Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere
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‘Then I’ll get it sent, if I see any worth having,’ said his wife.
They sauntered on, but had barely entered the town when her
attention was attracted by a young couple leading a child, who had
come out from the second platform, into which the train from Ald-
brickham had steamed. They were walking just in front of the
innkeepers.
‘Sakes alive!’ said Arabella.
‘What’s that?’ said Cartlett.
‘Who do you think that couple is? Don’t you recognize the man?’
‘No.’
‘Not from the photos I have showed you?’
‘Is it Fawley?’
‘Yes––of course.’
‘Oh, well. I suppose he was inclined for a little sight-seeing like
the rest of us.’ Cartlett’s interest in Jude, whatever it might have
been when Arabella was new to him, had plainly 
flagged since her
charms and her idiosyncrasies, her supernumerary hair-coils, and
her optional dimples, were becoming as a tale that is told.
Arabella so regulated her pace and her husband’s as to keep just in
the rear of the other three, which it was easy to do without notice in
such a stream of pedestrians. Her answers to Cartlett’s remarks were
vague and slight, for the group in front interested her more than all
the rest of the spectacle.
‘They are rather fond of one another and of their child, seemingly,’
continued the publican.
‘Their child! ’Tisn’t their child,’ said Arabella with a curious sud-
den covetousness. ‘They haven’t been married long enough for it to
be theirs.’
But although the smouldering maternal instinct was strong
enough in her to lead her to quash her husband’s conjecture, she was
not disposed on second thoughts to be more candid than necessary;
Mr. Cartlett had no other idea than that his wife’s child by her 
first
husband was with his grandparents at the Antipodes.
‘O I suppose not. She looks quite a girl.’
‘They are only lovers, or lately married, and have the child in
charge, as anybody can see.’
All continued to move ahead. The unwitting Sue and Jude, the
couple in question, had determined to make this agricultural exhib-
ition within twenty miles of their own town the occasion of a day’s
Jude the Obscure
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excursion which should combine exercise and amusement with
instruction, at small expense. Not regardful of themselves alone,
they had taken care to bring Father Time, to try every means of
making him kindle and laugh like other boys, though he was to some
extent a hindrance to the delightfully unreserved intercourse in their
pilgrimages which they so much enjoyed. But they soon ceased to
consider him an observer, and went along with that tender attention
to each other which the shyest can scarcely disguise, and which
these, among entire strangers as they imagined, took less trouble to
disguise than they might have done at home. Sue, in her new sum-
mer clothes, 
flexible and light as a bird, her little thumb stuck up by
the stem of her white cotton sunshade, went along as if she hardly
touched ground, and as if a moderately strong pu
ff of wind would
float her over the hedge into the next field. Jude, in his light grey
holiday-suit, was really proud of her companionship, not more for
her external attractiveness than for her sympathetic words and ways.
That complete mutual understanding, in which every glance and
movement was as e
ffectual as speech for conveying intelligence
between them, made them almost the two parts of a single whole.*
The pair with their charge passed through the turnstiles, Arabella
and her husband not far behind them. When inside the enclosure the
publican’s wife could see that the two ahead began to take trouble
with the youngster, pointing out and explaining the many objects of
interest, alive and dead; and a passing sadness would touch their
faces at their every failure to disturb his indi
fference.
‘How she sticks to him!’ said Arabella. ‘O no––I fancy they are not
married, or they wouldn’t be so much to one another as that. . . . I
wonder!’
‘But I thought you said he did marry her?’
‘I heard he was going to––that’s all, going to make another
attempt, after putting it o
ff once or twice. . . . As far as they them-
selves are concerned they are the only two in the show. I should be
ashamed of making myself so silly if I were he!’
‘I don’t see as how there’s anything remarkable in their behaviour.
I should never have noticed their being in love, if you hadn’t said so.’
‘You never see anything,’ she rejoined. Nevertheless Cartlett’s
view of the lovers’ or married pair’s conduct was undoubtedly that
of the general crowd, whose attention seemed to be in no way
attracted by what Arabella’s sharpened vision discerned.