Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Melchester


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go by; the probable disappointment of Sue that he was not there
when she arrived, and the missed pleasure of her company on the
long and lonely climb by starlight up the hills to Marygreen. ‘I ought
to have gone back really! My aunt is on her deathbed, I fear.’
‘I’ll go over with you to-morrow morning. I think I could get a day
o
ff.’
There was something particularly uncongenial in the idea of
Arabella, who had no more sympathy than a tigress with his relations
or him, coming to the bedside of his dying aunt, and meeting Sue.
Yet he said, ‘Of course, if you’d like to, you can.’
‘Well, that we’ll consider. . . . Now, until we have come to some
agreement it is awkward our being together here––where you are
known, and I am getting known, though without any suspicion that I
have anything to do with you. As we are going towards the station
suppose we take the nine-forty train to Aldbrickham? We shall be
there in little more than half-an-hour, and nobody will know us for
one night, and we shall be quite free to act as we choose till we have
made up our minds whether we’ll make anything public or not.’
‘As you like.’
‘Then wait till I get two or three things. This is my lodging.
Sometimes when late I sleep at the hotel where I am engaged, so
nobody will think anything of my staying out.’
She speedily returned, and they went on to the railway, and made
the half-hour’s journey to Aldbrickham, where they entered a
third-rate inn near the station in time for a late supper.
Jude the Obscure


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III.–ix.
O
 the morrow between nine and half-past they were journeying
back to Christminster, the only two occupants of a compartment in a
third-class railway-carriage. Having, like Jude, made rather a hasty
toilet to catch the train, Arabella looked a little frowsy, and her face
was very far from possessing the animation which had characterized
it at the bar the night before. When they came out of the station she
found that she still had half-an-hour to spare before she was due at
the bar. They walked in silence a little way out of the town in the
direction of Alfredston. Jude looked up the far highway.
‘Ah . . . poor feeble me!’ he murmured at last.
‘What?’ said she.
‘This is the very road by which I came into Christminster years
ago full of plans!’
‘Well, whatever the road is I think my time is nearly up, as I have
to be in the bar by eleven o’clock. And as I said, I shan’t ask for the
day to go with you to see your aunt. So perhaps we had better part
here. I’d sooner not walk up Chief Street with you, since we’ve come
to no conclusion at all.’
‘Very well. But you said when we were getting up this morning
that you had something you wished to tell me before I left?’
‘So I had––two things––one in particular. But you wouldn’t
promise to keep it a secret. I’ll tell you now if you promise? As an
honest woman I wish you to know it. . . . It was what I began telling
you in the night––about that gentleman who managed the Sydney
hotel.’ Arabella spoke somewhat hurriedly for her. ‘You’ll keep it
close?’
‘Yes––yes––I promise!’ said Jude impatiently. ‘Of course I don’t
want to reveal your secrets.’
‘Whenever I met him out for a walk, he used to say that he was
much taken with my looks, and he kept pressing me to marry him. I
never thought of coming back to England again; and being out there
in Australia, with no home of my own after leaving my father, I at
last agreed, and did.’
‘What––marry him?’
‘Yes.’

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‘Regularly––legally––in church?’
‘Yes. And lived with him till shortly before I left. It was stupid, I
know; but I did. There, now I’ve told you. Don’t round upon me! He
talks of coming back to England, poor old chap. But if he does, he
won’t be likely to 
find me.’
Jude stood pale and 
fixed.
‘Why the devil didn’t you tell me last night!’ he said.
‘Well––I didn’t. . . . Won’t you make it up with me, then?’
‘So in talking of “your husband” to the bar gentlemen you meant
him, of course––not me!’
‘Of course. . . . Come, don’t fuss about it.’
‘I have nothing more to say!’ replied Jude. ‘I have nothing at all to
say about the––crime––you’ve confessed to.’
‘Crime! Pooh. They don’t think much of such as that over there!
Lots of ’em do it. . . . Well, if you take it like that I shall go back to
him! He was very fond of me, and we lived honourable enough, and
as respectable as any married couple in the Colony! How did I know
where you were?’
‘I won’t go blaming you. I could say a good deal, but perhaps it
would be misplaced. What do you wish me to do?’
‘Nothing. There was one thing more I wanted to tell you; but I
fancy we’ve seen enough of one another for the present! I shall think
over what you said about your circumstances, and let you know.’
Thus they parted. Jude watched her disappear in the direction of
the hotel, and entered the railway station close by. Finding that it
wanted three-quarters of an hour of the time at which he could get a
train back to Alfredston, he strolled mechanically into the city as far
as to the Fourways, where he stood as he had so often stood before,
and surveyed Chief Street stretching ahead, with its college after
college, in picturesqueness unrivalled except by such Continental
vistas as the Street of Palaces in Genoa; the lines of the buildings
being as distinct in the morning air as in an architectural drawing.
But Jude was far from seeing or criticizing these things; they were
hidden by an indescribable consciousness of Arabella’s midnight
contiguity, a sense of degradation at his revived experiences with her,
of her appearance as she lay asleep at dawn, which set upon his
motionless face a look as of one accurst. If he could only have felt
resentment towards her he would have been less unhappy; but he
pitied while he contemned her.