with her grief, and slipped down upon her

knees.

“I’ll tell ’ee what—you ought not to marry this man again!” said Mrs.

Edlin indignantly. “You are in love wi’ t’ other still!”

“Yes I must—I am his already!”

“Pshoo! You be t’ other man’s. If you didn’t like to commit yourselves

to the binding vow again, just at first, ’twas all the more credit to

your consciences, considering your reasons, and you med ha’ lived on,

and made it all right at last. After all, it concerned nobody but your

own two selves.”

“Richard says he’ll have me back, and I’m bound to go! If he had

refused, it might not have been so much my duty to—give up Jude. But—”

She remained with her face in the bed-clothes, and Mrs. Edlin left the

room.

Phillotson in the interval had gone back to his friend Gillingham, who

still sat over the supper-table. They soon rose, and walked out on the

green to smoke awhile. A light was burning in Sue’s room, a shadow

moving now and then across the blind.

Gillingham had evidently been impressed with the indefinable charm of

Sue, and after a silence he said, “Well: you’ve all but got her again

at last. She can’t very well go a second time. The pear has dropped

into your hand.”

“Yes! … I suppose I am right in taking her at her word. I confess there

seems a touch of selfishness in it. Apart from her being what she is,

of course, a luxury for a fogey like me, it will set me right in the

eyes of the clergy and orthodox laity, who have never forgiven me for

letting her go. So I may get back in some degree into my old track.”

“Well—if you’ve got any sound reason for marrying her again, do it now

in God’s name! I was always against your opening the cage-door and

letting the bird go in such an obviously suicidal way. You might have

been a school inspector by this time, or a reverend, if you hadn’t been

so weak about her.”

“I did myself irreparable damage—I know it.”

“Once you’ve got her housed again, stick to her.”

Phillotson was more evasive to-night. He did not care to admit clearly

that his taking Sue to him again had at bottom nothing to do with

repentance of letting her go, but was, primarily, a human instinct

flying in the face of custom and profession. He said, “Yes—I shall do

that. I know woman better now. Whatever justice there was in releasing

her, there was little logic, for one holding my views on other

subjects.”

Gillingham looked at him, and wondered whether it would ever happen

that the reactionary spirit induced by the world’s sneers and his own

physical wishes would make Phillotson more orthodoxly cruel to her than

he had erstwhile been informally and perversely kind.

“I perceive it won’t do to give way to impulse,” Phillotson resumed,

feeling more and more every minute the necessity of acting up to his

position. “I flew in the face of the Church’s teaching; but I did it

without malice prepense. Women are so strange in their influence that

they tempt you to misplaced kindness. However, I know myself better

now. A little judicious severity, perhaps…”

“Yes; but you must tighten the reins by degrees only. Don’t be too

strenuous at first. She’ll come to any terms in time.”

The caution was unnecessary, though Phillotson did not say so. “I

remember what my vicar at Shaston said, when I left after the row that

was made about my agreeing to her elopement. ‘The only thing you can do

to retrieve your position and hers is to admit your error in not

restraining her with a wise and strong hand, and to get her back again

if she’ll come, and be firm in the future.’ But I was so headstrong at

that time that I paid no heed. And that after the divorce she should

have thought of doing so I did not dream.”

The gate of Mrs. Edlin’s cottage clicked, and somebody began crossing

in the direction of the school. Phillotson said “Good-night.”

“Oh, is that Mr. Phillotson,” said Mrs. Edlin. “I was going over to see

’ee. I’ve been upstairs with her, helping her to unpack her things; and

upon my word, sir, I don’t think this ought to be!”

“What—the wedding?”

“Yes. She’s forcing herself to it, poor dear little thing; and you’ve

no notion what she’s suffering. I was never much for religion nor

against it, but it can’t be right to let her do this, and you ought to

persuade her out of it. Of course everybody will say it was very good

and forgiving of ’ee to take her to ’ee again. But for my part I

don’t.”

“It’s her wish, and I am willing,” said Phillotson with grave reserve,

opposition making him illogically tenacious now. “A great piece of

laxity will be rectified.”

“I don’t believe it. She’s his wife if anybody’s. She’s had three

children by him, and he loves her dearly; and it’s a wicked shame to

egg her on to this, poor little quivering thing! She’s got nobody on

her side. The one man who’d be her friend the obstinate creature won’t

allow to come near her. What first put her into this mood o’ mind, I

wonder!”

“I can’t tell. Not I certainly. It is all voluntary on her part. Now

that’s all I have to say.” Phillotson spoke stiffly. “You’ve turned

round, Mrs. Edlin. It is unseemly of you!”

“Well, I knowed you’d be affronted at what I had to say; but I don’t

mind that. The truth’s the truth.”

“I’m not affronted, Mrs. Edlin. You’ve been too kind a neighbour for

that. But I must be allowed to know what’s best for myself and Susanna.

I suppose you won’t go to church with us, then?”

“No. Be hanged if I can… I don’t know what the times be coming to!

Matrimony have growed to be that serious in these days that one really

do feel afeard to move in it at all. In my time we took it more

careless; and I don’t know that we was any the worse for it! When I and

my poor man were jined in it we kept up the junketing all the week, and

drunk the parish dry, and had to borrow half a crown to begin

housekeeping!”

When Mrs. Edlin had gone back to her cottage Phillotson spoke moodily.

“I don’t know whether I ought to do it—at any rate quite so rapidly.”

“Why?”

“If she is really compelling herself to this against her

instincts—merely from this new sense of duty or religion—I ought

perhaps to let her wait a bit.”

“Now you’ve got so far you ought not to back out of it. That’s my

opinion.”

“I can’t very well put it off now; that’s true. But I had a qualm when

she gave that little cry at sight of the licence.”

“Now, never you have qualms, old boy. I mean to give her away to-morrow

morning, and you mean to take her. It has always been on my conscience

that I didn’t urge more objections to your letting her go, and now

we’ve got to this stage I shan’t be content if I don’t help you to set

the matter right.”

Phillotson nodded, and seeing how staunch his friend was, became more

frank. “No doubt when it gets known what I’ve done I shall be thought a

soft fool by many. But they don’t know Sue as I do. Though so elusive,

hers is such an honest nature at bottom that I don’t think she has ever

done anything against her conscience. The fact of her having lived with

Fawley goes for nothing. At the time she left me for him she thought

she was quite within her right. Now she thinks otherwise.”

The next morning came, and the self-sacrifice of the woman on the altar

of what she was pleased to call her principles was acquiesced in by

these two friends, each from his own point of view. Phillotson went

across to the Widow Edlin’s to fetch Sue a few minutes after eight

o’clock. The fog of the previous day or two on the low-lands had

travelled up here by now, and the trees on the green caught armfuls,

and turned them into showers of big drops. The bride was waiting,

ready; bonnet and all on. She had never in her life looked so much like

the lily her name connoted as she did in that pallid morning light.

Chastened, world-weary, remorseful, the strain on her nerves had preyed

upon her flesh and bones, and she appeared smaller in outline than she

had formerly done, though Sue had not been a large woman in her days of

rudest health.

“Prompt,” said the schoolmaster, magnanimously taking her hand. But he

checked his impulse to kiss her, remembering her start of yesterday,

which unpleasantly lingered in his mind.

Gillingham joined them, and they left the house, Widow Edlin continuing

steadfast in her refusal to assist in the ceremony.

“Where is the church?” said Sue. She had not lived there for any length

of time since the old church was pulled down, and in her preoccupation

forgot the new one.

“Up here,” said Phillotson; and presently the tower loomed large and

solemn in the fog. The vicar had already crossed to the building, and

when they entered he said pleasantly: “We almost want candles.”

“You do—wish me to be yours, Richard?” gasped Sue in a whisper.

“Certainly, dear; above all things in the world.”

Sue said no more; and for the second or third time he felt he was not

quite following out the humane instinct which had induced him to let

her go.

There they stood, five altogether: the parson, the clerk, the couple,

and Gillingham; and the holy ordinance was resolemnized forthwith. In

the nave of the edifice were two or three villagers, and when the

clergyman came to the words, “What God hath joined,” a woman’s voice

from among these was heard to utter audibly:

“God hath jined indeed!”

