Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere
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and tended by a young woman apparently unused to the business,
she being accompanied by a boy with an octogenarian face, who
assisted her.
‘Upon my––senses!’ murmured the widow to herself. ‘His wife
Sue––if she is so!’ She drew nearer to the stall. ‘How do you do, Mrs.
Fawley?’ she said blandly.
Sue changed colour, and recognized Arabella through the crape veil.
‘How are you, Mrs. Cartlett?’ she said sti
ffly. And then perceiving
Arabella’s garb her voice grew sympathetic in spite of herself.
‘What?––you have lost——’
‘My poor husband. Yes. He died suddenly, six weeks ago, leaving
me none too well o
ff, though he was a kind husband to me. But
whatever pro
fit there is in public-house keeping goes to them that
brew the liquors, and not to them that retail ’em. . . . And you, my
little old man! You don’t know me, I expect?’
‘Yes, I do. You be the woman I thought wer my mother for a bit,
till I found you wasn’t,’ replied Father Time, who had learned to use
the Wessex tongue quite naturally by now.
‘All right. Never mind. I am a friend.’
‘Juey,’ said Sue suddenly, ‘go down to the station platform with
this tray––there’s another train coming in, I think.’
When he was gone Arabella continued: ‘He’ll never be a beauty,
will he, poor chap! Does he know I am his mother really?’
‘No. He thinks there is some mystery about his parentage––that’s
all. Jude is going to tell him when he is a little older.’
‘But how do you come to be doing this? I am surprised.’
‘It is only a temporary occupation––a fancy of ours while we are
in a di
fficulty.’
‘Then you are living with him still?’
‘Yes.’
‘Married?’
‘Of course.’
‘Any children?’
‘Two.’
‘And another coming soon, I see.’
Sue writhed under the hard and direct questioning, and her ten-
der little mouth began to quiver.
‘Lord––I mean goodness gracious––what is there to cry about?
Some folks would be proud enough!’
Jude the Obscure
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‘It is not that I am ashamed––not as you think! But it seems such a
terribly tragic thing to bring beings into the world––so
presumptuous––that I question my right to do it sometimes!’
‘Take it easy, my dear. . . . But you don’t tell me why you do such a
thing as this? Jude used to be a proud sort of chap––above any
business almost, leave alone keeping a standing.’
‘Perhaps my husband has altered a little since then. I am sure he is
not proud now!’ And Sue’s lips quivered again. ‘I am doing this
because he caught a chill early in the year while putting up some
stone-work of a music-hall, at Quartershot, which he had to do in
the rain, the work having to be executed by a 
fixed day. He is
better than he was; but it has been a long, weary time! We have
had an old widow friend with us to help us through it; but she’s
leaving soon.’
‘Well, I am respectable too, thank God, and of a serious way of
thinking since my loss. Why did you choose to sell gingerbreads?’
‘That’s a pure accident. He was brought up to the baking busi-
ness, and it occurred to him to try his hand at these, which he can
make without coming out of doors. We call them Christminster
cakes. They are a great success.’
‘I never saw any like ’em. Why, they are windows and towers, and
pinnacles! And upon my word they are very nice.’ She had helped
herself, and was unceremoniously munching one of the cakes.
‘Yes. They are reminiscences of the Christminster Colleges. Tra-
ceried windows, and cloisters, you see. It was a whim of his to do
them in pastry.’
‘Still harping on Christminster––even in his cakes!’ laughed
Arabella. ‘Just like Jude. A ruling passion. What a queer fellow he is,
and always will be!’
Sue sighed, and she looked her distress at hearing him criticized.
‘Don’t you think he is? Come now; you do, though you are so fond
of him!’
‘Of course Christminster is a sort of 
fixed vision with him, which
I suppose he’ll never be cured of believing in. He still thinks it is a
great centre of high and fearless thought, instead of what it is, a nest
of commonplace schoolmasters whose characteristic is timid
obsequiousness to tradition.’
Arabella was quizzing Sue with more regard of how she was
speaking than of what she was saying. ‘How odd to hear a woman