Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

PART FIFTH
AT ALDBRICKHAM AND ELSEWHERE

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‘Thy aerial part, and all the 
fiery parts which are mingled in
thee, though by nature they have an upward tendency, still in
obedience to the disposition of the universe they are overpowered
here in the compound mass the body.’
*
M. A
 (Long).

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   
IV.–i.
H
 Gillingham’s doubts were disposed of will most quickly appear
by passing over the series of dreary months and incidents that fol-
lowed the events of the last chapter, and coming on to a Sunday in
the February of the year following.
Sue and Jude were living in Aldbrickham,* in precisely the same
relations that they had established between themselves when she left
Shaston to join him the year before. The proceedings in the Law-
Courts had reached their consciousness but as a distant sound, and
an occasional missive which they hardly understood.
They had met, as usual, to breakfast together in the little house
with Jude’s name on it, that he had taken at 
fifteen pounds a year,
with three-pounds-ten extra for rates and taxes, and furnished with
his aunt’s ancient and lumbering goods, which had cost him about
their full value to bring all the way from Marygreen. Sue kept house,
and managed everything.
As he entered the room this morning Sue held up a letter she had
just received.
‘Well; and what is it about?’ he said after kissing her.
‘That the decree nisi in the case of Phillotson versus Phillotson and
Fawley, pronounced six months ago, has just been made absolute.’
‘Ah,’ said Jude, as he sat down.
The same concluding incident* in Jude’s suit against Arabella had
occurred about a month or two earlier. Both cases had been too
insigni
ficant to be reported in the papers, further than by name in a
long list of other undefended cases.
‘Now then, Sue, at any rate, you can do what you like!’ He looked
at his sweetheart curiously.
‘Are we––you and I––just as free now as if we had never married
at all?’
‘Just as free––except, I believe, that a clergyman may object
personally to re-marry you, and hand the job on to somebody
else.’
‘But I wonder––do you think it is really so with us? I know it is

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generally. But I have an uncomfortable feeling that my freedom has
been obtained under false pretences!’
‘How?’
‘Well––if the truth about us had been known, the decree wouldn’t
have been pronounced. It is only, is it, because we have made no
defence, and have led them into a false supposition? Therefore is my
freedom lawful, however proper it may be?’
‘Well––why did you let it be under false pretences? You have only
yourself to blame,’ he said mischievously.
‘Jude––don’t! You ought not to be touchy about that still. You
must take me as I am.’
‘Very well, darling: so I will. Perhaps you were right. As to your
question, we were not obliged to prove anything. That was their
business. Anyhow we are living together.’
‘Yes. Though not in their sense.’*
‘One thing is certain, that however the decree may be brought
about, a marriage is dissolved when it is dissolved. There is this
advantage in being poor obscure people like us––that these things
are done for us in a rough and ready fashion. It was the same with me
and Arabella. I was afraid her criminal second marriage would have
been discovered, and she punished; but nobody took any interest in
her––nobody inquired, nobody suspected it. If we’d been patented
nobilities we should have had in
finite trouble, and days and weeks
would have been spent in investigations.’
By degrees Sue acquired her lover’s cheerfulness at the sense of
freedom, and proposed that they should take a walk in the 
fields,
even if they had to put up with a cold dinner on account of it. Jude
agreed, and Sue went upstairs and prepared to start, putting on a
joyful coloured gown in observance of her liberty; seeing which Jude
put on a lighter tie.
‘Now we’ll strut arm in arm,’ he said, ‘like any other engaged
couple. We’ve a legal right to.’
They rambled out of the town, and along a path over the low-lying
lands that bordered it, though these were frosty now, and the exten-
sive seed-
fields were bare of colour and produce. The pair, however,
were so absorbed in their own situation that their surroundings were
little in their consciousness.
‘Well, my dearest, the result of all this is that we can marry after a
decent interval.’