It was like a re-enactment by the ghosts of their former selves of the

similar scene which had taken place at Melchester years before. When

the books were signed the vicar congratulated the husband and wife on

having performed a noble, and righteous, and mutually forgiving act.

“All’s well that ends well,” he said smiling. “May you long be happy

together, after thus having been ‘saved as by fire.’”

They came down the nearly empty building, and crossed to the

schoolhouse. Gillingham wanted to get home that night, and left early.

He, too, congratulated the couple. “Now,” he said in parting from

Phillotson, who walked out a little way, “I shall be able to tell the

people in your native place a good round tale; and they’ll all say

‘Well done,’ depend on it.”

When the schoolmaster got back Sue was making a pretence of doing some

housewifery as if she lived there. But she seemed timid at his

approach, and compunction wrought on him at sight of it.

“Of course, my dear, I shan’t expect to intrude upon your personal

privacy any more than I did before,” he said gravely. “It is for our

good socially to do this, and that’s its justification, if it was not

my reason.” Sue brightened a little.

VI

The place was the door of Jude’s lodging in the out-skirts of

Christminster—far from the precincts of St. Silas’ where he had

formerly lived, which saddened him to sickness. The rain was coming

down. A woman in shabby black stood on the doorstep talking to Jude,

who held the door in his hand.

“I am lonely, destitute, and houseless—that’s what I am! Father has

turned me out of doors after borrowing every penny I’d got, to put it

into his business, and then accusing me of laziness when I was only

waiting for a situation. I am at the mercy of the world! If you can’t

take me and help me, Jude, I must go to the workhouse, or to something

worse. Only just now two undergraduates winked at me as I came along.

’Tis hard for a woman to keep virtuous where there’s so many young

men!”

The woman in the rain who spoke thus was Arabella, the evening being

that of the day after Sue’s remarriage with Phillotson.

“I am sorry for you, but I am only in lodgings,” said Jude coldly.

“Then you turn me away?”

“I’ll give you enough to get food and lodging for a few days.”

“Oh, but can’t you have the kindness to take me in? I cannot endure

going to a public house to lodge; and I am so lonely. Please, Jude, for

old times’ sake!”

“No, no,” said Jude hastily. “I don’t want to be reminded of those

things; and if you talk about them I shall not help you.”

“Then I suppose I must go!” said Arabella. She bent her head against

the doorpost and began sobbing.

“The house is full,” said Jude. “And I have only a little extra room to

my own—not much more than a closet—where I keep my tools, and

templates, and the few books I have left!”

“That would be a palace for me!”

“There is no bedstead in it.”

“A bit of a bed could be made on the floor. It would be good enough for

me.”

Unable to be harsh with her, and not knowing what to do, Jude called

the man who let the lodgings, and said this was an acquaintance of his

in great distress for want of temporary shelter.

“You may remember me as barmaid at the Lamb and Flag formerly?” spoke

up Arabella. “My father has insulted me this afternoon, and I’ve left

him, though without a penny!”

The householder said he could not recall her features. “But still, if

you are a friend of Mr. Fawley’s we’ll do what we can for a day or

two—if he’ll make himself answerable?”

“Yes, yes,” said Jude. “She has really taken me quite unawares; but I

should wish to help her out of her difficulty.” And an arrangement was

ultimately come to under which a bed was to be thrown down in Jude’s

lumber-room, to make it comfortable for Arabella till she could get out

of the strait she was in—not by her own fault, as she declared—and

return to her father’s again.

While they were waiting for this to be done Arabella said: “You know

the news, I suppose?”

“I guess what you mean; but I know nothing.”

“I had a letter from Anny at Alfredston to-day. She had just heard that

the wedding was to be yesterday: but she didn’t know if it had come

off.”

“I don’t wish to talk of it.”

“No, no: of course you don’t. Only it shows what kind of woman—”

“Don’t speak of her I say! She’s a fool! And she’s an angel, too, poor

dear!”

“If it’s done, he’ll have a chance of getting back to his old position,

by everybody’s account, so Anny says. All his well-wishers will be

pleased, including the bishop himself.”

“Do spare me, Arabella.”

Arabella was duly installed in the little attic, and at first she did

not come near Jude at all. She went to and fro about her own business,

which, when they met for a moment on the stairs or in the passage, she

informed him was that of obtaining another place in the occupation she

understood best. When Jude suggested London as affording the most

likely opening in the liquor trade, she shook her head. “No—the

temptations are too many,” she said. “Any humble tavern in the country

before that for me.”

On the Sunday morning following, when he breakfasted later than on

other days, she meekly asked him if she might come in to breakfast with

him, as she had broken her teapot, and could not replace it

immediately, the shops being shut.

“Yes, if you like,” he said indifferently.

While they sat without speaking she suddenly observed: “You seem all in

a brood, old man. I’m sorry for you.”

“I am all in a brood.”

“It is about her, I know. It’s no business of mine, but I could find

out all about the wedding—if it really did take place—if you wanted to

know.”

“How could you?”

“I wanted to go to Alfredston to get a few things I left there. And I

could see Anny, who’ll be sure to have heard all about it, as she has

friends at Marygreen.”

Jude could not bear to acquiesce in this proposal; but his suspense

pitted itself against his discretion, and won in the struggle. “You can

ask about it if you like,” he said. “I’ve not heard a sound from there.

It must have been very private, if—they have married.”

“I am afraid I haven’t enough cash to take me there and back, or I

should have gone before. I must wait till I have earned some.”

“Oh—I can pay the journey for you,” he said impatiently. And thus his

suspense as to Sue’s welfare, and the possible marriage, moved him to

dispatch for intelligence the last emissary he would have thought of

choosing deliberately.

Arabella went, Jude requesting her to be home not later than by the

seven o’clock train. When she had gone he said: “Why should I have

charged her to be back by a particular time! She’s nothing to me—nor

the other neither!”

But having finished work he could not help going to the station to meet

Arabella, dragged thither by feverish haste to get the news she might

bring, and know the worst. Arabella had made dimples most successfully

all the way home, and when she stepped out of the railway carriage she

smiled. He merely said “Well?” with the very reverse of a smile.

“They are married.”

“Yes—of course they are!” he returned. She observed, however, the hard

strain upon his lip as he spoke.

“Anny says she has heard from Belinda, her relation out at Marygreen,

that it was very sad, and curious!”

“How do you mean sad? She wanted to marry him again, didn’t she? And he

her!”

“Yes—that was it. She wanted to in one sense, but not in the other.

Mrs. Edlin was much upset by it all, and spoke out her mind at

Phillotson. But Sue was that excited about it that she burnt her best

embroidery that she’d worn with you, to blot you out entirely. Well—if

a woman feels like it, she ought to do it. I commend her for it, though

others don’t.” Arabella sighed. “She felt he was her only husband, and

that she belonged to nobody else in the sight of God A’mighty while he

lived. Perhaps another woman feels the same about herself, too!”

Arabella sighed again.

“I don’t want any cant!” exclaimed Jude.

“It isn’t cant,” said Arabella. “I feel exactly the same as she!”

He closed that issue by remarking abruptly: “Well—now I know all I

wanted to know. Many thanks for your information. I am not going back

to my lodgings just yet.” And he left her straightway.

In his misery and depression Jude walked to well-nigh every spot in the

city that he had visited with Sue; thence he did not know whither, and

then thought of going home to his usual evening meal. But having all

the vices of his virtues, and some to spare, he turned into a public

house, for the first time during many months. Among the possible

consequences of her marriage Sue had not dwelt on this.

Arabella, meanwhile, had gone back. The evening passed, and Jude did

not return. At half-past nine Arabella herself went out, first

proceeding to an outlying district near the river where her father

lived, and had opened a small and precarious pork-shop lately.

“Well,” she said to him, “for all your rowing me that night, I’ve

called in, for I have something to tell you. I think I shall get

married and settled again. Only you must help me: and you can do no

less, after what I’ve stood ’ee.”

