Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

particularly a married woman, and of full-sized 
figure like you.’
‘Most men think otherwise.’
‘I don’t care what most men think, if they do. How do you know?’
‘I used to be told so when I was serving in the tap-room.’
‘Ah––that public-house experience accounts for your knowing
about the adulteration of the ale when we went and had some that
Sunday evening. I thought when I married you that you had always
lived in your father’s house.’
‘You ought to have known better than that, and seen I was a little
more 
finished than I could have been by staying where I was born.
There was not much to do at home, and I was eating my head o
ff, so I
went away for three months.’
‘You’ll soon have plenty to do now, dear, won’t you?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Why, of course––little things to make.’
‘Oh.’
‘When will it be? Can’t you tell me exactly, instead of in such
general terms as you have used?’
‘Tell you?’
‘Yes––the date.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. I made a mistake.’
‘What?’
‘It was a mistake.’
He sat bolt upright in bed and looked at her. ‘How can that be?’
‘Women fancy wrong things sometimes.’
‘But——! Why, of course, so unprepared as I was, without a stick
At Marygreen


---

of furniture, and hardly a shilling, I shouldn’t have hurried on our
a
ffair, and brought you to a half-furnished hut before I was ready, if
it had not been for the news you gave me, which made it necessary to
save you, ready or no. . . . Good God!’
‘Don’t take on, dear. What’s done can’t be undone.’
‘I have no more to say!’
He gave the answer simply, and lay down; and there was silence
between them.
When Jude awoke the next morning he seemed to see the world
with a di
fferent eye. As to the point in question he was compelled to
accept her word; in the circumstances he could not have acted
otherwise while ordinary notions prevailed. But how came they to
prevail?
There seemed to him, vaguely and dimly, something wrong in a
social ritual which made necessary a cancelling of well-formed
schemes involving years of thought and labour, of forgoing a man’s
one opportunity of showing himself superior to the lower animals,
and of contributing his units of work to the general progress of his
generation, because of a momentary surprise by a new and transitory
instinct which had nothing in it of the nature of vice,* and could be
only at the most called weakness. He was inclined to inquire what he
had done, or she lost, for that matter, that he deserved to be caught
in a gin which would cripple him, if not her also, for the rest of a
lifetime? There was perhaps something fortunate in the fact that the
immediate reason of his marriage had proved to be non-existent. But
the marriage remained.
Jude the Obscure


---

I.–x.
T
 time arrived for killing the pig which Jude and his wife had
fattened in their sty during the autumn months, and the butchering
was timed to take place as soon as it was light in the morning, so that
Jude might get to Alfredston without losing more than a quarter of a
day.
The night had seemed strangely silent. Jude looked out of the
window long before dawn, and perceived that the ground was
covered with snow––snow rather deep for the season, it seemed, a
few 
flakes still falling.
‘I’m afraid the pig-killer won’t be able to come,’ he said to
Arabella.
‘O, he’ll come. You must get up and make the water hot, if you
want Challow to scald him. Though I like singeing best.’
‘I’ll get up,’ said Jude. ‘I like the way of my own county.’
He went downstairs, lit the 
fire under the copper, and began feed-
ing it with bean-stalks, all the time without a candle, the blaze 
fling-
ing a cheerful shine into the room; though for him the sense of
cheerfulness was lessened by thoughts on the reason of that blaze––
to heat water to scald the bristles from the body of an animal that as
yet lived, and whose voice could be continually heard from a corner
of the garden. At half-past six, the time of appointment with the
butcher, the water boiled, and Jude’s wife came downstairs.
‘Is Challow come?’ she asked.
‘No.’
They waited, and it grew lighter, with the dreary light of a snowy
dawn. She went out, gazed along the road, and returning said, ‘He’s
not coming. Drunk last night, I expect. The snow is not enough to
hinder him, surely!’
‘Then we must put it o
ff. It is only the water boiled for nothing.
The snow may be deep in the valley.’
‘Can’t be put o
ff. There’s no more victuals for the pig. He ate the
last mixing o’ barleymeal yesterday morning.’
‘Yesterday morning? What has he lived on since?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What––he has been starving?’

---

‘Yes. We always do it the last day or two, to save bother with the
innerds. What ignorance, not to know that!’
‘That accounts for his crying so. Poor creature!’
‘Well––you must do the sticking––there’s no help for it. I’ll show
you how. Or I’ll do it myself––I think I could. Though as it is such a
big pig I had rather Challow had done it. However, his basket o’
knives and things have been already sent on here, and we can use ’em.’
‘Of course you shan’t do it,’ said Jude. ‘I’ll do it, since it must be
done.’
He went out to the sty, shovelled away the snow for the space of a
couple of yards or more, and placed the stool in front, with the
knives and ropes at hand. A robin peered down at the preparations
from the nearest tree, and, not liking the sinister look of the scene,
flew away, though hungry. By this time Arabella had joined her
husband, and Jude, rope in hand, got into the sty, and noosed the
a
ffrighted animal, who, beginning with a squeak of surprise, rose to
repeated cries of rage. Arabella opened the sty-door, and together
they hoisted the victim on to the stool, legs upward, and while Jude
held him Arabella bound him down, looping the cord over his legs to
keep him from struggling.
The animal’s note changed its quality. It was not now rage, but the
cry of despair; long-drawn, slow and hopeless.*
‘Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than
have had this to do!’ said Jude. ‘A creature I have fed with my own
hands.’
‘Don’t be such a tender-hearted fool! There’s the sticking-knife––
the one with the point. Now whatever you do, don’t stick un too
deep.’
‘I’ll stick him e
ffectually, so as to make short work of it. That’s the
chief thing.’
‘You must not!’ she cried. ‘The meat must be well bled, and to do
that he must die slow. We shall lose a shilling a score if the meat is
red and bloody! Just touch the vein, that’s all. I was brought up to it,
and I know. Every good butcher keeps un bleeding long. He ought to
be eight or ten minutes dying, at least.’
‘He shall not be half a minute if I can help it, however the meat
may look,’ said Jude determinedly. Scraping the bristles from the
pig’s upturned throat, as he had seen the butchers do, he slit the fat;
then plunged in the knife with all his might.