Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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‘Yes, if you like,’ he said indi
fferently.
While they sat without speaking she suddenly observed: ‘You
seem all in a brood old man. I’m sorry for you.’
‘I am all in a brood.’
‘It is about her, I know. It’s no business of mine, but I could 
find
out all about the wedding––if it really did take place––if you wanted
to know.’
‘How could you?’
‘I wanted to go to Alfredston to get a few things I left there. And I
could see Anny, who’ll be sure to have heard all about it, as she has
friends at Marygreen.’
Jude could not bear to acquiesce in this proposal; but his suspense
pitted itself against his discretion, and won in the struggle. ‘You can
ask about it if you like,’ he said. ‘I’ve not heard a sound from there. It
must have been very private, if––they have married.’
‘I am afraid I haven’t enough cash to take me there and back, or I
should have gone before. I must wait till I have earned some.’
‘O––I can pay the journey for you,’ he said impatiently. And thus
his suspense as to Sue’s welfare, and the possible marriage, moved
him to despatch for intelligence the last emissary he would have
thought of choosing deliberately.
Arabella went, Jude requesting her to be home not later than by
the seven o’clock train. When she had gone he said: ‘Why should I
have charged her to be back by a particular time! She’s nothing to
me:––nor the other neither!’
But having 
finished work he could not help going to the station to
meet Arabella, dragged thither by feverish haste to get the news she
might bring, and know the worst. Arabella had made dimples most
successfully all the way home, and when she stepped out of the
railway carriage she smiled. He merely said ‘Well?’ with the very
reverse of a smile.
‘They are married.’
‘Yes––of course they are!’ he returned. She observed, however,
the hard strain upon his lip as he spoke.
‘Anny says she has heard from Belinda, her relation out at Mary-
green, that it was very sad, and curious!’
‘How do you mean sad? She wanted to marry him again, didn’t
she?––and he her!’
‘Yes––that was it. She wanted to in one sense, but not in the other.
At Christminster Again
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Mrs. Edlin was much upset by it all, and spoke out her mind at
Phillotson. But Sue was that excited about it that she burnt her best
embroidery, that she’d worn with you, to blot you out entirely.
Well––if a woman feels like it, she ought to do it. I commend her for
it, though others don’t.’ Arabella sighed. ‘She felt he was her only
husband, and that she belonged to nobody else in the sight of God
A’mighty while he lived. Perhaps another woman feels the same
about herself, too!’ Arabella sighed again.
‘I don’t want any cant!’ exclaimed Jude.
‘It isn’t cant,’ said Arabella. ‘I feel exactly the same as she!’
He closed that issue by remarking abruptly: ‘Well––now I know
all I wanted to know. Many thanks for your information. I am not
going back to my lodgings just yet.’ And he left her straightway.
In his misery and depression Jude walked to well-nigh every spot
in the city that he had visited with Sue; thence he did not know
whither, and then thought of going home to his usual evening meal.
But having all the vices of his virtues, and some to spare, he turned
into a public-house, for the 
first time during many months. Among
the possible consequences of her marriage Sue had not dwelt on this.
Arabella, meanwhile, had gone back. The evening passed, and
Jude did not return. At half-past nine Arabella herself went out, 
first
proceeding to an outlying district near the river, where her father
lived, and had opened a small and precarious pork-shop lately.
‘Well,’ she said to him, ‘for all your rowing me that night, I’ve
called in, for I have something to tell you. I think I shall get married
and settled again! Only you must help me: and you can do no less,
after what I’ve stood ’ee.’
‘I’ll do anything to get thee o
ff my hands!’
‘Very well. I am now going to look for my young man. He’s on the
loose I’m afraid, and I must get him home. All I want you to do to-
night is not to fasten the door, in case I should want to sleep here,
and should be late.’
‘I thought you’d soon get tired of giving yourself airs and keeping
away!’
‘Well––don’t do the door. That’s all I say.’
She then sallied out again, and 
first hastening back to Jude’s to
make sure that he had not returned, began her search for him. A
shrewd guess as to his probable course took her straight to the
tavern which Jude had formerly frequented, and where she had been