Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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the lowlands had travelled up here by now, and the trees on the green
caught armfuls, and turned them into showers of big drops. The
bride was waiting, ready; bonnet and all on. She had never in her life
looked so much like the lily her name connoted as she did in that
pallid morning light. Chastened, world-weary, remorseful, the strain
on her nerves had preyed upon her 
flesh and bones, and she
appeared smaller in outline than she had formerly done, though Sue
had not been a large woman in her days of rudest health.
‘Prompt,’ said the schoolmaster, magnanimously taking her hand.
But he checked his impulse to kiss her, remembering her start of
yesterday, which unpleasantly lingered in his mind.
Gillingham joined them, and they left the house, Widow Edlin
continuing steadfast in her refusal to assist in the ceremony.
‘Where is the church?’ said Sue. She had not lived there for any
length of time since the old church was pulled down, and in her
preoccupation forgot the new one.
‘Up here,’ said Phillotson; and presently the tower loomed large
and solemn in the fog. The vicar had already crossed to the building,
and when they entered he said pleasantly: ‘We almost want candles.’
‘You do––wish me to be yours, Richard?’ gasped Sue in a whisper.
‘Certainly, dear: above all things in the world.’
Sue said no more; and for the second or third time he felt he was
not quite following out the humane instinct which had induced him
to let her go.
There they stood, 
five altogether: the parson, the clerk, the couple
and Gillingham; and the holy ordinance was resolemnized forthwith.
In the nave of the edi
fice were two or three villagers, and when the
clergyman came to the words, ‘What God hath joined,’ a woman’s
voice from among these was heard to utter audibly:
‘God hath jined indeed!’
It was like a re-enactment by the ghosts of their former selves of
the similar scene which had taken place at Melchester years before.
When the books were signed the vicar congratulated the husband
and wife on having performed a noble, and righteous, and mutually
forgiving act. ‘All’s well that ends well,’ he said smiling. ‘May you
long be happy together, after thus having been “saved as by 
fire.”’*
They came down the nearly empty building, and crossed to the
schoolhouse. Gillingham wanted to get home that night, and left
early. He, too, congratulated the couple. ‘Now,’ he said in parting
At Christminster Again
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from Phillotson, who walked out a little way, ‘I shall be able to tell
the people in your native place a good round tale; and they’ll all say
“Well done,” depend on it.’
When the schoolmaster got back Sue was making a pretence of
doing some housewifery as if she lived there. But she seemed timid
at his approach, and compunction wrought on him at sight of it.
‘Of course, my dear, I shan’t expect to intrude upon your personal
privacy any more than I did before,’ he said gravely. ‘It is for our
good socially to do this, and that’s its justi
fication, if it was not my
reason.’
Sue brightened a little.
Jude the Obscure
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VI.–vi.
T
 place was the door of Jude’s lodging in the outskirts of
Christminster––far from the precincts of St. Silas’ where he had
formerly lived, which saddened him to sickness. The rain was com-
ing down. A woman in shabby black stood on the doorstep talking to
Jude, who held the door in his hand.
‘I am lonely, destitute, and houseless––that’s what I am! Father
has turned me out of doors after borrowing every penny I’d got, to
put it into his business, and then accusing me of laziness when I was
only waiting for a situation. I am at the mercy of the world! If you
can’t take me and help me Jude, I must go to the workhouse, or to
something worse. Only just now two undergraduates winked at me
as I came along. ’Tis hard for a woman to keep virtuous where
there’s so many young men!’
The woman in the rain who spoke thus was Arabella, the evening
being that of the day after Sue’s re-marriage with Phillotson.
‘I am sorry for you, but I am only in lodgings,’ said Jude coldly.
‘Then you turn me away?’
‘I’ll give you enough to get food and lodging for a few days.’
‘O, but can’t you have the kindness to take me in? I cannot endure
going to a public-house to lodge; and I am so lonely. Please, Jude, for
old times’ sake!’
‘No; no,’ said Jude hastily. ‘I don’t want to be reminded of those
things; and if you talk about them I shall not help you.’
‘Then I suppose I must go!’ said Arabella. She bent her head
against the doorpost and began sobbing.
‘The house is full,’ said Jude. ‘And I have only a little extra room
to my own––not much more than a closet––where I keep my tools,
and templates, and the few books I have left.’
‘That would be a palace for me!’
‘There is no bedstead in it.’
‘A bit of a bed could be made on the 
floor. It would be good
enough for me.’
Unable to be harsh with her, and not knowing what to do,
Jude called the man who let the lodgings, and said this was an
acquaintance of his in great distress for want of temporary shelter.

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‘You may remember me as barmaid at the Lamb and Flag for-
merly?’ spoke up Arabella. ‘My father has insulted me this after-
noon, and I’ve left him, though without a penny!’
The householder said he could not recall her features. ‘But still, if
you are a friend of Mr. Fawley’s we’ll do what we can for a day or
two––if he’ll make himself answerable.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Jude. ‘She has really taken me quite unawares; but I
should wish to help her out of her di
fficulty.’ And an arrangement
was ultimately come to under which a bed was to be thrown down in
Jude’s lumber-room, to make it comfortable for Arabella till she
could get out of the strait she was in––not by her own fault, as she
declared––and return to her father’s again.
While they were waiting for this to be done Arabella said: ‘You
know the news, I suppose?’
‘I guess what you mean; but I know nothing.’
‘I had a letter from Anny at Alfredston to-day. She had just heard
that the wedding was to be yesterday; but she didn’t know if it had
come o
ff.’
‘I don’t wish to talk of it.’
‘No, no: of course you don’t. Only it shows what kind of
woman——’
‘Don’t speak of her I say! She’s a fool––and she’s an angel, too,
poor dear!’
‘If it’s done, he’ll have a chance of getting back to his old position,
by everybody’s account, so Anny says. All his well-wishers will be
pleased, including the bishop himself.’
‘Do spare me, Arabella.’
Arabella was duly installed in the little attic, and at 
first she did
not come near Jude at all. She went to and fro, about her own
business, which, when they met for a moment on the stairs or in the
passage, she informed him was that of obtaining another place in the
occupation she understood best. When Jude suggested London as
a
ffording the most likely opening in the liquor trade, she shook her
head. ‘No––the temptations are too many,’ she said. ‘Any humble
tavern in the country before that for me.’
On the Sunday morning following, when he breakfasted later than
on other days, she meekly asked him if she might come in to break-
fast with him, as she had broken her teapot, and could not replace it
immediately, the shops being shut.