Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

part of his incurably sad nature, poor little fellow! But then the
others––my own children and yours!’
Again Sue looked at the hanging little frock, and at the socks and
shoes; and her 
figure quivered like a string. ‘I am a pitiable creature,’
she said, ‘good neither for earth nor heaven any more! I am driven
out of my mind by things! What ought to be done?’ She stared at
Jude, and tightly held his hand.
‘Nothing can be done,’ he replied. ‘Things are as they are, and will
be brought to their destined issue.’
She paused. ‘Yes! Who said that?’ she asked heavily.
‘It comes in the chorus of the Agamemnon. It has been in my mind
continually since this happened.’
‘My poor Jude––how you’ve missed everything!––you more than
I, for I did get you! To think you should know that by your
unassisted reading, and yet be in poverty and despair!’
Jude the Obscure


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After such momentary diversions her grief would return in a
wave.
The jury duly came and viewed the bodies, the inquest was held;
and next arrived the melancholy morning of the funeral. Accounts in
the newspapers had brought to the spot curious idlers, who stood
apparently counting the window-panes and the stones of the walls.
Doubt of the real relations of the couple added zest to their curiosity.
Sue had declared that she would follow the two little ones to the
grave, but at the last moment she gave way, and the co
ffins were
quietly carried out of the house while she was lying down. Jude got
into the vehicle, and it drove away, much to the relief of the landlord,
who now had only Sue and her luggage remaining on his hands,
which he hoped to be also clear of later on in the day, and so to have
freed his house from the exasperating notoriety it had acquired dur-
ing the week through his wife’s unlucky admission of these
strangers. In the afternoon he privately consulted with the owner of
the house, and they agreed that if any objection to it arose from the
tragedy which had occurred there they would try to get its number
changed.
When Jude had seen the two little boxes––one containing little
Jude, and the other the two smallest––deposited in the earth he
hastened back to Sue, who was still in her room, and he therefore did
not disturb her just then. Feeling anxious, however, he went again
about four o’clock. The woman thought she was still lying down, but
returned to him to say that she was not in her bedroom after all. Her
hat and jacket, too, were missing; she had gone out. Jude hurried o
ff
to the public-house where he was sleeping. She had not been there.
Then bethinking himself of possibilities he went along the road to
the cemetery, which he entered, and crossed to where the interments
had recently taken place. The idlers who had followed to the spot by
reason of the tragedy were all gone now. A man with a shovel in his
hands was attempting to earth in the common grave of the three
children, but his arm was held back by an expostulating woman who
stood in the half-
filled hole. It was Sue, whose coloured clothing,
which she had never thought of changing for the mourning he had
bought, suggested to the eye a deeper grief than the conventional
garb of bereavement could express.
‘He’s 
filling them in, and he shan’t till I’ve seen my little ones
again!’ she cried wildly when she saw Jude. ‘I want to see them once
At Christminster Again


---

more. O Jude––please Jude––I want to see them! I didn’t know you
would let them be taken away while I was asleep! You said perhaps I
should see them once more before they were screwed down; and then
you didn’t, but took them away! O Jude, you are cruel to me too!’
‘She’s been wanting me to dig out the grave again, and let her get
to the co
ffins,’ said the man with the spade. ‘She ought to be took
home, by the look o’ her. She is hardly responsible, poor thing,
seemingly. Can’t dig ’em up again now, ma’am. Do ye go home with
your husband, and take it quiet, and thank God that there’ll be
another soon to swage yer grief.’
But Sue kept asking piteously: ‘Can’t I see them once more––just
once. Can’t I? Only just one little minute, Jude. It would not
take long! And I should be so glad, Jude. I will be so good, and
not disobey you ever any more, Jude, if you will let me? I would
go home quietly afterwards, and not want to see them any more!
Can’t I?––why can’t I?’
Thus she went on. Jude was thrown into such acute sorrow that he
almost felt he would try to get the man to accede. But it could do no
good, and might make her still worse; and he saw that it was impera-
tive to get her home at once. So he coaxed her, and whispered ten-
derly, and put his arm round her to support her; till she helplessly
gave in, and was induced to leave the cemetery.
He wished to obtain a 
fly to take her back in, but economy being so
imperative she deprecated his doing so, and they walked along
slowly, Jude in black crape, she in brown and red clothing. They
were to have gone to a new lodging that afternoon, but Jude saw that
it was not practicable, and in course of time they entered the now
hated house. Sue was at once got to bed, and the doctor sent for.
Jude waited all the evening downstairs. At a very late hour the
intelligence was brought to him that a child had been prematurely
born, and that it, like the others, was a corpse.