Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere
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and her friends came to it in due course, and the inscription it bore
was: ‘Model of Cardinal College, Christminster; by J. Fawley and
S. F. M. Bridehead.’
‘Admiring their own work,’ said Arabella. ‘How like Jude––always
thinking of Colleges and Christminster, instead of attending to his
business.’
They glanced cursorily at the pictures, and proceeded to the
band-stand. When they had stood a little while listening to the music
of the military performers, Jude, Sue, and the child came up on the
other side. Arabella did not care if they should recognize her; but
they were too deeply absorbed in their own lives, as translated into
emotion by the military band, to perceive her under her beaded veil.
She walked round the outside of the listening throng, passing behind
the lovers, whose movements had an unexpected fascination for her
today. Scrutinizing them narrowly from the rear she noticed that
Jude’s hand sought Sue’s as they stood, the two standing close
together so as to conceal, as they supposed, this tacit expression of
their mutual responsiveness.
‘Silly fools––like two children!’ Arabella whispered to herself
morosely, as she rejoined her companions, with whom she preserved
a preoccupied silence.
Anny meanwhile had jokingly remarked to Vilbert on Arabella’s
hankering interest in her 
first husband.
‘Now,’ said the physician to Arabella, apart, ‘do you want anything
such as this, Mrs. Cartlett? It is not compounded out of my regular
pharmacopœia, but I am sometimes asked for such a thing.’ He
produced a small phial of clear liquid. ‘A love-philtre, such as was
used by the ancients with great e
ffect. I found it out by study of their
writings, and have never known it to fail.’
‘What is it made of ?’ asked Arabella curiously.
‘Well––a distillation of the juices of doves’ hearts––otherwise
pigeons’––is one of the ingredients. It took nearly a hundred hearts
to produce that small bottle full.’
‘How do you get pigeons enough?’
‘To tell a secret, I get a piece of rock-salt, of which pigeons are
inordinately fond, and place it in a dovecote on my roof. In a few
hours the birds come to it from all points of the compass––east, west,
north and south––and thus I secure as many as I require. You use the
liquid by contriving that the desired man shall take about ten drops
Jude the Obscure
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of it in his drink. But remember, all this is told you because I gather
from your questions that you mean to be a purchaser. You must keep
faith with me?’
‘Very well––I don’t mind a bottle––to give some friend or other to
try it on her young man.’ She produced 
five shillings, the price
asked, and slipped the phial in her capacious bosom. Saying pres-
ently that she was due at an appointment with her husband she
sauntered away towards the refreshment bar, Jude, his companion,
and the child having gone on to the horticultural tent, where
Arabella caught a glimpse of them standing before a group of roses
in bloom.
She waited a few minutes observing them, and then proceeded to
join her spouse with no very amiable sentiments. She found him
seated on a stool by the bar, talking to one of the gaily dressed maids
who had served him with spirits.
‘I should think you had enough of this business at home!’ Arabella
remarked gloomily. ‘Surely you didn’t come 
fifty miles from your
own bar to stick in another? Come, take me round the show, as other
men do their wives! Dammy, one would think you were a young
bachelor, with nobody to look after but yourself.’
‘But we agreed to meet here; and what could I do but wait?’
‘Well, now we have met, come along,’ she returned, ready to quar-
rel with the sun for shining on her. And they left the tent together,
this pot-bellied man and 
florid woman, in the antipathetic, recrimin-
atory mood of the average husband and wife of Christendom.
In the meantime the more exceptional couple and the boy still
lingered in the pavilion of 
flowers––an enchanted palace to their
appreciative taste––Sue’s usually pale cheeks re
flecting the pink of
the tinted roses at which she gazed; for the gay sights, the air, the
music, and the excitement of a day’s outing with Jude, had quick-
ened her blood and made her eyes sparkle with vivacity. She adored
roses, and what Arabella had witnessed was Sue detaining Jude
almost against his will while she learnt the names of this variety and
that, and put her face within an inch of their blooms to smell them.
‘I should like to push my face quite into them––the dears!’ she had
said. ‘But I suppose it is against the rules to touch them, isn’t it,
Jude?’
‘Yes, you baby,’ said he: and then playfully gave her a little push,
so that her nose went among the petals.