Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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him most of all. She obediently ate some supper, and prepared to
leave for her lodging hard by. Phillotson crossed the green with her,
bidding her good-night at Mrs. Edlin’s door.
The old woman accompanied Sue to her temporary quarters, and
helped her to unpack. Among other things she laid out a nightgown
tastefully embroidered.
‘O––I didn’t know that was put in!’ said Sue quickly. ‘I didn’t
mean it to be. Here is a di
fferent one.’ She handed a new and abso-
lutely plain garment, of coarse and unbleached calico.
‘But this is the prettiest,’ said Mrs. Edlin. ‘That one is no better
than very sackcloth o’ Scripture!’
‘Yes––I meant it to be. Give me the other.’
She took it, and began rending it with all her might, the tears
resounding through the house like a screech-owl.
‘But my dear, dear!––whatever . . . ’
‘It is adulterous! It signi
fies what I don’t feel––I bought it long
ago––to please Jude. It must be destroyed!’
Mrs. Edlin lifted her hands, and Sue excitedly continued to tear
the linen into strips, laying the pieces in the 
fire.
‘You med ha’ give it to me!’ said the widow. ‘It do make my heart
ache to see such pretty open-work as that a-burned by the 
flames––
not that ornamental night-rails can be much use to a’ ould ’ooman
like I. My days for such be all past and gone!’
‘It is an accursed thing––it reminds me of what I want to forget!’
Sue repeated. ‘It is only 
fit for the fire.’
‘Lord, you be too strict. What do ye use such words for, and
condemn to hell your dear little innocent children that’s lost to ’ee!
Upon my life I don’t call that religion.’
Sue 
flung her face upon the bed, sobbing. ‘O, don’t, don’t! That
kills me!’ She remained shaken with her grief, and slipped down
upon her knees.
‘I’ll tell ’ee what––you ought not to marry this man again!’ said
Mrs. Edlin indignantly. ‘You are in love wi’ t’ other still!’
‘Yes I must––I am his already!’
‘Pshoo! You be t’ other man’s. If you didn’t like to commit your-
selves to the binding vow again, just at 
first ’twas all the more credit
to your consciences, considering your reasons, and you med ha’ lived
on, and made it all right at last. After all, it concerned nobody but
your own two selves.’
At Christminster Again
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‘Richard says he’ll have me back, and I’m bound to go. If he had
refused, it might not have been so much my duty to––give up Jude.
But––’ She remained with her face in the bedclothes, and Mrs. Edlin
left the room.
Phillotson in the interval had gone back to his friend Gillingham,
who still sat over the supper-table. They soon rose, and walked out
on the green to smoke awhile. A light was burning in Sue’s room, a
shadow moving now and then across the blind.
Gillingham had evidently been impressed with the inde
finable
charm of Sue, and after a silence he said, ‘Well: you’ve all but got her
again at last. She can’t very well go a second time. The pear has
dropped into your hand.’
‘Yes. . . . I suppose I am right in taking her at her word. I confess
there seems a touch of sel
fishness in it. Apart from her being, what
she is, of course, a luxury for a fogey like me, it will set me right in
the eyes of the clergy and orthodox laity, who have never forgiven me
for letting her go. So I may get back in some degree into my old
track.’
‘Well––if you’ve got any sound reason for marrying her again, do
it now in God’s name! I was always against your opening the cage-
door and letting the bird go in such an obviously suicidal way. You
might have been a school inspector by this time, or a reverend, if you
hadn’t been so weak about her.’
‘I did myself irreparable damage––I know it.’
‘Once you’ve got her housed again, stick to her.’
Phillotson was more evasive to-night. He did not care to admit
clearly that his taking Sue to him again had at bottom nothing to do
with repentance of letting her go, but was, primarily, a human
instinct 
flying in the face of custom and profession.* He said, ‘Yes. I
shall do that. I know woman better now. Whatever justice there was
in releasing her, there was little logic, for one holding my views on
other subjects.’
Gillingham looked at him, and wondered whether it would ever
happen that the reactionary spirit induced by the world’s sneers and
his own physical wishes would make Phillotson more orthodoxly
cruel to her than he had erstwhile been informally and perversely
kind.
‘I perceive it won’t do to give way to impulse,’ Phillotson
resumed, feeling more and more every minute the necessity of acting