Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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and outwardly his days went on with that monotonous uniformity
which is in itself so grateful after vicissitude. People seemed to have
forgotten that he had ever shown any awkward aberrancies: and he
daily mounted to the parapets and copings of colleges he could never
enter, and renewed the crumbling freestones of mullioned windows
he would never look from, as if he had known no wish to do
otherwise.
There was this change in him; that he did not often go to any
service at the churches now. One thing troubled him more than any
other; that Sue and himself had mentally travelled in opposite direc-
tions since the tragedy: events which had enlarged his own views of
life, laws, customs, and dogmas, had not operated in the same man-
ner on Sue’s. She was no longer the same as in the independent days,
when her intellect played like lambent lightning over conventions
and formalities which he at that time respected, though he did not now.
On a particular Sunday evening he came in rather late. She was
not at home, but she soon returned, when he found her silent and
meditative.
‘What are you thinking of, little woman?’ he asked curiously.
‘O I can’t tell clearly! I have thought that we have been sel
fish,
careless, even impious, in our courses, you and I. Our life has been a
vain attempt at self-delight. But self-abnegation is the higher road.
We should mortify the 
flesh––the terrible flesh––the curse of Adam!’
‘Sue!’ he murmured. ‘What has come over you?’
‘We ought to be continually sacri
ficing ourselves on the altar of
duty. But I have always striven to do what has pleased me. I well
deserved the scourging I have got! I wish something would take the
evil right out of me, and all my monstrous errors, and all my sinful
ways!’
‘Sue––my own too su
ffering dear!––there’s no evil woman in you.
Your natural instincts are perfectly healthy; not quite so impas-
sioned, perhaps, as I could wish; but good, and dear, and pure. And
as I have often said, you are absolutely the most ethereal, least sens-
ual woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness. Why
do you talk in such a changed way? We have not been sel
fish, except
when no one could pro
fit by our being otherwise. You used to say
that human nature was noble and long-su
ffering, not vile and cor-
rupt, and at last I thought you spoke truly. And now you seem to take
such a much lower view!’
At Christminster Again
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‘I want a humble heart; and a chastened mind; and I have never
had them yet!’
‘You have been fearless, both as a thinker and as a feeler, and you
deserved more admiration than I gave. I was too full of narrow
dogmas at that time to see it.’
‘Don’t say that, Jude! I wish my every fearless word and thought
could be rooted out of my history. Self-renunciation––that’s every-
thing! I cannot humiliate myself too much. I should like to prick
myself all over with pins and bleed out the badness that’s in me!’
‘Hush!’ he said, pressing her little face against his breast as if she
were an infant. ‘It is bereavement that has brought you to this. Such
remorse is not for you, my sensitive plant, but for the wicked ones of
the earth––who never feel it!’
‘I ought not to stay like this,’ she murmured, when she had
remained in the position a long while.
‘Why not?’
‘It is indulgence.’
‘Still on the same tack! But is there anything better on earth than
that we should love one another?’
‘Yes. It depends on the sort of love; and yours––ours––is the
wrong.’
‘I won’t have it, Sue! Come, when do you wish our marriage to be
signed in a vestry?’
She paused, and looked up uneasily. ‘Never,’ she whispered.
Not knowing the whole of her meaning he took the objection
serenely, and said nothing. Several minutes elapsed, and he thought
she had fallen asleep; but he spoke softly, and found that she was
wide awake all the time. She sat upright and sighed.
‘There is a strange, indescribable perfume or atmosphere about
you to-night, Sue,’ he said. ‘I mean not only mentally, but about your
clothes also. A sort of vegetable scent, which I seem to know, yet
cannot remember.’
‘It is incense.’
‘Incense?’
‘I have been to the service at St. Silas’, and I was in the fumes of
it.’
‘Oh––St. Silas’.’
‘Yes. I go there sometimes.’
‘Indeed. You go there!’