Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Shaston
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cider-wine, of which they drank a rummer* each. ‘I think you are
rafted,* and not yourself,’ he continued. ‘Do go back and make up
your mind to put up with a few whims. But keep her. I hear on all
sides that she’s a charming young thing.’
‘Ah yes. That’s the bitterness of it! Well, I won’t stay. I have a long
walk before me.’
Gillingham accompanied his friend a mile on his way, and at part-
ing expressed his hope that this consultation, singular as its subject
was, would be the renewal of their old comradeship. ‘Stick to her!’
were his last words, 
flung into the darkness after Phillotson; from
which his friend answered ‘Ay, ay!’
But when Phillotson was alone under the clouds of night, and no
sound was audible but that of the purling tributaries of the Stour, he
said, ‘So Gillingham, my friend, you had no stronger arguments
against it than those!’
‘I think she ought to be smacked, and brought to her senses––
that’s what I think!’ murmured Gillingham, as he walked back alone.
The next morning came, and at breakfast Phillotson told Sue:
‘You may go––with whom you will. I absolutely and uncondition-
ally agree.’
Having once come to this conclusion it seemed to Phillotson more
and more indubitably the true one. His mild serenity at the sense
that he was doing his duty by a woman who was at his mercy almost
overpowered his grief at relinquishing her.
Some days passed, and the evening of their last meal together had
come––a cloudy evening with wind––which indeed was very seldom
absent in this elevated place. How permanently it was imprinted
upon his vision; that look of her as she glided into the parlour to tea;
a slim, 
flexible figure; a face, strained from its roundness, and
marked by the pallors of restless days and nights, suggesting tragic
possibilities quite at variance with her times of buoyancy; a trying of
this morsel and that, and an inability to eat either. Her nervous
manner, begotten of a fear lest he should be injured by her course,
might have been interpreted by a stranger as displeasure that
Phillotson intruded his presence on her for the few brief minutes
that remained.
‘You had better have a slice of ham, or an egg, or something with
your tea? You can’t travel on a mouthful of bread and butter.’
She took the slice he helped her to; and they discussed as they sat
Jude the Obscure
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trivial questions of housekeeping, such as where he would 
find the
key of this or that cupboard, what little bills were paid, and what not.
‘I am a bachelor by nature, as you know, Sue,’ he said, in a heroic
attempt to put her at her ease. ‘So that being without a wife will not
really be irksome to me, as it might be to other men who have had
one a little while. I have, too, this grand hobby in my head of writing
“The Roman Antiquities of Wessex,” which will occupy all my spare
hours.’
‘If you will send me some of the manuscript to copy at any time, as
you used to, I will do it with so much pleasure,’ she said with amen-
able gentleness. ‘I should much like to be some help to you still––as
a––friend.’
Phillotson mused, and said: ‘No, I think we ought to be really
separate, if we are to be at all. And for this reason, that I don’t wish
to ask you any questions, and particularly wish you not to give me
information as to your movements, or even your address. . . . Now,
what money do you want? You must have some, you know.’
‘O, of course, Richard, I couldn’t think of having any of your
money to go away from you with! I don’t want any, either. I have
enough of my own to last me for a long while, and Jude will let me
have——’
‘I would rather not know anything about him, if you don’t mind.
You are free, absolutely; and your course is your own.’
‘Very well. But I’ll just say that I have packed only a change or two
of my own personal clothing, and one or two little things besides that
are my very own. I wish you would look into my trunk before it is
closed. Besides that I have only a small parcel that will go into Jude’s
portmanteau.’
‘Of course I shall do no such thing as examine your luggage! I
wish you would take three-quarters of the household furniture. I
don’t want to be bothered with it. I have a sort of a
ffection for a little
of it that belonged to my poor mother and father. But the rest you
are welcome to whenever you like to send for it.’
‘That I shall never do.’
‘You go by the six-thirty train, don’t you? It is now a quarter to
six.’
‘You . . . You don’t seem very sorry I am going, Richard!’
‘O no––perhaps not.’
‘I like you much for how you have behaved. It is a curious thing
At Shaston
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that directly I have begun to regard you as not my husband, but as
my old teacher, I like you. I won’t be so a
ffected as to say I love you,
because you know I don’t, except as a friend. But you do seem that to
me.’
Sue was for a few moments a little tearful at these re
flections, and
then the station omnibus came round to take her up. Phillotson saw
her things put on the top, handed her in, and was obliged to make an
appearance of kissing her as he wished her good-bye, which she quite
understood and imitated.* From the cheerful manner in which they