“I’ll do anything to get thee off my hands!”

“Very well. I am now going to look for my young man. He’s on the loose

I’m afraid, and I must get him home. All I want you to do to-night is

not to fasten the door, in case I should want to sleep here, and should

be late.”

“I thought you’d soon get tired of giving yourself airs and keeping

away!”

“Well—don’t do the door. That’s all I say.”

She then sallied out again, and first hastening back to Jude’s to make

sure that he had not returned, began her search for him. A shrewd guess

as to his probable course took her straight to the tavern which Jude

had formerly frequented, and where she had been barmaid for a brief

term. She had no sooner opened the door of the “Private Bar” than her

eyes fell upon him—sitting in the shade at the back of the compartment,

with his eyes fixed on the floor in a blank stare. He was drinking

nothing stronger than ale just then. He did not observe her, and she

entered and sat beside him.

Jude looked up, and said without surprise: “You’ve come to have

something, Arabella? … I’m trying to forget her: that’s all! But I

can’t; and I am going home.” She saw that he was a little way on in

liquor, but only a little as yet.

“I’ve come entirely to look for you, dear boy. You are not well. Now

you must have something better than that.” Arabella held up her finger

to the barmaid. “You shall have a liqueur—that’s better fit for a man

of education than beer. You shall have maraschino, or curaçao dry or

sweet, or cherry brandy. I’ll treat you, poor chap!”

“I don’t care which! Say cherry brandy… Sue has served me badly, very

badly. I didn’t expect it of Sue! I stuck to her, and she ought to have

stuck to me. I’d have sold my soul for her sake, but she wouldn’t risk

hers a jot for me. To save her own soul she lets mine go damn! … But it

isn’t her fault, poor little girl—I am sure it isn’t!”

How Arabella had obtained money did not appear, but she ordered a

liqueur each, and paid for them. When they had drunk these Arabella

suggested another; and Jude had the pleasure of being, as it were,

personally conducted through the varieties of spirituous delectation by

one who knew the landmarks well. Arabella kept very considerably in the

rear of Jude; but though she only sipped where he drank, she took as

much as she could safely take without losing her head—which was not a

little, as the crimson upon her countenance showed.

Her tone towards him to-night was uniformly soothing and cajoling; and

whenever he said “I don’t care what happens to me,” a thing he did

continually, she replied, “But I do very much!” The closing hour came,

and they were compelled to turn out; whereupon Arabella put her arm

round his waist, and guided his unsteady footsteps.

When they were in the streets she said: “I don’t know what our landlord

will say to my bringing you home in this state. I expect we are

fastened out, so that he’ll have to come down and let us in.”

“I don’t know—I don’t know.”

“That’s the worst of not having a home of your own. I tell you, Jude,

what we had best do. Come round to my father’s—I made it up with him a

bit to-day. I can let you in, and nobody will see you at all; and by

to-morrow morning you’ll be all right.”

“Anything—anywhere,” replied Jude. “What the devil does it matter to

me?”

They went along together, like any other fuddling couple, her arm still

round his waist, and his, at last, round hers; though with no amatory

intent; but merely because he was weary, unstable, and in need of

support.

“This—is th’ Martyrs’—burning-place,” he stammered as they dragged

across a broad street. “I remember—in old Fuller’s _Holy State_—and I

am reminded of it—by our passing by here—old Fuller in his _Holy State_

says, that at the burning of Ridley, Doctor Smith—preached sermon, and

took as his text _‘Though I give my body to be burned, and have not

charity, it profiteth me nothing.’_—Often think of it as I pass here.

Ridley was a—”

“Yes. Exactly. Very thoughtful of you, deary, even though it hasn’t

much to do with our present business.”

“Why, yes it has! I’m giving my body to be burned! But—ah you don’t

understand!—it wants Sue to understand such things! And I was her

seducer—poor little girl! And she’s gone—and I don’t care about myself!

Do what you like with me! … And yet she did it for conscience’ sake,

poor little Sue!”

“Hang her!—I mean, I think she was right,” hiccuped Arabella. “I’ve my

feelings too, like her; and I feel I belong to you in Heaven’s eye, and

to nobody else, till death us do part! It is—hic—never too late—hic to

mend!”

They had reached her father’s house, and she softly unfastened the

door, groping about for a light within.

The circumstances were not altogether unlike those of their entry into

the cottage at Cresscombe, such a long time before. Nor were perhaps

Arabella’s motives. But Jude did not think of that, though she did.

“I can’t find the matches, dear,” she said when she had fastened up the

door. “But never mind—this way. As quiet as you can, please.”

“It is as dark as pitch,” said Jude.

“Give me your hand, and I’ll lead you. That’s it. Just sit down here,

and I’ll pull off your boots. I don’t want to wake him.”

“Who?”

“Father. He’d make a row, perhaps.”

She pulled off his boots. “Now,” she whispered, “take hold of me—never

mind your weight. Now—first stair, second stair—”

“But—are we out in our old house by Marygreen?” asked the stupefied

Jude. “I haven’t been inside it for years till now! Hey? And where are

my books? That’s what I want to know?”

“We are at my house, dear, where there’s nobody to spy out how ill you

are. Now—third stair, fourth stair—that’s it. Now we shall get on.”

VII

Arabella was preparing breakfast in the downstairs back room of this

small, recently hired tenement of her father’s. She put her head into

the little pork-shop in front, and told Mr. Donn it was ready. Donn,

endeavouring to look like a master pork-butcher, in a greasy blue

blouse, and with a strap round his waist from which a steel dangled,

came in promptly.

“You must mind the shop this morning,” he said casually. “I’ve to go

and get some inwards and half a pig from Lumsdon, and to call

elsewhere. If you live here you must put your shoulder to the wheel, at

least till I get the business started!”

“Well, for to-day I can’t say.” She looked deedily into his face. “I’ve

got a prize upstairs.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“A husband—almost.”

“No!”

“Yes. It’s Jude. He’s come back to me.”

“Your old original one? Well, I’m damned!”

“Well, I always did like him, that I will say.”

“But how does he come to be up there?” said Donn, humour-struck, and

nodding to the ceiling.

“Don’t ask inconvenient questions, Father. What we’ve to do is to keep

him here till he and I are—as we were.”

“How was that?”

“Married.”

“Ah… Well it is the rummest thing I ever heard of—marrying an old

husband again, and so much new blood in the world! He’s no catch, to my

thinking. I’d have had a new one while I was about it.”

“It isn’t rum for a woman to want her old husband back for

respectability, though for a man to want his old wife back—well,

perhaps it is funny, rather!” And Arabella was suddenly seized with a

fit of loud laughter, in which her father joined more moderately.

“Be civil to him, and I’ll do the rest,” she said when she had

recovered seriousness. “He told me this morning that his head ached fit

to burst, and he hardly seemed to know where he was. And no wonder,

considering how he mixed his drink last night. We must keep him jolly

and cheerful here for a day or two, and not let him go back to his

lodging. Whatever you advance I’ll pay back to you again. But I must go

up and see how he is now, poor deary.”

Arabella ascended the stairs, softly opened the door of the first

bedroom, and peeped in. Finding that her shorn Samson was asleep she

entered to the bedside and stood regarding him. The fevered flush on

his face from the debauch of the previous evening lessened the

fragility of his ordinary appearance, and his long lashes, dark brows,

and curly back hair and beard against the white pillow completed the

physiognomy of one whom Arabella, as a woman of rank passions, still

felt it worth while to recapture, highly important to recapture as a

woman straitened both in means and in reputation. Her ardent gaze

seemed to affect him; his quick breathing became suspended, and he

opened his eyes.

“How are you now, dear?” said she. “It is I—Arabella.”

“Ah!—where—oh yes, I remember! You gave me shelter… I am

stranded—ill—demoralized—damn bad! That’s what I am!”

“Then do stay here. There’s nobody in the house but father and me, and

you can rest till you are thoroughly well. I’ll tell them at the

stoneworks that you are knocked up.”

“I wonder what they are thinking at the lodgings!”

