Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Melchester
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‘Oh, I had my reasons. . . . Then you are not a Don yet?’
‘No.’
‘Not even a Reverend?’
‘No.’
‘Nor so much as a rather reverend dissenting gentleman?’
‘I am as I was.’
‘True––you look so.’ She idly allowed her 
fingers to rest on the
pull of the beer-engine as she inspected him critically. He observed
that her hands were smaller and whiter than when he had lived with
her, and that on the hand which pulled the engine she wore an
ornamental ring set with what seemed to be real sapphires––which
they were, indeed, and were much admired as such by the young
men who frequented the bar.
‘So you pass as having a living husband,’ he continued.
‘Yes. I thought it might be awkward if I called myself a widow, as I
should have liked.’
‘True. I am known here a little.’
‘I didn’t mean on that account––for as I said I didn’t expect you.
It was for other reasons.’
‘What were they?’
‘I don’t care to go into them,’ she replied evasively. ‘I make a very
good living, and I don’t know that I want your company.’
Here a chappie with no chin and a moustache like a lady’s eyebrow
came and asked for a curiously compounded drink, and Arabella was
obliged to go and attend to him. ‘We can’t talk here,’ she said step-
ping back a moment. ‘Can’t you wait till nine? Say yes, and don’t be a
fool. I can get o
ff duty two hours sooner than usual, if I ask. I am not
living in the house at present.’
He re
flected and said gloomily, ‘I’ll come back. I suppose we’d
better arrange something.’
‘O, bother arranging! I’m not going to arrange anything.’
‘But I must know a thing or two; and, as you say, we can’t talk
here. Very well; I’ll call for you.’
Depositing his unemptied glass he went out and walked up and
down the street. Here was a rude 
flounce into the pellucid senti-
mentality of his sad attachment to Sue. Though Arabella’s word was
absolutely untrustworthy, he thought there might be some truth in
her implication that she had not wished to disturb him, and had
really supposed him dead. However there was only one thing now to
Jude the Obscure
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be done, and that was to play a straightforward part, the law being
the law, and the woman between whom and himself there was no
more unity than between east and west being in the eye of the
Church one person with him.
Having to meet Arabella here it was impossible to meet Sue at
Alfredston as he had promised. At every thought of this a pang had
gone through him; but the conjuncture could not be helped.
Arabella was perhaps an intended intervention to punish him for his
unauthorized love. Passing the evening, therefore, in a desultory
waiting about the town wherein he avoided the precincts of every
cloister and hall, because he could not bear to behold them, he
repaired to the tavern bar while the hundred and one strokes were
resounding from the great bell of Cardinal College, a coincidence
which seemed to him gratuitous irony. The inn was now brilliantly
lighted up, and the scene was altogether more brisk and gay. The
faces of the barmaidens had risen in colour, each having a pink 
flush
on her cheek; their manners were still more vivacious than before––
more abandoned, more excited, more sensuous, and they expressed
their sentiments and desires less euphemistically, laughing in a
lackadaisical tone, without reserve.
The bar had been crowded with men of all sorts during the previ-
ous hour, and he had heard from without the hubbub of their voices;
but the customers were fewer at last. He nodded to Arabella, and
told her that she would 
find him outside the door when she came
away.
‘But you must have something with me 
first,’ she said with great
good-humour. ‘Just an early nightcap: I always do. Then you can go
out and wait a minute, as it is best we should not be seen going
together.’ She drew a couple of liqueur glasses of brandy; and
though she had evidently, from her countenance, already taken in
enough alcohol either by drinking or, more probably, from the
atmosphere she had breathed for so many hours, she 
finished hers
quickly. He also drank his, and went outside the house.
In a few minutes she came, in a thick jacket and a hat with a black
feather. ‘I live quite near,’ she said, taking his arm, ‘and can let
myself in by a latch-key at any time. What arrangement do you want
to come to?’
‘O––none in particular,’ he answered, thoroughly sick and tired,
his thoughts again reverting to Alfredston, and the train he did not