Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure


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‘Richard, I didn’t know we were going to kiss each other till we
did!’
‘How many times?’
‘A good many. I don’t know. I am horri
fied to look back on it, and
the least I can do after it is to come to you like this.’
‘Come––this is pretty bad, after what I’ve done! Anything else to
confess?’
‘No.’ She had been intending to say: ‘I called him my darling
Love.’ But, as a contrite woman always keeps back a little, that
portion of the scene remained untold. She went on: ‘I am never
going to see him any more. He spoke of some things of the past: and
it overcame me. He spoke of––the children.––But, as I have said, I
am glad––almost glad I mean––that they are dead, Richard. It blots
out all that life of mine!’
‘Well––about not seeing him again any more. Come––you really
mean this?’ There was something in Phillotson’s tone now which
seemed to show that his three months of remarriage with Sue had
somehow not been so satisfactory as his magnanimity or amative
patience had anticipated.
‘Yes, yes!’
‘Perhaps you’ll swear it on the New Testament?’
‘I will.’
He went back to the room and brought out a little brown Testa-
ment. ‘Now then: So help you God!’
She swore.
‘Very good!’
‘Now I supplicate you, Richard, to whom I belong, and whom I
wish to honour and obey, as I vowed, to let me in.’
‘Think it over well. You know what it means. Having you back in
the house was one thing––this another. So think again.’
‘I have thought––I wish this!’
‘That’s a complaisant spirit––and perhaps you are right. With a
lover hanging about, a half-marriage should be completed. But I
repeat my reminder this third and last time.’
‘It is my wish! . . . O God!’
‘What did you say O God for?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Yes you do! But . . .’ He gloomily considered her thin and
fragile form a moment longer as she crouched before him in her
At Christminster Again
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night-clothes. ‘Well, I thought it might end like this,’ he said pres-
ently. ‘I owe you nothing, after these signs; but I’ll take you in at your
word, and forgive you.’
He put his arm round her to lift her up. Sue started back.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, speaking for the 
first time sternly.
‘You shrink from me again?––just as formerly!’
‘No, Richard––I––I––was not thinking——’
‘You wish to come in here?’
‘Yes.’
‘You still bear in mind what it means?’
‘Yes. It is my duty!’
Placing the candlestick on the chest of drawers he led her through
the doorway, and lifting her bodily, kissed her. A quick look of aver-
sion passed over her face, but clenching her teeth she uttered no cry.
Mrs. Edlin had by this time undressed, and was about to get into
bed when she said to herself: ‘Ah––perhaps I’d better go and see if
the little thing is all right. How it do blow and rain!’
The widow went out on the landing, and saw that Sue had disap-
peared. ‘Ah! Poor soul! Weddings be funerals ’a b’lieve nowadays.
Fifty-
five years ago, come Fall, since my man and I married! Times
have changed since then!’
Jude the Obscure
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VI.–x.
D
 himself Jude recovered somewhat, and worked at his
trade for several weeks. After Christmas, however, he broke down
again.
With the money he had earned he shifted his lodgings to a yet
more central part of the town. But Arabella saw that he was not
likely to do much work for a long while, and was cross enough at the
turn a
ffairs had taken since her re-marriage to him. ‘I’m hanged if
you haven’t been clever in this last stroke!’ she would say, ‘to get a
nurse for nothing by marrying me!’
Jude was absolutely indi
fferent to what she said, and, indeed,
often regarded her abuse in a humorous light. Sometimes his mood
was more earnest, and as he lay he often rambled on upon the defeat
of his early aims.
‘Every man has some little power in some one direction,’ he would
say. ‘I was never really stout enough for the stone trade, particularly
the 
fixing. Moving the blocks always used to strain me, and standing
the trying draughts in buildings before the windows are in, always
gave me colds, and I think that began the mischief inside. But I felt I
could do one thing if I had the opportunity. I could accumulate ideas,
and impart them to others. I wonder if the Founders had such as I in
their minds––a fellow good for nothing else but that particular thing
. . . I hear that soon there is going to be a better chance for such
helpless students as I was. There are schemes afoot for making the
University less exclusive, and extending its in
fluence. I don’t know
much about it. And it is too late, too late for me. Ah––and for how
many worthier ones before me.’
‘How you keep a-mumbling!’ said Arabella. ‘I should have
thought you’d have got over all that craze about books by this time.
And so you would, if you’d had any sense to begin with. You are as
bad now as when we were 
first married.’
On one occasion while soliloquizing thus he called her ‘Sue’
unconsciously.
‘I wish you’d mind who you are talking to!’ said Arabella indig-
nantly. ‘Calling a respectable married woman by the name of that––’.
She remembered herself and he did not catch the word.

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But in the course of time, when she saw how things were going,
and how very little she had to fear from Sue’s rivalry, she had a 
fit of
generosity. ‘I suppose you want to see your––Sue?’ she said. ‘Well, I
don’t mind her coming. You can have her here if you like.’
‘I don’t wish to see her again.’
‘O––that’s a change!’
‘And don’t tell her anything about me––that I’m ill, or anything.
She has chosen her course. Let her go.’
One day he received a surprise. Mrs. Edlin came to see him, quite
on her own account. Jude’s wife, whose feelings as to where his
a
ffections were centred had reached absolute indifference by this
time, went out, leaving the old woman alone with Jude. He impul-
sively asked how Sue was, and then said bluntly, remembering what
Sue had told him: ‘I suppose they are still only husband and wife in
name?’
Mrs. Edlin hesitated. ‘Well, no––it’s di
fferent now. She’s begun it
quite lately––all of her own free will.’
‘When did she begin?’ he asked quickly.
‘The night after you came. But as a punishment to her poor self.
He didn’t wish it, but she insisted.’
‘Sue, my Sue––you darling fool––this is almost more than I can
endure! . . . Mrs. Edlin––don’t be frightened at my rambling––I’ve
got to talk to myself lying here so many hours alone––she was once a
woman whose intellect was to mine like a star to a benzoline lamp:
who saw all my superstitions as cobwebs that she could brush away
with a word. Then bitter a
ffliction came to us, and her intellect
broke, and she veered round to darkness. Strange di
fference of sex,
that time and circumstance, which enlarge the views of most men,
narrow the views of women almost invariably. And now the ultimate
horror has come––her giving herself like this to what she loathes, in
her enslavement to forms!––she, so sensitive, so shrinking, that the
very wind seemed to blow on her with a touch of deference. . . .* As
for Sue and me when we were at our own best, long ago––when our
minds were clear, and our love of truth fearless––the time was not
ripe for us! Our ideas were 
fifty years too soon to be any good to us.
And so the resistance they met with brought reaction in her, and
recklessness and ruin on me! . . . There––this, Mrs. Edlin, is how I
go on to myself continually, as I lie here. I must be boring you
awfully.’