Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Shaston
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When Jude came back and sat down to supper Sue seemed mop-
ing and miserable. ‘Jude,’ she said to him plaintively, at their parting
that night upon the landing, ‘it is not so nice and pleasant as it used
to be with us! I don’t like it here––I can’t bear the place! And I don’t
like you so well as I did!’
‘How 
fidgeted you seem, dear! Why do you change like this?’
‘Because it was cruel to bring me here!’
‘Why?’
‘You were lately here with Arabella. There, now I have said it!’
‘Dear me, why––’ said Jude looking round him. ‘Yes––it is the
same! I really didn’t know it, Sue. Well––it is not cruel, since we have
come as we have––two relations staying together.’
‘How long ago was it you were here? Tell me, tell me!’
‘The day before I met you in Christminster, when we went back to
Marygreen together. I told you I had met her.’
‘Yes, you said you had met her, but you didn’t tell me all. Your
story was that you had met as estranged people, who were not hus-
band and wife at all in Heaven’s sight––not that you had made it up
with her.’
‘We didn’t make it up,’ he said sadly. ‘I can’t explain, Sue.’
‘You’ve been false to me; you, my last hope! And I shall never
forget it, never!’
‘But by your own wish, dear Sue, we are only to be friends, not
lovers! It is so very inconsistent of you to——’
‘Friends can be jealous!’
‘I don’t see that. You concede nothing to me and I have to concede
everything to you. After all, you were on good terms with your
husband at that time.’
‘No, I wasn’t, Jude. O how can you think so! And you have taken
me in, even if you didn’t intend to.’ She was so morti
fied that he was
obliged to take her into her room and close the door lest the people
should hear. ‘Was it this room? Yes it was––I see by your look it was!
I won’t have it for mine! O it was treacherous of you to have her
again! I jumped out of the window!’
‘But Sue, she was, after all, my legal wife, if not——’
Slipping down on her knees Sue buried her face in the bed and
wept.
‘I never knew such an unreasonable––such a dog-in-the-manger
feeling,’ said Jude. ‘I am not to approach you, nor anybody else!’
Jude the Obscure
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‘O don’t you understand my feeling! Why don’t you! Why are you
so gross! I jumped out of the window!’
‘Jumped out of the window?’
‘I can’t explain!’
It was true that he did not understand her feeling very well. But
he did a little; and began to love her none the less.
‘I––I thought you cared for nobody––desired nobody in the world
but me at that time––and ever since!’ continued Sue.
‘It is true. I did not, and don’t now!’ said Jude, as distressed as she.
‘But you must have thought much of her! Or——’
‘No––I need not––you don’t understand me either––women
never do! Why should you get into such a tantrum about nothing?’
Looking up from the quilt she pouted provokingly: ‘If it hadn’t
been for that, perhaps I would have gone on to the Temperance
Hotel, after all, as you proposed; for I was beginning to think I did
belong to you!’
‘O, it is of no consequence!’ said Jude distantly.
‘I thought, of course, that she had never been really your wife
since she left you of her own accord years and years ago! My sense of
it was, that a parting such as yours from her, and mine from him,
ended the marriage.’
‘I can’t say more without speaking against her, and I don’t want to
do that,’ said he. ‘Yet I must tell you one thing, which would settle
the matter in any case. She has married another man––really married
him! I knew nothing about it till after the visit we made here.’
‘Married another? . . . It is a crime––as the world treats it, but
does not believe.’
‘There––now you are yourself again. Yes, it is a crime––as you
don’t hold, but would fearfully concede. But I shall never inform
against her! and it is evidently a prick of conscience in her that has
led her to urge me to get a divorce, that she may re-marry this man
legally. So you perceive I shall not be likely to see her again.’
‘And you didn’t really know anything of this when you saw her?’
said Sue more gently, as she rose.
‘I did not. Considering all things, I don’t think you ought to be
angry, darling!’
‘I am not. But I shan’t go to the Temperance Hotel!’
He laughed. ‘Never mind!’ he said. ‘So that I am near you, I am
comparatively happy. It is more than this earthly wretch called Me