Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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Jude turned and retraced his steps. Drawing again towards the
station he started at hearing his name pronounced––less at the name
than at the voice. To his great surprise no other than Sue stood like a
vision before him––her look bodeful and anxious as in a dream, her
little mouth nervous, and her strained eyes speaking reproachful
inquiry.
‘O Jude––I am so glad––to meet you like this!’ she said in quick,
uneven accents not far from a sob. Then she 
flushed as she observed
his thought that they had not met since her marriage.
They looked away from each other to hide their emotion, took
each other’s hand without further speech, and went on together
awhile, till she glanced at him with furtive solicitude. ‘I arrived at
Alfredston station last night, as you asked me to, and there was
nobody to meet me! But I reached Marygreen alone, and they told
me aunt was a tri
fle better. I sat up with her, and as you did not come
all night I was frightened about you––I thought that perhaps, when
you found yourself back in the old city, you were upset at––at think-
ing I was––married, and not there as I used to be; and that you had
nobody to speak to; so you had tried to drown your gloom!––as you
did at that former time when you were disappointed about entering
as a student, and had forgotten your promise to me that you never
would again. And this, I thought, was why you hadn’t come to meet
me.’
‘And you came to hunt me up, and deliver me, like a good angel!’
‘I thought I would come by the morning train, and try to 
find
you––in case––in case——’
‘I did think of my promise to you, dear, continually! I shall never
break out again as I did, I am sure. I may have been doing nothing
better, but I was not doing that––I loathe the thought of it.’
‘I am glad your staying had nothing to do with that. But,’ she said,
the faintest pout entering into her tone, ‘you didn’t come back last
night and meet me, as you engaged to!’
‘I didn’t––I am sorry to say. I had an appointment at nine
o’clock––too late for me to catch the train that would have met
yours, or to get home at all.’
Looking at his loved one as she appeared to him now, in his tender
thought the sweetest and most disinterested comrade that he had
ever had, living largely in vivid imaginings, so ethereal a creature
that her spirit could be seen trembling through her limbs, he felt
At Melchester
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heartily ashamed of his earthliness in spending the hours he had
spent in Arabella’s company. There was something rude and
immoral in thrusting these recent facts of his life upon the mind of
one who, to him, was so uncarnate as to seem at times impossible
as a human wife to any average man. And yet she was Phillotson’s.
How she had become such, how she lived as such, passed his
comprehension as he regarded her to-day.
‘You’ll go back with me?’ he said. ‘There’s a train just now. I
wonder how my aunt is by this time. . . . And so, Sue, you really
came on my account all this way! At what an early time you must
have started, poor thing!’
‘Yes. Sitting up watching alone made me all nerves for you, and
instead of going to bed when it got light I started. And now you
won’t frighten me like this again about your morals for nothing?’
He was not so sure that she had been frightened about his morals
for nothing. He released her hand till they had entered the train,––it
seemed the same carriage he had lately got out of with another––
where they sat down side by side, Sue between him and the window.
He regarded the delicate lines of her pro
file, and the small, tight,
apple-like convexities of her bodice, so di
fferent from Arabella’s
amplitudes. Though she knew he was looking at her she did not turn
to him, but kept her eyes forward, as if afraid that by meeting his
own some troublous discussion would be initiated.
‘Sue––you are married now, you know, like me; and yet we have
been in such a hurry that we have not said a word about it.’
‘There’s no necessity,’ she quickly returned.
‘O well––perhaps not. . . . But I wish——’
‘Jude––don’t talk about me––I wish you wouldn’t!’ she entreated.
‘It distresses me, rather. Forgive my saying it! . . . Where did you
stay last night?’
She had asked the question in perfect innocence, to change the
topic. He knew that, and said merely ‘At an inn,’ though it would
have been a relief to tell her of his meeting with an unexpected one.
But the latter’s 
final announcement of her marriage in Australia
bewildered him lest what he might say should do his ignorant wife an
injury.
Their talk proceeded but awkwardly till they reached Alfredston.
That Sue was not as she had been, but was labelled ‘Phillotson,’
paralyzed Jude whenever he wanted to commune with her as an