Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere
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before. Times had decidedly changed. ‘The little bird is caught at
last!’ she said, a sadness showing in her smile.
‘No––only nested,’ he assured her.
She walked along the muddy street till she reached the public-
house mentioned by Arabella, which was not so very far o
ff. She was
informed that Arabella had not yet left, and in doubt how to
announce herself so that her predecessor in Jude’s a
ffections would
recognize her, she sent up word that a friend from Spring Street had
called, naming the place of Jude’s residence. She was asked to step
upstairs, and on being shown into a room found that it was Arabella’s
bedroom, and that the latter had not yet risen. She halted on the turn
of her toe till Arabella cried from the bed, ‘Come in and shut the
door,’ which Sue accordingly did.
Arabella lay facing the window, and did not at once turn her head:
and Sue was wicked enough despite her penitence, to wish for a
moment that Jude could behold her forerunner now, with the day-
light full upon her. She may have seemed handsome enough in pro-
file under the lamps, but a frowsiness was apparent this morning;
and the sight of her own fresh charms in the looking-glass made
Sue’s manner bright, till she re
flected what a meanly sexual emotion
this was in her, and hated herself for it.
‘I’ve just looked in to see if you got back comfortably last night,
that’s all,’ she said gently. ‘I was afraid afterwards that you might
have met with any mishap.’
‘O. How stupid this is! I thought my visitor was––your friend––
your husband––Mrs. Fawley, as I suppose you call yourself,’ said
Arabella, 
flinging her head back upon the pillows with a disap-
pointed toss, and ceasing to retain the dimple she had just taken the
trouble to produce.
‘Indeed I don’t,’ said Sue.
‘O I thought you might have, even if he’s not really yours.
Decency is decency, any hour of the twenty-four.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Sue sti
ffly. ‘He is mine, if you
come to that!’
‘He wasn’t yesterday.’
Sue coloured roseate, and said ‘How do you know?’
‘From your manner when you talked to me at the door. Well, my
dear, you’ve been quick about it, and I expect my visit last night
helped it on––ha-ha! But I don’t want to get him away from you.’
Jude the Obscure
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Sue looked out at the rain, and at the dirty toilet-cover, and at the
detached tail of Arabella’s hair hanging on the looking-glass, just as
it had done in Jude’s time; and wished she had not come. In the
pause there was a knock at the door, and the chambermaid brought
in a telegram for ‘Mrs. Cartlett.’
Arabella opened it as she lay, and her ru
ffled look disappeared.
‘I am much obliged to you for your anxiety about me,’ she said
blandly when the maid had gone; ‘but it is not necessary you should
feel it. My man 
finds he can’t do without me after all, and agrees to
stand by the promise to marry again over here that he has made me
all along. See here. This is in answer to one from me.’ She held out
the telegram for Sue to read, but Sue did not take it. ‘He asks me to
come back. His little corner public in Lambeth would go to pieces
without me, he says. But he isn’t going to knock me about when he
has had a drop, any more after we are spliced by English law than
before! . . . As for you, I should coax Jude to take me before the
parson straight o
ff and have done with it, if I were in your place. I
say it as a friend, my dear.’
‘He’s waiting to, any day,’ returned Sue, with frigid pride.
‘Then let him, in Heaven’s name. Life with a man is more
business-like after it, and money matters work better. And then, you
see, if you have rows, and he turns you out of doors, you can get the
law to protect you, which you can’t otherwise, unless he half runs
you through with a knife, or cracks your noddle with a poker. And if
he bolts away from you––I say it friendly, as woman to woman, for
there’s never any knowing what a man med do––you’ll have the
sticks o’ furniture, and won’t be looked upon as a thief. I shall marry
my man over again, now he’s willing, as there was a little 
flaw in the
first ceremony. In my telegram last night which this is an answer to, I
told him I had almost made it up with Jude; and that frightened him,
I expect! Perhaps I should quite have done it if it hadn’t been for
you,’ she said laughing; ‘and then how di
fferent our histories might
have been from to-day! Never such a tender fool as Jude is if a
woman seems in trouble, and coaxes him a bit! Just as he used to be
about birds and things. However, as it happens, it is just as well as if I
had made it up, and I forgive you. And, as I say, I’d advise you to get
the business legally done as soon as possible. You’ll 
find it an awful
bother later on if you don’t.’
‘I have told you he is asking me to marry him––to make our