Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure


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IV.–ii.
H
, if God disposed not, woman did. The next morning but
one brought him this note from her:
‘Don’t come next week. On your own account don’t! We were too free,
under the in
fluence of that morbid hymn and the twilight. Think no more
than you can help of
S
 F M.’
The disappointment was keen: he knew her mood, the look of her
face, when she subscribed herself at length thus. But whatever her
mood he could not say she was wrong in her view. He replied:
‘I acquiesce. You are right. It is a lesson in renunciation which I suppose
I ought to learn at this season.
J
.’
He dispatched the note on Easter Eve, and there seemed a 
finality
in their decision. But other forces and laws than theirs were in oper-
ation. On Easter Monday morning he received a message from the
Widow Edlin, whom he had directed to telegraph if anything serious
happened:
‘Your aunt is sinking. Come at once.’
He threw down his tools and went. Three and a half hours later he
was crossing the downs about Marygreen, and presently plunged
into the concave 
field across which the short cut was made to the
village. As he ascended on the other side a labouring man, who had
been watching his approach from a gate across the path, moved
uneasily, and prepared to speak. ‘I can see in his face that she is
dead,’ said Jude. ‘Poor aunt Drusilla!’
It was as he had supposed, and Mrs. Edlin had sent out the man to
break the news to him.
‘She wouldn’t have knowed ’ee. She lay like a doll wi’ glass eyes; so
it didn’t matter that you wasn’t here,’ said he.
Jude went on to the house, and in the afternoon, when everything
was done, and the layers-out had 
finished their beer and gone, he
sat down alone in the silent place. It was absolutely necessary to

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communicate with Sue, though two or three days earlier they had
agreed to mutual severance. He wrote in the briefest terms:
‘Aunt Drusilla is dead, having been taken almost suddenly. The funeral is
on Friday afternoon.’
He remained in and about Marygreen through the intervening
days, went out on Friday morning to see that the grave was 
finished,
and wondered if Sue would come. She had not written, and that
seeemed to signify rather that she would come than that she would
not. Having timed her by her only possible train, he locked the door
about mid-day, and crossed the hollow 
field to the verge of the
upland by the Brown House, where he stood and looked over the
vast prospect northwards, and over the nearer landscape in which
Alfredston stood. Two miles behind it a jet of white steam was
travelling from the left to the right of the picture.
There was a long time to wait, even now, till he would know if she
had arrived. He did wait, however, and at last a small hired vehicle
pulled up at the bottom of the hill, and a person alighted, the con-
veyance going back, while the passenger began ascending the hill.
He knew her; and she looked so slender to-day that it seemed as if
she might be crushed in the intensity of a too passionate embrace,
such as it was not for him to give. Two-thirds of the way up her head
suddenly took a solicitous poise, and he knew that she had at that
moment recognized him. Her face soon began a pensive smile, which
lasted till, having descended a little way, he met her.
‘I thought,’ she began with nervous quickness, ‘that it would be so
sad to let you attend the funeral alone! And so––at the last
moment––I came.’
‘Dear faithful Sue!’ murmured Jude.
With the elusiveness of her curious double nature,* however, Sue
did not stand still for any further greeting, though it wanted some
time to the burial. A pathos so unusually compounded as that which
attached to this hour was unlikely to repeat itself for years, if ever,
and Jude would have paused, and meditated, and conversed. But Sue
either saw it not at all, or, seeing it more than he, would not allow
herself to feel it.
The sad and simple ceremony was soon over, their progress to the
church being almost at a trot, the bustling undertaker having a more
important funeral an hour later, three miles o
ff. Drusilla was put into