Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Shaston
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‘That’s rather cruel,’ he answered; but acquiesced. ‘Such a
strange thing has happened to me,’ Jude continued after a silence.
‘Arabella has actually written to ask me to get a divorce from her––in
kindness to her, she says. She wants to honestly and legally marry
that man she has already married virtually; and begs me to enable her
to do it.’
‘What have you done?’
‘I have agreed. I thought at 
first I couldn’t do it without getting
her into trouble about that second marriage, and I don’t want to
injure her in any way. Perhaps she’s no worse than I am, after all! But
nobody knows about it over here, and I 
find it will not be a difficult
proceeding at all. If she wants to start afresh I have only too obvious
reasons for not hindering her.’
‘Then you’ll be free?’
‘Yes, I shall be free.’
‘Where are we booked for?’ she asked, with the discontinuity that
marked her to-night.
‘Aldbrickham, as I said.’
‘But it will be very late when we get there?’
‘Yes. I thought of that, and I wired for a room for us at the
Temperance Hotel there.’
‘One?’
‘Yes––one.’
She looked at him. ‘O Jude!’ Sue bent her forehead against the
corner of the compartment. ‘I thought you might do it; and that I
was deceiving you. But I didn’t mean that!’
In the pause which followed, Jude’s eyes 
fixed themselves with a
stulti
fied expression on the opposite seat. ‘Well!’ he said. . . . ‘Well!’
He remained in silence; and seeing how discom
fited he was she
put her face against his cheek, murmuring, ‘Don’t be vexed, dear!’
‘Oh––there’s no harm done,’ he said. ‘But––I understood it like
that. . . . Is this a sudden change of mind?’
‘You have no right to ask me such a question; and I shan’t answer!’
she said, smiling.
‘My dear one, your happiness is more to me than anything––
although we seem to verge on quarrelling so often!––and your will is
law to me. I am something more than a mere––sel
fish fellow, I hope.
Have it as you wish!’ On re
flection his brow showed perplexity. ‘But
perhaps it is that you don’t love me––not that you have become
Jude the Obscure
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conventional! Much as, under your teaching, I hate convention, I
hope it is that, not the other terrible alternative!’
Even at this obvious moment for candour Sue could not be quite
candid as to the state of that mystery, her heart. ‘Put it down to my
timidity,’ she said with hurried evasiveness; ‘to a woman’s natural
timidity when the crisis comes. I may feel as well as you that I have a
perfect right to live with you as you thought––from this moment. I
may
hold the opinion that, in a proper state of society, the father of a
woman’s child will be as much a private matter of hers as the cut of
her underlinen, on whom nobody will have any right to question her.*
But partly, perhaps, because it is by his generosity that I am now free,
I would rather not be other than a little rigid. If there had been a
rope-ladder, and he had run after us with pistols, it would have
seemed di
fferent, and I may have acted otherwise. But don’t press
me and criticize me, Jude! Assume that I haven’t the courage of my
opinions. I know I am a poor miserable creature. My nature is not so
passionate as yours!’
He repeated simply: ‘I thought––what I naturally thought. But if
we are not lovers, we are not. Phillotson thought so, I am sure. See,
here is what he has written to me.’ He opened the letter she had
brought, and read:
‘I make only one condition––that you are tender and kind to her. I
know you love her. But even love may be cruel at times. You are made
for each other: it is obvious, palpable, to any unbiased older person.
You were all along “the shadowy third” in my short life with her. I
repeat, take care of Sue.’
‘He’s a good fellow, isn’t he!’ she said with latent tears. On
reconsideration she added, ‘He was very resigned to letting me go––
too resigned almost! I never was so near being in love with him as
when he made such thoughtful arrangements for my being comfort-
able on my journey, and o
ffering to provide money. Yet I was not. If I
loved him ever so little as a wife, I’d go back to him even now.’
‘But you don’t, do you?’
‘It is true––O so terribly true!––I don’t.’
‘Nor me neither, I half fear!’ he said pettishly. ‘Nor anybody
perhaps!––Sue, sometimes, when I am vexed with you, I think you
are incapable of real love.’
‘That’s not good and loyal of you!’ she said, and drawing away
from him as far as she could, looked severely out into the darkness.