“I’ll go round and explain. Perhaps you had better let me pay up, or

they’ll think we’ve run away?”

“Yes. You’ll find enough money in my pocket there.”

Quite indifferent, and shutting his eyes because he could not bear the

daylight in his throbbing eye-balls, Jude seemed to doze again.

Arabella took his purse, softly left the room, and putting on her

outdoor things went off to the lodgings she and he had quitted the

evening before.

Scarcely half an hour had elapsed ere she reappeared round the corner,

walking beside a lad wheeling a truck on which were piled all Jude’s

household possessions, and also the few of Arabella’s things which she

had taken to the lodging for her short sojourn there. Jude was in such

physical pain from his unfortunate break-down of the previous night,

and in such mental pain from the loss of Sue and from having yielded in

his half-somnolent state to Arabella, that when he saw his few chattels

unpacked and standing before his eyes in this strange bedroom,

intermixed with woman’s apparel, he scarcely considered how they had

come there, or what their coming signalized.

“Now,” said Arabella to her father downstairs, “we must keep plenty of

good liquor going in the house these next few days. I know his nature,

and if he once gets into that fearfully low state that he does get into

sometimes, he’ll never do the honourable thing by me in this world, and

I shall be left in the lurch. He must be kept cheerful. He has a little

money in the savings bank, and he has given me his purse to pay for

anything necessary. Well, that will be the licence; for I must have

that ready at hand, to catch him the moment he’s in the humour. You

must pay for the liquor. A few friends, and a quiet convivial party

would be the thing, if we could get it up. It would advertise the shop,

and help me too.”

“That can be got up easy enough by anybody who’ll afford victuals and

drink… Well yes—it would advertise the shop—that’s true.”

Three days later, when Jude had recovered somewhat from the fearful

throbbing of his eyes and brain, but was still considerably confused in

his mind by what had been supplied to him by Arabella during the

interval—to keep him, jolly, as she expressed it—the quiet convivial

gathering, suggested by her, to wind Jude up to the striking point,

took place.

Donn had only just opened his miserable little pork and sausage shop,

which had as yet scarce any customers; nevertheless that party

advertised it well, and the Donns acquired a real notoriety among a

certain class in Christminster who knew not the colleges, nor their

works, nor their ways. Jude was asked if he could suggest any guest in

addition to those named by Arabella and her father, and in a saturnine

humour of perfect recklessness mentioned Uncle Joe, and Stagg, and the

decayed auctioneer, and others whom he remembered as having been

frequenters of the well-known tavern during his bout therein years

before. He also suggested Freckles and Bower o’ Bliss. Arabella took

him at his word so far as the men went, but drew the line at the

ladies.

Another man they knew, Tinker Taylor, though he lived in the same

street, was not invited; but as he went homeward from a late job on the

evening of the party, he had occasion to call at the shop for trotters.

There were none in, but he was promised some the next morning. While

making his inquiry Taylor glanced into the back room, and saw the

guests sitting round, card-playing, and drinking, and otherwise

enjoying themselves at Donn’s expense. He went home to bed, and on his

way out next morning wondered how the party went off. He thought it

hardly worth while to call at the shop for his provisions at that hour,

Donn and his daughter being probably not up, if they caroused late the

night before. However, he found in passing that the door was open, and

he could hear voices within, though the shutters of the meat-stall were

not down. He went and tapped at the sitting-room door, and opened it.

“Well—to be sure!” he said, astonished.

Hosts and guests were sitting card-playing, smoking, and talking,

precisely as he had left them eleven hours earlier; the gas was burning

and the curtains drawn, though it had been broad daylight for two hours

out of doors.

“Yes!” cried Arabella, laughing. “Here we are, just the same. We ought

to be ashamed of ourselves, oughtn’t we? But it is a sort of

housewarming, you see; and our friends are in no hurry. Come in, Mr.

Taylor, and sit down.”

The tinker, or rather reduced ironmonger, was nothing loath, and

entered and took a seat. “I shall lose a quarter, but never mind,” he

said. “Well, really, I could hardly believe my eyes when I looked in!

It seemed as if I was flung back again into last night, all of a

sudden.”

“So you are. Pour out for Mr. Taylor.”

He now perceived that she was sitting beside Jude, her arm being round

his waist. Jude, like the rest of the company, bore on his face the

signs of how deeply he had been indulging.

“Well, we’ve been waiting for certain legal hours to arrive, to tell

the truth,” she continued bashfully, and making her spirituous crimson

look as much like a maiden blush as possible. “Jude and I have decided

to make up matters between us by tying the knot again, as we find we

can’t do without one another after all. So, as a bright notion, we

agreed to sit on till it was late enough, and go and do it off-hand.”

Jude seemed to pay no great heed to what she was announcing, or indeed

to anything whatever. The entrance of Taylor infused fresh spirit into

the company, and they remained sitting, till Arabella whispered to her

father: “Now we may as well go.”

“But the parson don’t know?”

“Yes, I told him last night that we might come between eight and nine,

as there were reasons of decency for doing it as early and quiet as

possible; on account of it being our second marriage, which might make

people curious to look on if they knew. He highly approved.”

“Oh very well, I’m ready,” said her father, getting up and shaking

himself.

“Now, old darling,” she said to Jude. “Come along, as you promised.”

“When did I promise anything?” asked he, whom she had made so tipsy by

her special knowledge of that line of business as almost to have made

him sober again—or to seem so to those who did not know him.

“Why!” said Arabella, affecting dismay. “You’ve promised to marry me

several times as we’ve sat here to-night. These gentlemen have heard

you.”

“I don’t remember it,” said Jude doggedly. “There’s only one woman—but

I won’t mention her in this Capharnaum!”

Arabella looked towards her father. “Now, Mr. Fawley be honourable,”

said Donn. “You and my daughter have been living here together these

three or four days, quite on the understanding that you were going to

marry her. Of course I shouldn’t have had such goings on in my house if

I hadn’t understood that. As a point of honour you must do it now.”

“Don’t say anything against my honour!” enjoined Jude hotly, standing

up. “I’d marry the W–––– of Babylon rather than do anything

dishonourable! No reflection on you, my dear. It is a mere rhetorical

figure—what they call in the books, hyperbole.”

“Keep your figures for your debts to friends who shelter you,” said

Donn.

“If I am bound in honour to marry her—as I suppose I am—though how I

came to be here with her I know no more than a dead man—marry her I

will, so help me God! I have never behaved dishonourably to a woman or

to any living thing. I am not a man who wants to save himself at the

expense of the weaker among us!”

“There—never mind him, deary,” said she, putting her cheek against

Jude’s. “Come up and wash your face, and just put yourself tidy, and

off we’ll go. Make it up with Father.”

They shook hands. Jude went upstairs with her, and soon came down

looking tidy and calm. Arabella, too, had hastily arranged herself, and

accompanied by Donn away they went.

“Don’t go,” she said to the guests at parting. “I’ve told the little

maid to get the breakfast while we are gone; and when we come back

we’ll all have some. A good strong cup of tea will set everybody right

for going home.”

When Arabella, Jude, and Donn had disappeared on their matrimonial

errand the assembled guests yawned themselves wider awake, and

discussed the situation with great interest. Tinker Taylor, being the

most sober, reasoned the most lucidly.

“I don’t wish to speak against friends,” he said. “But it do seem a

rare curiosity for a couple to marry over again! If they couldn’t get

on the first time when their minds were limp, they won’t the second, by

my reckoning.”

“Do you think he’ll do it?”

“He’s been put upon his honour by the woman, so he med.”

“He’d hardly do it straight off like this. He’s got no licence nor

anything.”

“She’s got that, bless you. Didn’t you hear her say so to her father?”

“Well,” said Tinker Taylor, relighting his pipe at the gas-jet. “Take

her all together, limb by limb, she’s not such a bad-looking

piece—particular by candlelight. To be sure, halfpence that have been

in circulation can’t be expected to look like new ones from the mint.

But for a woman that’s been knocking about the four hemispheres for

some time, she’s passable enough. A little bit thick in the flitch

perhaps: but I like a woman that a puff o’ wind won’t blow down.”

