Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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The softer side of his nature, the desire to see Sue, made him
unable to resist the o
ffer even now, provoked as he had been; and he
replied breathlessly: ‘Yes: I agree. Only send for her!’
In the evening he inquired if she had written.
‘Yes,’ she said; ‘I wrote a note telling her you were ill, and asking
her to come to-morrow or the day after. I haven’t posted it yet.’
The next day Jude wondered if she really did post it, but would
not ask her; and foolish Hope, that lives on a drop and a crumb, made
him restless with expectation. He knew the times of the possible
trains, and listened on each occasion for sounds of her.
She did not come; but Jude would not address Arabella again
thereon. He hoped and expected all the next day; but no Sue
appeared; neither was there any note of reply. Then Jude decided in
the privacy of his mind that Arabella had never posted hers,
although she had written it. There was something in her manner
which told it. His physical weakness was such that he shed tears at
the disappointment when she was not there to see. His suspicions
were, in fact, well founded. Arabella, like some other nurses, thought
that your duty towards your invalid was to pacify him by any means
short of really acting upon his fancies.
He never said another word to her about his wish or his con-
jecture. A silent, undiscerned resolve grew up in him, which gave
him, if not strength, stability and calm. One midday when, after an
absence of two hours, she came into the room, she beheld the chair
empty.
Down she 
flopped on the bed, and sitting meditated. ‘Now where
the devil is my man gone to!’ she said.
A driving rain from the north-east had been falling with more or
less intermission all the morning, and looking from the window at
the dripping spouts it seemed impossible to believe that any sick man
would have ventured out to almost certain death. Yet a conviction
possessed Arabella that he had gone out, and it became a certainty
when she had searched the house. ‘If he’s such a fool, let him be!’ she
said. ‘I can do no more.’
Jude was at that moment in a railway train that was drawing near
to Alfredston, oddly swathed, pale as a monumental 
figure in ala-
baster, and much stared at by other passengers. An hour later his thin
form, in the long great-coat and blanket he had come with, but
without an umbrella, could have been seen walking along the
At Christminster Again
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five-mile road to Marygreen. On his face showed the determined
purpose that alone sustained him, but to which his weakness
a
fforded a sorry foundation. By the uphill walk he was quite blown,
but he pressed on; and at half-past three o’clock stood by the familiar
well at Marygreen. The rain was keeping everybody indoors; Jude
crossed the green to the church without observation, and found the
building open. Here he stood, looking forth at the school, whence he
could hear the usual sing-song tones of the little voices that had not
learnt Creation’s groan.
He waited till a small boy came from the school––one evidently
allowed out before hours for some reason or other. Jude held up his
hand, and the child came.
‘Please call at the schoolhouse and ask Mrs. Phillotson if she will
be kind enough to come to the church for a few minutes.’
The child departed, and Jude heard him knock at the door of the
dwelling. He himself went further into the church. Everything was
new, except a few pieces of carving preserved from the wrecked
old fabric, now 
fixed against the new walls. He stood by these:
they seemed akin to the perished people of that place who were his
ancestors and Sue’s.
A light footstep, which might have been accounted no more than an
added drip to the rainfall, sounded in the porch, and he looked round.
‘O––I didn’t think it was you! I didn’t––O Jude!’ A hysterical
catch in her breath ended in a succession of them. He advanced, but
she quickly recovered and went back.
‘Don’t go––don’t go!’ he implored. ‘This is my last time. I
thought it would be less intrusive than to enter your house. And I
shall never come again. Don’t then be unmerciful. Sue, Sue: we are
acting by the letter; and “the letter killeth”.’*
‘I’ll stay––I won’t be unkind!’ she said, her mouth quivering and
her tears 
flowing as she allowed him to come closer. ‘But why did you
come, and do this wrong thing, after doing such a right thing as you
have done?’
‘What right thing?’
‘Marrying Arabella again. It was in the Alfredston paper. She––
has never been other than yours, Jude––in a proper sense. And there-
fore you did so well––O so well!––in recognizing it––and taking her
to you again.’
‘God above––and is that all I’ve come to hear? If there is anything