Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Melchester


---

Then Sue wrote to tell him the day 
fixed for the wedding; and
Jude decided, after inquiry, that she should come into residence on
the following Saturday, which would allow of a ten days’ stay in the
city prior to the ceremony, su
fficiently representing a nominal
residence of 
fifteen.
She arrived by the ten o’clock train on the day aforesaid, Jude not
going to meet her at the station, by her special request, that he
should not lose a morning’s work and pay, she said (if this were her
true reason). But so well by this time did he know Sue that the
remembrance of their mutual sensitiveness at emotional crises
might, he thought, have weighed with her in this. When he came
home to dinner she had taken possession of her apartment.
She lived in the same house with him, but on a di
fferent floor,
and they saw each other little, an occasional supper being the only
meal they took together, when Sue’s manner was something that of
a scared child. What she felt he did not know; their conversation
was mechanical, though she did not look pale or ill. Phillotson
came frequently, but mostly when Jude was absent. On the morn-
ing of the wedding, when Jude had given himself a holiday, Sue
and her cousin had breakfast together for the 
first and last time
during this curious interval; in his room––the parlour––which he
had hired for the period of Sue’s residence. Seeing, as women do,
how helpless he was in making the place comfortable, she bustled
about.
‘What’s the matter Jude?’ she said suddenly.
He was leaning with his elbows on the table and his chin on his
hands, looking into a futurity which seemed to be sketched out on
the tablecloth.
‘O––nothing!’
‘You are “father,” you know. That’s what they call the man who
gives you away.’
Jude could have said, ‘Phillotson’s age entitles him to be called
that.’ But he would not annoy her by such a cheap retort.
She talked incessantly, as if she dreaded his indulgence in re
flec-
tion, and before the meal was over both he and she wished they had
not put such con
fidence in their new view of things, and had taken
breakfast apart. What oppressed Jude was the thought that having
done a wrong thing of this sort himself, he was aiding and abetting
the woman he loved in doing a like wrong thing, instead of imploring
Jude the Obscure


---

and warning her against it. It was on his tongue to say, ‘You have
quite made up your mind?’
After breakfast they went out on an errand together, moved by a
mutual thought that it was the last opportunity they would have of
indulging in unceremonious companionship. By the irony of fate,
and the curious trick in Sue’s nature of tempting Providence at
critical times, she took his arm as they walked through the muddy
street––a thing she had never done before in her life––and on turn-
ing the corner they found themselves close to a grey Perpendicular
church with a low-pitched roof––the church of St. Thomas.
‘That’s the church,’ said Jude.
‘Where I am going to be married?’
‘Yes.’
‘Indeed!’ she exclaimed with curiosity. ‘How I should like to go in
and see what the spot is like where I am so soon to kneel and do it!’
Again he said to himself, ‘She does not realize what marriage
means!’
He passively acquiesced in her wish to go in, and they entered by
the western door. The only person inside the gloomy building was a
charwoman cleaning. Sue still held Jude’s arm, almost as if she loved
him. Cruelly sweet, indeed, she had been to him that morning; but
his thoughts of a penance in store for her were tempered by an ache:
How a blow should fa
‘. . . I can 
find no way
How a blow should fall, such as falls on men,
Nor prove too much for your womanhood!’*
They strolled undemonstratively up the nave towards the altar
railing, which they stood against in silence, turning then and walking
down the nave again, her hand still on his arm, precisely like a couple
just married. The too suggestive incident, entirely of her making,
nearly broke down Jude.
‘I like to do things like this,’ she said in the delicate voice of an
epicure in emotions,* which left no doubt that she spoke the truth.
‘I know you do!’ said Jude.
‘They are interesting, because they have probably never been done
before. I shall walk down the church like this with my husband in
about two hours, shan’t I!’
‘No doubt you will!’
‘Was it like this when you were married?’