Their eyes followed the movements of the little girl as she spread the

breakfast-cloth on the table they had been using, without wiping up the

slops of the liquor. The curtains were undrawn, and the expression of

the house made to look like morning. Some of the guests, however, fell

asleep in their chairs. One or two went to the door, and gazed along

the street more than once. Tinker Taylor was the chief of these, and

after a time he came in with a leer on his face.

“By Gad, they are coming! I think the deed’s done!”

“No,” said Uncle Joe, following him in. “Take my word, he turned rusty

at the last minute. They are walking in a very unusual way; and that’s

the meaning of it!”

They waited in silence till the wedding-party could be heard entering

the house. First into the room came Arabella boisterously; and her face

was enough to show that her strategy had succeeded.

“Mrs. Fawley, I presume?” said Tinker Taylor with mock courtesy.

“Certainly. Mrs. Fawley again,” replied Arabella blandly, pulling off

her glove and holding out her left hand. “There’s the padlock, see…

Well, he was a very nice, gentlemanly man indeed. I mean the clergyman.

He said to me as gentle as a babe when all was done: ‘Mrs. Fawley, I

congratulate you heartily,’ he says. ‘For having heard your history,

and that of your husband, I think you have both done the right and

proper thing. And for your past errors as a wife, and his as a husband,

I think you ought now to be forgiven by the world, as you have forgiven

each other,’ says he. Yes; he was a very nice, gentlemanly man. ‘The

Church don’t recognize divorce in her dogma, strictly speaking,’ he

says: ‘and bear in mind the words of the service in your goings out and

your comings in: What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’

Yes; he was a very nice, gentlemanly man… But, Jude, my dear, you were

enough to make a cat laugh! You walked that straight, and held yourself

that steady, that one would have thought you were going ’prentice to a

judge; though I knew you were seeing double all the time, from the way

you fumbled with my finger.”

“I said I’d do anything to—save a woman’s honour,” muttered Jude. “And

I’ve done it!”

“Well now, old deary, come along and have some breakfast.”

“I want—some—more whisky,” said Jude stolidly.

“Nonsense, dear. Not now! There’s no more left. The tea will take the

muddle out of our heads, and we shall be as fresh as larks.”

“All right. I’ve—married you. She said I ought to marry you again, and

I have straightway. It is true religion! Ha—ha—ha!”

VIII

Michaelmas 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.

IX

On the platform stood Arabella. She looked him up and down.

“You’ve been to see her?” she asked.

“I have,” said Jude, literally tottering with cold and lassitude.

“Well, now you’d best march along home.”

The water ran out of him as he went, and he was compelled to lean

against the wall to support himself while coughing.

“You’ve done for yourself by this, young man,” said she. “I don’t know

whether you know it.”

“Of course I do. I meant to do for myself.”

“What—to commit suicide?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, I’m blest! Kill yourself for a woman.”

“Listen to me, Arabella. You think you are the stronger; and so you

are, in a physical sense, now. You could push me over like a nine-pin.

You did not send that letter the other day, and I could not resent your

conduct. But I am not so weak in another way as you think. I made up my

mind that a man confined to his room by inflammation of the lungs, a

fellow who had only two wishes left in the world, to see a particular

woman, and then to die, could neatly accomplish those two wishes at one

stroke by taking this journey in the rain. That I’ve done. I have seen

her for the last time, and I’ve finished myself—put an end to a

feverish life which ought never to have been begun!”

“Lord—you do talk lofty! Won’t you have something warm to drink?”

“No thank you. Let’s get home.”

They went along by the silent colleges, and Jude kept stopping.

“What are you looking at?”

“Stupid fancies. I see, in a way, those spirits of the dead again, on

this my last walk, that I saw when I first walked here!”

“What a curious chap you are!”

“I seem to see them, and almost hear them rustling. But I don’t revere

all of them as I did then. I don’t believe in half of them. The

theologians, the apologists, and their kin the metaphysicians, the

high-handed statesmen, and others, no longer interest me. All that has

been spoilt for me by the grind of stern reality!”

The expression of Jude’s corpselike face in the watery lamplight was

indeed as if he saw people where there was nobody. At moments he stood

still by an archway, like one watching a figure walk out; then he would

look at a window like one discerning a familiar face behind it. He

seemed to hear voices, whose words he repeated as if to gather their

meaning.

“They seem laughing at me!”

“Who?”

“Oh—I was talking to myself! The phantoms all about here, in the

college archways, and windows. They used to look friendly in the old

days, particularly Addison, and Gibbon, and Johnson, and Dr. Browne,

and Bishop Ken—”

“Come along do! Phantoms! There’s neither living nor dead hereabouts

except a damn policeman! I never saw the streets emptier.”

“Fancy! The Poet of Liberty used to walk here, and the great Dissector

of Melancholy there!”

“I don’t want to hear about ’em! They bore me.”

“Walter Raleigh is beckoning to me from that

lane—Wycliffe—Harvey—Hooker—Arnold—and a whole crowd of Tractarian

Shades—”

“I _don’t want_ to know their names, I tell you! What do I care about

folk dead and gone? Upon my soul you are more sober when you’ve been

drinking than when you have not!”

“I must rest a moment,” he said; and as he paused, holding to the

railings, he measured with his eye the height of a college front. “This

is old Rubric. And that Sarcophagus; and up that lane Crozier and

Tudor: and all down there is Cardinal with its long front, and its

windows with lifted eyebrows, representing the polite surprise of the

university at the efforts of such as I.”

“Come along, and I’ll treat you!”

“Very well. It will help me home, for I feel the chilly fog from the

meadows of Cardinal as if death-claws were grabbing me through and

through. As Antigone said, I am neither a dweller among men nor ghosts.

But, Arabella, when I am dead, you’ll see my spirit flitting up and

down here among these!”

“Pooh! You mayn’t die after all. You are tough enough yet, old man.”

It was night at Marygreen, and the rain of the afternoon showed no sign

of abatement. About the time at which Jude and Arabella were walking

the streets of Christminster homeward, the Widow Edlin crossed the

green, and opened the back door of the schoolmaster’s dwelling, which

she often did now before bedtime, to assist Sue in putting things away.

Sue was muddling helplessly in the kitchen, for she was not a good

housewife, though she tried to be, and grew impatient of domestic

details.

“Lord love ’ee, what do ye do that yourself for, when I’ve come o’

purpose! You knew I should come.”

“Oh—I don’t know—I forgot! No, I didn’t forget. I did it to discipline

myself. I have scrubbed the stairs since eight o’clock. I _must_

practise myself in my household duties. I’ve shamefully neglected

them!”

“Why should ye? He’ll get a better school, perhaps be a parson, in

time, and you’ll keep two servants. ’Tis a pity to spoil them pretty

hands.”

“Don’t talk of my pretty hands, Mrs. Edlin. This pretty body of mine

has been the ruin of me already!”

“Pshoo—you’ve got no body to speak of! You put me more in mind of a

sperrit. But there seems something wrong to-night, my dear. Husband

cross?”

“No. He never is. He’s gone to bed early.”

“Then what is it?”

“I cannot tell you. I have done wrong to-day. And I want to eradicate

it… Well—I will tell you this—Jude has been here this afternoon, and I

find I still love him—oh, grossly! I cannot tell you more.”

“Ah!” said the widow. “I told ’ee how ’twould be!”

“But it shan’t be! I have not told my husband of his visit; it is not

necessary to trouble him about it, as I never mean to see Jude any

more. But I am going to make my conscience right on my duty to

Richard—by doing a penance—the ultimate thing. I must!”

“I wouldn’t—since he agrees to it being otherwise, and it has gone on

three months very well as it is.”

“Yes—he agrees to my living as I choose; but I feel it is an indulgence

I ought not to exact from him. It ought not to have been accepted by

me. To reverse it will be terrible—but I must be more just to him. O

why was I so unheroic!”

“What is it you don’t like in him?” asked Mrs. Edlin curiously.

“I cannot tell you. It is something… I cannot say. The mournful thing

is, that nobody would admit it as a reason for feeling as I do; so that

no excuse is left me.”

