Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure


---

‘Not at all, my dear boy. I could hearken to ’ee all day.’
As Jude re
flected more and more on her news, and grew more
restless, he began in his mental agony to use terribly profane lan-
guage about social conventions, which started a 
fit of coughing. Pres-
ently there came a knock at the door downstairs. As nobody
answered it Mrs. Edlin herself went down.
The visitor said blandly: ‘The doctor.’ The lanky form was that of
Physician Vilbert, who had been called in by Arabella.
‘How is my patient at present?’ asked the physician.
‘O bad––very bad. Poor chap, he got excited, and do blaspeam
terribly, since I let out some gossip by accident––the more to my
blame. But there––you must excuse a man in su
ffering for what he
says, and I hope God will forgive him.’
‘Ah. I’ll go up and see him. Mrs. Fawley at home?’
‘She’s not in at present, but she’ll be here soon.’
Vilbert went; but though Jude had hitherto taken the medicines of
that skilful practitioner with the greatest indi
fference, whenever
poured down his throat by Arabella, he was now so brought to bay by
events that he vented his opinion of Vilbert in the physician’s face,
and so forcibly, and with such striking epithets, that Vilbert soon
scurried downstairs again. At the door he met Arabella, Mrs. Edlin
having left. Arabella inquired how he thought her husband was now,
and seeing that the doctor looked ru
ffled, asked him to take some-
thing. He assented.
‘I’ll bring it to you here in the passage,’ she said. ‘There’s nobody
but me about the house to-day.’
She brought him a bottle and a glass, and he drank. Arabella
began shaking with suppressed laughter. ‘What is this, my dear?’ he
asked, smacking his lips.
‘O––a drop of wine––and something in it.’ Laughing again she
said: ‘I poured your own love-philter into it, that you sold me at the
Agricultural Show, don’t you remember?’
‘I do, I do! Clever woman! But you must be prepared for the
consequences.’ Putting his arm round her shoulders he kissed her
there and then.
‘Don’t, don’t,’ she whispered, laughing good-humouredly. ‘My
man will hear.’
She let him out of the house, and as she went back she said to
herself: ‘Well! Weak women must provide for a rainy day. And if my
At Christminster Again


---

poor fellow upstairs do go o
ff––as I suppose he will soon––it’s well
to keep chances open. And I can’t pick and choose now as I could
when I was younger. And one must take the old if one can’t get the
young.’
Jude the Obscure


---

VI.–xi.
T
 last pages to which the chronicler of these lives would ask the
reader’s attention are concerned with the scene in and out of Jude’s
bedroom when leafy summer came round again.
His face was now so thin that his old friends would hardly have
known him. It was afternoon, and Arabella was at the looking-glass
curling her hair, which operation she performed by heating an
umbrella-stay in the 
flame of a candle she had lighted, and using it
upon the 
flowing lock. When she had finished this, practised a
dimple, and put on her things, she cast her eyes round upon Jude. He
seemed to be sleeping, though his position was an elevated one, his
malady preventing him lying down.
Arabella, hatted, gloved, and ready, sat down and waited, as if
expecting some one to come and take her place as nurse.
Certain sounds from without revealed that the town was in festiv-
ity, though little of the festival, whatever it might have been, could be
seen here. Bells began to ring, and the notes came into the room
through the open window, and travelled round Jude’s head in a hum.
They made her restless, and at last she said to herself: ‘Why ever
doesn’t father come!’
She looked again at Jude, critically gauged his ebbing life, as she
had done so many times during the late months, and glancing at his
watch, which was hung up by way of timepiece, rose impatiently.
Still he slept, and coming to a resolution she slipped from the room,
closed the door noiselessly, and descended the stairs. The house was
empty. The attraction which moved Arabella to go abroad had
evidently drawn away the other inmates long before.
It was a warm, cloudless, enticing day. She shut the front door,
and hastened round into Chief Street, and when near the theatre
could hear the notes of the organ, a rehearsal for a coming concert
being in progress. She entered under the archway of Oldgate
College, where men were putting up awnings round the quadrangle
for a ball in the Hall that evening. People who had come up from the
country for the day were picnicking on the grass, and Arabella
walked along the gravel paths and under the aged limes. But 
finding
this place rather dull she returned to the streets, and watched the

---

carriages drawing up for the concert, numerous Dons and their
wives, and undergraduates with gay female companions, crowding
up likewise. When the doors were closed and the concert began, she
moved on.
The powerful notes of that concert rolled forth through the swing-
ing yellow blinds of the open windows, over the house-tops, and into
the still air of the lanes. They reached so far as to the room in which
Jude lay; and it was about this time that his cough began again and
awakened him.
As soon as he could speak he murmured, his eyes still closed: ‘A
little water, please.’
Nothing but the deserted room received his appeal, and he
coughed to exhaustion again, saying still more feebly: ‘Water––some
water––Sue––Arabella!’
The room remained still as before. Presently he gasped again:
‘Throat –– water –– Sue –– darling –– drop of water –– please –– O
please!’
No water came, and the organ notes, faint as a bee’s hum, rolled in
as before.
While he remained, his face changing, shouts and hurrahs came
from somewhere in the direction of the river.
‘Ah––yes! The Remembrance games,’ he murmured. ‘And I here.
And Sue de
filed!’
The hurrahs were repeated, drowning the faint organ notes.
Jude’s face changed more; he whispered slowly, his parched lips
scarcely moving:
‘Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was