Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure


---

action did not respond for a moment to his animal instinct and what
he said was, ‘I am glad of your kindness in coming to talk plainly to
me about it. You know what they say?––that I ought to marry her.’
‘What!’
‘And I wish with all my soul I could!’
Phillotson trembled, and his naturally pale face acquired a corpse-
like sharpness* in its lines. ‘I had no idea that it was of this nature!
God forbid!’
‘No, no!’ said Jude aghast. ‘I thought you understood. I mean that
were I in a position to marry her, or some one, and settle down,
instead of living in lodgings here and there, I should be glad.’
What he had really meant was simply that he loved her.
‘But––since this painful matter has been opened up––what really
happened?’ asked Phillotson, with the 
firmness of a man who felt
that a sharp smart now was better than a long agony of suspense
hereafter. ‘Cases arise, and this is one, when even ungenerous ques-
tions must be put to make false assumptions impossible, and to kill
scandal.’
Jude explained readily; giving the whole series of adventures,
including the night at the shepherd’s, her wet arrival at his lodging,
her indisposition from her immersion, their vigil of discussion, and
his seeing her o
ff next morning.
‘Well now,’ said Phillotson at the conclusion, ‘I take it as your 
final
word, and I know I can believe you, that the suspicion which led to
her rustication is an absolutely baseless one?’
‘It is,’ said Jude solemnly. ‘Absolutely. So help me God!’
The schoolmaster rose. Each of the twain felt that the interview
could not comfortably merge in a friendly discussion of their recent
experiences, after the manner of friends; and when Jude had taken
him round, and shown him some features of the renovation which
the old cathedral was undergoing, Phillotson bade the young man
good-day, and went away.
This visit took place about eleven o’clock in the morning; but no
Sue appeared. When Jude went to his dinner at one he saw his
beloved ahead of him in the street leading up from the North Gate,
walking as if in no way looking for him. Speedily overtaking her he
remarked that he had asked her to come to him at the Cathedral, and
she had promised.
‘I have been to get my things from the College,’ she said––an
At Melchester


---

observation which he was expected to take as an answer, though it
was not one. Finding her to be in this evasive mood he felt inclined
to give her the information so long withheld.
‘You have not seen Mr. Phillotson to-day?’ he ventured to inquire.
‘I have not. But I am not going to be cross-examined about him;
and if you ask anything more I won’t answer!’
‘It is very odd that––’ He stopped, regarding her.
‘What?’
‘That you are often not so nice in your real presence as you are in
your letters.’
‘Does it really seem so to you?’ said she, smiling with quick curios-
ity. ‘Well, that’s strange; but I feel just the same about you, Jude.
When you are gone away I seem such a cold-hearted——’
As she knew his sentiment towards her Jude saw that they were
getting upon dangerous ground. It was now, he thought, that he
must speak as an honest man.
But he did not speak, and she continued: ‘It was that which made
me write and say––I didn’t mind your loving me––if you wanted to,
much!’
The exultation he might have felt at what that implied, or seemed
to imply, was nulli
fied by his intention, and he rested rigid till he
began: ‘I have never told you——’
‘Yes you have,’ murmured she.
‘I mean, I have never told you my history––all of it.’
‘But I guess it. I know nearly.’
Jude looked up. Could she possibly know of that morning perform-
ance of his with Arabella, which in a few months had ceased to be a
marriage more completely than by death? He saw that she did not.
‘I can’t quite tell you here in the street,’ he went on with a gloomy
tongue. ‘And you had better not come to my lodgings. Let us go in
here.’
The building by which they stood was the market-house; it was
the only place available; and they entered, the market being over, and
the stalls and areas empty. He would have preferred a more congenial
spot, but, as usually happens, in place of a romantic 
field or solemn
aisle for his tale, it was told while they walked up and down over a
floor littered with rotten cabbage-leaves, and amid all the usual
squalors of decayed vegetable matter and unsaleable refuse. He
began, and 
finished his brief narrative, which merely led up to the