“Did you ever tell Jude what it was?”

“Never.”

“I’ve heard strange tales o’ husbands in my time,” observed the widow

in a lowered voice. “They say that when the saints were upon the earth

devils used to take husbands’ forms o’ nights, and get poor women into

all sorts of trouble. But I don’t know why that should come into my

head, for it is only a tale… What a wind and rain it is to-night!

Well—don’t be in a hurry to alter things, my dear. Think it over.”

“No, no! I’ve screwed my weak soul up to treating him more

courteously—and it must be now—at once—before I break down!”

“I don’t think you ought to force your nature. No woman ought to be

expected to.”

“It is my duty. I will drink my cup to the dregs!”

Half an hour later when Mrs. Edlin put on her bonnet and shawl to

leave, Sue seemed to be seized with vague terror.

“No—no—don’t go, Mrs. Edlin,” she implored, her eyes enlarged, and with

a quick nervous look over her shoulder.

“But it is bedtime, child.”

“Yes, but—there’s the little spare room—my room that was. It is quite

ready. Please stay, Mrs. Edlin!—I shall want you in the morning.”

“Oh well—I don’t mind, if you wish. Nothing will happen to my four old

walls, whether I be there or no.”

She then fastened up the doors, and they ascended the stairs together.

“Wait here, Mrs. Edlin,” said Sue. “I’ll go into my old room a moment

by myself.”

Leaving the widow on the landing Sue turned to the chamber which had

been hers exclusively since her arrival at Marygreen, and pushing to

the door knelt down by the bed for a minute or two. She then arose, and

taking her night-gown from the pillow undressed and came out to Mrs.

Edlin. A man could be heard snoring in the room opposite. She wished

Mrs. Edlin good-night, and the widow entered the room that Sue had just

vacated.

Sue unlatched the other chamber door, and, as if seized with faintness,

sank down outside it. Getting up again she half opened the door, and

said “Richard.” As the word came out of her mouth she visibly

shuddered.

The snoring had quite ceased for some time, but he did not reply. Sue

seemed relieved, and hurried back to Mrs. Edlin’s chamber. “Are you in

bed, Mrs. Edlin?” she asked.

“No, dear,” said the widow, opening the door. “I be old and slow, and

it takes me a long while to un-ray. I han’t unlaced my jumps yet.”

“I—don’t hear him! And perhaps—perhaps—”

“What, child?”

“Perhaps he’s dead!” she gasped. “And then—I should be _free_, and I

could go to Jude! … Ah—no—I forgot _her_—and God!”

“Let’s go and hearken. No—he’s snoring again. But the rain and the wind

is so loud that you can hardly hear anything but between whiles.”

Sue had dragged herself back. “Mrs. Edlin, good-night again! I am sorry

I called you out.” The widow retreated a second time.

The strained, resigned look returned to Sue’s face when she was alone.

“I must do it—I must! I must drink to the dregs!” she whispered.

“Richard!” she said again.

“Hey—what? Is that you, Susanna?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want? Anything the matter? Wait a moment.” He pulled on

some articles of clothing, and came to the door. “Yes?”

“When we were at Shaston I jumped out of the window rather than that

you should come near me. I have never reversed that treatment till

now—when I have come to beg your pardon for it, and ask you to let me

in.”

“Perhaps you only think you ought to do this? I don’t wish you to come

against your impulses, as I have said.”

“But I beg to be admitted.” She waited a moment, and repeated, “I beg

to be admitted! I have been in error—even to-day. I have exceeded my

rights. I did not mean to tell you, but perhaps I ought. I sinned

against you this afternoon.”

“How?”

“I met Jude! I didn’t know he was coming. And—”

“Well?”

“I kissed him, and let him kiss me.”

“Oh—the old story!”

“Richard, I didn’t know we were going to kiss each other till we did!”

“How many times?”

“A good many. I don’t know. I am horrified to look back on it, and the

least I can do after it is to come to you like this.”

“Come—this is pretty bad, after what I’ve done! Anything else to

confess?”

“No.” She had been intending to say: “I called him my darling Love.”

But, as a contrite woman always keeps back a little, that portion of

the scene remained untold. She went on: “I am never going to see him

any more. He spoke of some things of the past, and it overcame me. He

spoke of—the children. But, as I have said, I am glad—almost glad I

mean—that they are dead, Richard. It blots out all that life of mine!”

“Well—about not seeing him again any more. Come—you really mean this?”

There was something in Phillotson’s tone now which seemed to show that

his three months of remarriage with Sue had somehow not been so

satisfactory as his magnanimity or amative patience had anticipated.

“Yes, yes!”

“Perhaps you’ll swear it on the New Testament?”

“I will.”

He went back to the room and brought out a little brown Testament. “Now

then: So help you God!”

She swore.

“Very good!”

“Now I supplicate you, Richard, to whom I belong, and whom I wish to

honour and obey, as I vowed, to let me in.”

“Think it over well. You know what it means. Having you back in the

house was one thing—this another. So think again.”

“I have thought—I wish this!”

“That’s a complaisant spirit—and perhaps you are right. With a lover

hanging about, a half-marriage should be completed. But I repeat my

reminder this third and last time.”

“It is my wish! … O God!”

“What did you say ‘O God’ for?”

“I don’t know!”

“Yes you do! But …” He gloomily considered her thin and fragile form a

moment longer as she crouched before him in her night-clothes. “Well, I

thought it might end like this,” he said presently. “I owe you nothing,

after these signs; but I’ll take you in at your word, and forgive you.”

He put his arm round her to lift her up. Sue started back.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, speaking for the first time sternly.

“You shrink from me again?—just as formerly!”

“No, Richard—I—I—was not thinking—”

“You wish to come in here?”

“Yes.”

“You still bear in mind what it means?”

“Yes. It is my duty!”

Placing the candlestick on the chest of drawers he led her through the

doorway, and lifting her bodily, kissed her. A quick look of aversion

passed over her face, but clenching her teeth she uttered no cry.

Mrs. Edlin had by this time undressed, and was about to get into bed

when she said to herself: “Ah—perhaps I’d better go and see if the

little thing is all right. How it do blow and rain!”

The widow went out on the landing, and saw that Sue had disappeared.

“Ah! Poor soul! Weddings be funerals ’a b’lieve nowadays. Fifty-five

years ago, come Fall, since my man and I married! Times have changed

since then!”

X

Despite himself Jude recovered somewhat, and worked at his trade for

several weeks. After Christmas, however, he broke down again.

With the money he had earned he shifted his lodgings to a yet more

central part of the town. But Arabella saw that he was not likely to do

much work for a long while, and was cross enough at the turn affairs

had taken since her remarriage to him. “I’m hanged if you haven’t been

clever in this last stroke!” she would say, “to get a nurse for nothing

by marrying me!”

Jude was absolutely indifferent to what she said, and indeed, often

regarded her abuse in a humorous light. Sometimes his mood was more

earnest, and as he lay he often rambled on upon the defeat of his early

aims.

“Every man has some little power in some one direction,” he would say.

“I was never really stout enough for the stone trade, particularly the

fixing. Moving the blocks always used to strain me, and standing the

trying draughts in buildings before the windows are in always gave me

colds, and I think that began the mischief inside. But I felt I could

do one thing if I had the opportunity. I could accumulate ideas, and

impart them to others. I wonder if the founders had such as I in their

minds—a fellow good for nothing else but that particular thing? … I

hear that soon there is going to be a better chance for such helpless

students as I was. There are schemes afoot for making the university

less exclusive, and extending its influence. I don’t know much about

it. And it is too late, too late for me! Ah—and for how many worthier

ones before me!”

“How you keep a-mumbling!” said Arabella. “I should have thought you’d

have got over all that craze about books by this time. And so you

would, if you’d had any sense to begin with. You are as bad now as when

we were first married.”

On one occasion while soliloquizing thus he called her “Sue”

unconsciously.

“I wish you’d mind who you are talking to!” said Arabella indignantly.

“Calling a respectable married woman by the name of that—” She

remembered herself and he did not catch the word.

