Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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‘Yes, I suppose so. But I am weak. Although I know it is all right
with our plans, I felt a curious dread of him––an awe, or terror, of
conventions I don’t believe in. It comes over me at times like a sort of
creeping paralysis, and makes me so sad!’
‘You are getting tired Sue. O––I forgot, darling! Yes, we’ll go on at
once.’
They started in quest of the lodging and at last found something
that seemed to promise well, in Mildew Lane––a spot which to Jude
was irresistible––though to Sue it was not so fascinating––a narrow
lane close to the back of a college, but having no communication with
it. The little houses were darkened to gloom by the high collegiate
buildings, within which life was so far removed from that of the
people in the lane as if it had been on opposite sides of the globe; yet
only a thickness of wall divided them. Two or three of the houses
had notices of rooms to let, and the newcomers knocked at the door
of one, which a woman opened.
‘Ah––listen!’ said Jude suddenly, instead of addressing her.
‘What?’
‘Why the bells––what church can that be? The tones are familiar.’
Another peal of bells had begun to sound out at some distance o
ff.
‘I don’t know!’ said the landlady tartly. ‘Did you knock to ask
that?’
‘No; for lodgings,’ said Jude, coming to himself.
The householder scrutinized Sue’s 
figure a moment. ‘We haven’t
any to let,’ said she, shutting the door.
Jude looked discom
fited, and the boy distressed. ‘Now, Jude,’ said
Sue, ‘let me try. You don’t know the way.’
They found a second place hard by; but here the occupier, observ-
ing not only Sue, but the boy and the small children, said civilly, ‘I
am sorry to say we don’t let where there are children;’ and also
closed the door.
The small child squared its mouth and cried silently, with an
instinct that trouble loomed. The boy sighed. ‘I don’t like Christ-
minster!’ he said. ‘Are the great old houses gaols?’
‘No; colleges,’ said Jude; ‘which perhaps you’ll study in some day.’
‘I’d rather not!’ the boy rejoined.
‘Now we’ll try again,’ said Sue. ‘I’ll pull my cloak more round
me. . . . Leaving Kennetbridge for this place is like coming from
Caiaphas to Pilate!* . . . How do I look now, dear?’
At Christminster Again
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‘Nobody would notice it now,’ said Jude.
There was one other house, and they tried a third time. The
woman here was more amiable; but she had little room to spare, and
could only agree to take in Sue and the children if her husband could
go elsewhere. This arrangement they perforce adopted, in the stress
from delaying their search till so late. They came to terms with her,
though her price was rather high for their pockets. But they could
not a
fford to be critical till Jude had time to get a more permanent
abode; and in this house Sue took possession of a back room on the
second 
floor with an inner closet-room for the children. Jude stayed
and had a cup of tea; and was pleased to 
find that the window
commanded the back of another of the colleges. Kissing all four he
went to get a few necessaries and look for lodgings for himself.
When he was gone the landlady came up to talk a little with Sue,
and gather something of the circumstances of the family she had
taken in. Sue had not the art of prevarication, and, after admitting
several facts as to their late di
fficulties and wanderings, she was
startled by the landlady saying suddenly:
‘Are you really a married woman?’
Sue hesitated; and then impulsively told the woman that her hus-
band and herself had each been unhappy in their 
first marriages,
after which, terri
fied at the thought of a second irrevocable union,
and lest the conditions of the contract should kill their love, yet
wishing to be together, they had literally not found the courage to
repeat it, though they had attempted it two or three times. There-
fore, though in her own sense of the words she was a married
woman, in the landlady’s sense she was not.
The housewife looked embarrassed, and went downstairs. Sue sat
by the window in a reverie, watching the rain. Her quiet was broken
by the noise of someone entering the house, and then the voices
of a man and woman in conversation in the passage below. The
landlady’s husband had arrived, and she was explaining to him the
incoming of the lodgers during his absence.
His voice rose in sudden anger. ‘Now who wants such a woman
here? and perhaps a con
finement! . . . Besides, didn’t I say I wouldn’t
have children? The hall and stairs fresh painted, to be kicked about
by them! You must have known all was not straight with ’em––
coming like that. Taking in a family when I said a single man.’
The wife expostulated, but, as it seemed, the husband insisted on