Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere


---

His betrothed shuddered; and asked him earnestly if he indeed
felt that they ought not to go in cold blood and sign that life-
undertaking again? ‘It is awful if you think we have found ourselves
not strong enough for it, and knowing this are proposing to perjure
ourselves,’ she said.
‘I fancy I do think it––since you ask me,’ said Jude. ‘Remember I’ll
do it if you wish, own darling.’ While she hesitated he went on to
confess that, though he thought they ought to be able to do it he felt
checked by the dread of incompetency just as she did––from their
peculiarities, perhaps, because they were unlike other people. ‘We
are horribly sensitive: that’s really what’s the matter with us, Sue,’ he
declared.
‘I fancy more are like us than we think!’
‘Well, I don’t know. The intention of the contract is good, and
right for many, no doubt; but in our case it may defeat its own ends
because we are the queer sort of people we are––folk in whom
domestic ties of a forced kind snu
ff out cordiality and
spontaneousness.’
Sue still held that there was not much queer or exceptional in
them: that all were so. ‘Everybody is getting to feel as we do. We are a
little beforehand, that’s all. In 
fifty, a hundred, years the descendants
of these two will act and feel worse than we. They will see weltering
humanity still more vividly than we do now, as
Shapes like our own selves hideously multiplied,*
and will be afraid to reproduce them.’
‘What a terrible line of poetry! . . . though I have felt it myself
about my fellow-creatures, at morbid times.’
Thus they murmured on, till Sue said more brightly:
‘Well––the general question is not our business, and why should
we plague ourselves about it? However di
fferent our reasons are we
come to the same conclusion; that for us particular two, an irrevoc-
able oath is risky. Then, Jude, let us go home without killing our
dream! Yes? How good you are, my friend: you give way to all my
whims!’
‘They accord very much with my own.’
He gave her a little kiss behind a pillar while the attention of
everybody present was taken up in observing the bridal procession
entering the vestry; and then they came outside the building. By the
Jude the Obscure


---

door they waited till two or three carriages, which had gone away for
a while, returned, and the new husband and wife came into the open
daylight. Sue sighed.
‘The 
flowers in the bride’s hand are sadly like the garland which
decked the heifers of sacri
fice* in old times.’
‘Still, Sue, it is no worse for the woman than for the man. That’s
what some women fail to see, and instead of protesting against the
conditions they protest against the man, the other victim; just as a
woman in a crowd will abuse the man who crushes against her, when
he is only the helpless transmitter of the pressure put upon him.’
‘Yes––some are like that, instead of uniting with the man against
the common enemy, coercion.’ The bride and bridegroom had by
this time driven o
ff, and the two moved away with the rest of the
idlers. ‘No––don’t let’s do it,’ she continued. ‘At least just now.’
They reached home, and passing the window arm in arm saw the
widow looking out at them. ‘Well,’ cried their guest when they
entered, ‘I said to myself when I zeed ye coming so loving up to the
door, “They made up their minds at last, then.” ’
They brie
fly hinted that they had not.
‘What––and ha’n’t ye really done it? Chok’ it all, that I should
have lived to see a good old saying like “marry in haste and repent at
leisure” spoiled like this by you two! ’Tis time I got back again to
Marygreen––sakes if tidden––if this is what the new notions be
leading us to! Nobody thought o’ being afeared o’ matrimony in my
time, nor of much else but a cannon-ball or empty cupboard. Why
when I and my poor man were married we thought no more o’t than
of a game o’ dibs.’
‘Don’t tell the child when he comes in,’ whispered Sue nervously.
‘He’ll think it has all gone on right, and it will be better that he
should not be surprised and puzzled. Of course it is only put o
ff for
reconsideration. If we are happy as we are, what does it matter to
anybody?’
At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere


---

V.–v.
T
 purpose of a chronicler of moods and deeds does not require
him to express his personal views upon the grave controversy above
given. That the twain were happy––between their times of
sadness––was indubitable. And when the unexpected apparition of
Jude’s child in the house had shown itself to be no such disturbing
event as it had looked, but one that brought into their lives a new and
tender interest of an ennobling and unsel
fish kind, it rather helped
than injured their happiness.
To be sure, with such pleasing anxious beings as they were, the
boy’s coming also brought with it much thought for the future,