But in the course of time, when she saw how things were going, and how

very little she had to fear from Sue’s rivalry, she had a fit of

generosity. “I suppose you want to see your—Sue?” she said. “Well, I

don’t mind her coming. You can have her here if you like.”

“I don’t wish to see her again.”

“Oh—that’s a change!”

“And don’t tell her anything about me—that I’m ill, or anything. She

has chosen her course. Let her go!”

One day he received a surprise. Mrs. Edlin came to see him, quite on

her own account. Jude’s wife, whose feelings as to where his affections

were centred had reached absolute indifference by this time, went out,

leaving the old woman alone with Jude. He impulsively asked how Sue

was, and then said bluntly, remembering what Sue had told him: “I

suppose they are still only husband and wife in name?”

Mrs. Edlin hesitated. “Well, no—it’s different now. She’s begun it

quite lately—all of her own free will.”

“When did she begin?” he asked quickly.

“The night after you came. But as a punishment to her poor self. He

didn’t wish it, but she insisted.”

“Sue, my Sue—you darling fool—this is almost more than I can endure! …

Mrs. Edlin—don’t be frightened at my rambling—I’ve got to talk to

myself lying here so many hours alone—she was once a woman whose

intellect was to mine like a star to a benzoline lamp: who saw all _my_

superstitions as cobwebs that she could brush away with a word. Then

bitter affliction came to us, and her intellect broke, and she veered

round to darkness. Strange difference of sex, that time and

circumstance, which enlarge the views of most men, narrow the views of

women almost invariably. And now the ultimate horror has come—her

giving herself like this to what she loathes, in her enslavement to

forms! She, so sensitive, so shrinking, that the very wind seemed to

blow on her with a touch of deference… As for Sue and me when we were

at our own best, long ago—when our minds were clear, and our love of

truth fearless—the time was not ripe for us! Our ideas were fifty years

too soon to be any good to us. And so the resistance they met with

brought reaction in her, and recklessness and ruin on me! … There—this,

Mrs. Edlin, is how I go on to myself continually, as I lie here. I must

be boring you awfully.”

“Not at all, my dear boy. I could hearken to ’ee all day.”

As Jude reflected more and more on her news, and grew more restless, he

began in his mental agony to use terribly profane language about social

conventions, which started a fit of coughing. Presently there came a

knock at the door downstairs. As nobody answered it Mrs. Edlin herself

went down.

The visitor said blandly: “The Doctor.” The lanky form was that of

Physician Vilbert, who had been called in by Arabella.

“How is my patient at present?” asked the physician.

“Oh bad—very bad! Poor chap, he got excited, and do blaspeam terribly,

since I let out some gossip by accident—the more to my blame. But

there—you must excuse a man in suffering for what he says, and I hope

God will forgive him.”

“Ah. I’ll go up and see him. Mrs. Fawley at home?”

“She’s not in at present, but she’ll be here soon.”

Vilbert went; but though Jude had hitherto taken the medicines of that

skilful practitioner with the greatest indifference whenever poured

down his throat by Arabella, he was now so brought to bay by events

that he vented his opinion of Vilbert in the physician’s face, and so

forcibly, and with such striking epithets, that Vilbert soon scurried

downstairs again. At the door he met Arabella, Mrs. Edlin having left.

Arabella inquired how he thought her husband was now, and seeing that

the Doctor looked ruffled, asked him to take something. He assented.

“I’ll bring it to you here in the passage,” she said. “There’s nobody

but me about the house to-day.”

She brought him a bottle and a glass, and he drank.

Arabella began shaking with suppressed laughter. “What is this, my

dear?” he asked, smacking his lips.

“Oh—a drop of wine—and something in it.” Laughing again she said: “I

poured your own love-philtre into it, that you sold me at the

agricultural show, don’t you re-member?”

“I do, I do! Clever woman! But you must be prepared for the

consequences.” Putting his arm round her shoulders he kissed her there

and then.

“Don’t don’t,” she whispered, laughing good-humouredly. “My man will

hear.”

She let him out of the house, and as she went back she said to herself:

“Well! Weak women must provide for a rainy day. And if my poor fellow

upstairs do go off—as I suppose he will soon—it’s well to keep chances

open. And I can’t pick and choose now as I could when I was younger.

And one must take the old if one can’t get the young.”

XI

The last pages to which the chronicler of these lives would ask the

reader’s attention are concerned with the scene in and out of Jude’s

bedroom when leafy summer came round again.

His face was now so thin that his old friends would hardly have known

him. It was afternoon, and Arabella was at the looking-glass curling

her hair, which operation she performed by heating an umbrella-stay in

the flame of a candle she had lighted, and using it upon the flowing

lock. When she had finished this, practised a dimple, and put on her

things, she cast her eyes round upon Jude. He seemed to be sleeping,

though his position was an elevated one, his malady preventing him

lying down.

Arabella, hatted, gloved, and ready, sat down and waited, as if

expecting some one to come and take her place as nurse.

Certain sounds from without revealed that the town was in festivity,

though little of the festival, whatever it might have been, could be

seen here. Bells began to ring, and the notes came into the room

through the open window, and travelled round Jude’s head in a hum. They

made her restless, and at last she said to herself: “Why ever doesn’t

Father come?”

She looked again at Jude, critically gauged his ebbing life, as she had

done so many times during the late months, and glancing at his watch,

which was hung up by way of timepiece, rose impatiently. Still he

slept, and coming to a resolution she slipped from the room, closed the

door noiselessly, and descended the stairs. The house was empty. The

attraction which moved Arabella to go abroad had evidently drawn away

the other inmates long before.

It was a warm, cloudless, enticing day. She shut the front door, and

hastened round into Chief Street, and when near the theatre could hear

the notes of the organ, a rehearsal for a coming concert being in

progress. She entered under the archway of Oldgate College, where men

were putting up awnings round the quadrangle for a ball in the hall

that evening. People who had come up from the country for the day were

picnicking on the grass, and Arabella walked along the gravel paths and

under the aged limes. But finding this place rather dull she returned

to the streets, and watched the carriages drawing up for the concert,

numerous Dons and their wives, and undergraduates with gay female

companions, crowding up likewise. When the doors were closed, and the

concert began, she moved on.

The powerful notes of that concert rolled forth through the swinging

yellow blinds of the open windows, over the housetops, and into the

still air of the lanes. They reached so far as to the room in which

Jude lay; and it was about this time that his cough began again and

awakened him.

As soon as he could speak he murmured, his eyes still closed: “A little

water, please.”

Nothing but the deserted room received his appeal, and he coughed to

exhaustion again—saying still more feebly: “Water—some

water—Sue—Arabella!”

The room remained still as before. Presently he gasped again:

“Throat—water—Sue—darling—drop of water—please—oh please!”

No water came, and the organ notes, faint as a bee’s hum, rolled in as

before.

While he remained, his face changing, shouts and hurrahs came from

somewhere in the direction of the river.

“Ah—yes! The Remembrance games,” he murmured. “And I here. And Sue

defiled!”

The hurrahs were repeated, drowning the faint organ notes. Jude’s face

changed more: he whispered slowly, his parched lips scarcely moving:

_“Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was

said, There is a man-child conceived.”_

(“Hurrah!”)

_“Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither

let the light shine upon it. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no

joyful voice come therein.”_

(“Hurrah!”)

_“Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I

came out of the belly? … For now should I have lain still and been

quiet. I should have slept: then had I been at rest!”_

(“Hurrah!”)

_“There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the

oppressor… The small and the great are there; and the servant is free

from his master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and

life unto the bitter in soul?”_

Meanwhile Arabella, in her journey to discover what was going on, took

a short cut down a narrow street and through an obscure nook into the

quad of Cardinal. It was full of bustle, and brilliant in the sunlight

with flowers and other preparations for a ball here also. A carpenter

nodded to her, one who had formerly been a fellow-workman of Jude’s. A

corridor was in course of erection from the entrance to the hall

staircase, of gay red and buff bunting. Waggon-loads of boxes

containing bright plants in full bloom were being placed about, and the

great staircase was covered with red cloth. She nodded to one workman

and another, and ascended to the hall on the strength of their

acquaintance, where they were putting down a new floor and decorating

for the dance.

