Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere
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a late hour––Father Time included; though, as he never spoke, they
were hardly conscious of him.
‘Well, I bain’t set against marrying as your great-aunt was,’ said
the widow. ‘And I hope ’twill be a jocund wedding for ye in all
respects this time. Nobody can hope it more, knowing what I do of
your families which is more, I suppose, than anybody else now living.
For they have been unlucky that way, God knows.’
Sue breathed uneasily.
‘They was always good-hearted people, too––wouldn’t kill a 
fly if
they knowed it,’ continued the wedding guest. ‘But things happened
to thwart ’em, and if everything wasn’t vitty* they were upset. No
doubt that’s how he that the tale is told of came to do what ’a did––if
he were one of your family.’
‘What was that?’ said Jude.
‘Well––that tale, ye know; he that was gibbeted just on the brow of
the hill by the Brown House––not far from the milestone between
Marygreen and Alfredston, where the other road branches o
ff. But
Lord, ’twas in my grandfather’s time; and it medn’ have been one of
your folk at all.’
‘I know where the gibbet is said to have stood, very well,’ mur-
mured Jude. ‘But I never heard of this. What––did this man––my
ancestor and Sue’s––kill his wife?’
‘ ’Twer not that exactly. She ran away from him, with their child,
to her friends; and while she was there the child died. He wanted the
body, to bury it where his people lay, but she wouldn’t give it up. Her
husband then came in the night with a cart, and broke into the house
to steal the co
ffin away; but he was catched, and being obstinate,
wouldn’t tell what he broke in for. They brought it in burglary, and
that’s why he was hanged and gibbeted on Brown House Hill. His
wife went mad after he was dead. But it medn’ be true that he
belonged to ye more than to me.’
A small slow voice rose from the shade of the 
fireside, as if out of
the earth: ‘If I was you, mother, I wouldn’t marry father!’ It came
from little Time, and they started, for they had forgotten him.
‘O, it is only a tale,’ said Sue cheeringly.
After this exhilarating tradition from the widow on the eve of the
solemnization they rose, and, wishing their guest good-night retired.
The next morning Sue, whose nervousness intensi
fied with the
hours, took Jude privately into the sitting-room before starting.
Jude the Obscure
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‘Jude, I want you to kiss me as a lover, incorporeally,’ she said,
tremulously nestling up to him, with damp lashes. ‘It won’t be ever
like this any more, will it! I wish we hadn’t begun the business. But I
suppose we must go on. How horrid that story was last night! It
spoilt my thoughts of to-day. It makes me feel as if a tragic doom
overhung our family, as it did the house of Atreus.’*
‘Or the house of Jeroboam;’* said the quondam theologian.
‘Yes. And it seems awful temerity in us two to go marrying! I am
going to vow to you in the same words I vowed in to my other
husband, and you to me in the same as you used to your other wife;
regardless of the deterrent lesson we were taught by those
experiments!’
‘If you are uneasy I am made unhappy,’ said he. ‘I had hoped you
would feel quite joyful. But if you don’t you don’t. It is no use
pretending. It is a dismal business to you, and that makes it so to me.’
‘It is unpleasantly like that other morning––that’s all,’ she
murmured. ‘Let us go on now.’
They started arm in arm for the o
ffice aforesaid, no witness
accompanying them except the Widow Edlin. The day was chilly
and dull, and a clammy fog blew through the town from ‘royal-
tower’d Thame.’* On the steps of the o
ffice there were the muddy
footmarks of people who had entered, and in the entry were damp
umbrellas. Within the o
ffice several persons were gathered, and our
couple perceived that a marriage between a soldier and a young
woman was just in progress. Sue, Jude, and the widow stood in the
background while this was going on, Sue reading the notices of
marriage on the wall. The room was a dreary place to two of their
temperament, though to its usual frequenters it doubtless seemed
ordinary enough. Law-books in musty calf covered one wall, and
elsewhere were Post-O
ffice Directories, and other books of refer-
ence. Papers in packets tied with red tape were pigeon-holed around,
and some iron safes 
filled a recess, while the bare wood floor was, like
the doorstep, stained by previous visitors.
The soldier was sullen and reluctant: the bride sad and timid; she
was soon, obviously, to become a mother; and she had a black eye.
Their little business was soon done, and the twain and their friends
straggled out, one of the witnesses saying casually to Jude and Sue in
passing, as if he had known them before: ‘See the couple just come
in? Ha, ha! That fellow is just out of gaol this morning. She met him