The cathedral bell close at hand was sounding for five o’clock service.

“I should not mind having a spin there with a fellow’s arm round my

waist,” she said to one of the men. “But Lord, I must be getting home

again—there’s a lot to do. No dancing for me!”

When she reached home she was met at the door by Stagg, and one or two

other of Jude’s fellow stoneworkers. “We are just going down to the

river,” said the former, “to see the boat-bumping. But we’ve called

round on our way to ask how your husband is.”

“He’s sleeping nicely, thank you,” said Arabella.

“That’s right. Well now, can’t you give yourself half an hour’s

relaxation, Mrs. Fawley, and come along with us? ’Twould do you good.”

“I should like to go,” said she. “I’ve never seen the boat-racing, and

I hear it is good fun.”

“Come along!”

“How I _wish_ I could!” She looked longingly down the street. “Wait a

minute, then. I’ll just run up and see how he is now. Father is with

him, I believe; so I can most likely come.”

They waited, and she entered. Downstairs the inmates were absent as

before, having, in fact, gone in a body to the river where the

procession of boats was to pass. When she reached the bedroom she found

that her father had not even now come.

“Why couldn’t he have been here!” she said impatiently. “He wants to

see the boats himself—that’s what it is!”

However, on looking round to the bed she brightened, for she saw that

Jude was apparently sleeping, though he was not in the usual

half-elevated posture necessitated by his cough. He had slipped down,

and lay flat. A second glance caused her to start, and she went to the

bed. His face was quite white, and gradually becoming rigid. She

touched his fingers; they were cold, though his body was still warm.

She listened at his chest. All was still within. The bumping of near

thirty years had ceased.

After her first appalled sense of what had happened, the faint notes of

a military or other brass band from the river reached her ears; and in

a provoked tone she exclaimed, “To think he should die just now! Why

did he die just now!” Then meditating another moment or two she went to

the door, softly closed it as before, and again descended the stairs.

“Here she is!” said one of the workmen. “We wondered if you were coming

after all. Come along; we must be quick to get a good place… Well, how

is he? Sleeping well still? Of course, we don’t want to drag ’ee away

if—”

“Oh yes—sleeping quite sound. He won’t wake yet,” she said hurriedly.

They went with the crowd down Cardinal Street, where they presently

reached the bridge, and the gay barges burst upon their view. Thence

they passed by a narrow slit down to the riverside path—now dusty, hot,

and thronged. Almost as soon as they had arrived the grand procession

of boats began; the oars smacking with a loud kiss on the face of the

stream, as they were lowered from the perpendicular.

“Oh, I say—how jolly! I’m glad I’ve come,” said Arabella. “And—it can’t

hurt my husband—my being away.”

On the opposite side of the river, on the crowded barges, were gorgeous

nosegays of feminine beauty, fashionably arrayed in green, pink, blue,

and white. The blue flag of the boat club denoted the centre of

interest, beneath which a band in red uniform gave out the notes she

had already heard in the death-chamber. Collegians of all sorts, in

canoes with ladies, watching keenly for “our” boat, darted up and down.

While she regarded the lively scene somebody touched Arabella in the

ribs, and looking round she saw Vilbert.

“That philtre is operating, you know!” he said with a leer. “Shame on

’ee to wreck a heart so!”

“I shan’t talk of love to-day.”

“Why not? It is a general holiday.”

She did not reply. Vilbert’s arm stole round her waist, which act could

be performed unobserved in the crowd. An arch expression overspread

Arabella’s face at the feel of the arm, but she kept her eyes on the

river as if she did not know of the embrace.

The crowd surged, pushing Arabella and her friends sometimes nearly

into the river, and she would have laughed heartily at the horse-play

that succeeded, if the imprint on her mind’s eye of a pale, statuesque

countenance she had lately gazed upon had not sobered her a little.

The fun on the water reached the acme of excitement; there were

immersions, there were shouts: the race was lost and won, the pink and

blue and yellow ladies retired from the barges, and the people who had

watched began to move.

“Well—it’s been awfully good,” cried Arabella. “But I think I must get

back to my poor man. Father is there, so far as I know; but I had

better get back.”

“What’s your hurry?”

“Well, I must go… Dear, dear, this is awkward!”

At the narrow gangway where the people ascended from the riverside path

to the bridge the crowd was literally jammed into one hot mass—Arabella

and Vilbert with the rest; and here they remained motionless, Arabella

exclaiming, “Dear, dear!” more and more impatiently; for it had just

occurred to her mind that if Jude were discovered to have died alone an

inquest might be deemed necessary.

“What a fidget you are, my love,” said the physician, who, being

pressed close against her by the throng, had no need of personal effort

for contact. “Just as well have patience: there’s no getting away yet!”

It was nearly ten minutes before the wedged multitude moved

sufficiently to let them pass through. As soon as she got up into the

street Arabella hastened on, forbidding the physician to accompany her

further that day. She did not go straight to her house; but to the

abode of a woman who performed the last necessary offices for the

poorer dead; where she knocked.

“My husband has just gone, poor soul,” she said. “Can you come and lay

him out?”

Arabella waited a few minutes; and the two women went along, elbowing

their way through the stream of fashionable people pouring out of

Cardinal meadow, and being nearly knocked down by the carriages.

“I must call at the sexton’s about the bell, too,” said Arabella. “It

is just round here, isn’t it? I’ll meet you at my door.”

By ten o’clock that night Jude was lying on the bedstead at his lodging

covered with a sheet, and straight as an arrow. Through the partly

opened window the joyous throb of a waltz entered from the ball-room at

Cardinal.

Two days later, when the sky was equally cloudless, and the air equally

still, two persons stood beside Jude’s open coffin in the same little

bedroom. On one side was Arabella, on the other the Widow Edlin. They

were both looking at Jude’s face, the worn old eyelids of Mrs. Edlin

being red.

“How beautiful he is!” said she.

“Yes. He’s a ’andsome corpse,” said Arabella.

The window was still open to ventilate the room, and it being about

noontide the clear air was motionless and quiet without. From a

distance came voices; and an apparent noise of persons stamping.

“What’s that?” murmured the old woman.

“Oh, that’s the Doctors in the theatre, conferring Honorary degrees on

the Duke of Hamptonshire and a lot more illustrious gents of that sort.

It’s Remembrance Week, you know. The cheers come from the young men.”

“Aye; young and strong-lunged! Not like our poor boy here.”

An occasional word, as from some one making a speech, floated from the

open windows of the theatre across to this quiet corner, at which there

seemed to be a smile of some sort upon the marble features of Jude;

while the old, superseded, Delphin editions of Virgil and Horace, and

the dog-eared Greek Testament on the neighbouring shelf, and the few

other volumes of the sort that he had not parted with, roughened with

stone-dust where he had been in the habit of catching them up for a few

minutes between his labours, seemed to pale to a sickly cast at the

sounds. The bells struck out joyously; and their reverberations

travelled round the bed-room.

Arabella’s eyes removed from Jude to Mrs. Edlin. “D’ye think she will

come?” she asked.

“I could not say. She swore not to see him again.”

“How is she looking?”

“Tired and miserable, poor heart. Years and years older than when you

saw her last. Quite a staid, worn woman now. ’Tis the man—she can’t

stomach un, even now!”

“If Jude had been alive to see her, he would hardly have cared for her

any more, perhaps.”

“That’s what we don’t know… Didn’t he ever ask you to send for her,

since he came to see her in that strange way?”

“No. Quite the contrary. I offered to send, and he said I was not to

let her know how ill he was.”

“Did he forgive her?”

“Not as I know.”

“Well—poor little thing, ’tis to be believed she’s found forgiveness

somewhere! She said she had found peace!

“She may swear that on her knees to the holy cross upon her necklace

till she’s hoarse, but it won’t be true!” said Arabella. “She’s never

found peace since she left his arms, and never will again till she’s as

he is now!”