Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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‘Why mustn’t we go there, father?’
‘Because of a cloud that has gathered over us; though “we have
wronged no man, corrupted no man, defrauded no man!”* Though
perhaps we have “done that which was right in our own eyes.” ’*
At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere
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V.–vii.
F
 that week Jude Fawley and Sue walked no more in the town of
Aldbrickham.
Whither they had gone nobody knew, chie
fly because nobody
cared to know. Any one su
fficiently curious to trace the steps of such
an obscure pair might have discovered without great trouble that
they had taken advantage of his adaptive craftsmanship to enter on a
shifting, almost nomadic life, which was not without its pleasantness
for a time.
Wherever Jude heard of freestone work to be done, thither he
went, choosing by preference places remote from his old haunts and
Sue’s. He laboured at a job, long or brie
fly, till it was finished, and
then moved on.
Two whole years and a half passed thus. Sometimes he might have
been found shaping the mullions of a country mansion, sometimes
setting the parapet of a town-hall, sometimes ashlaring an hotel at
Sandbourne, sometimes a museum at Casterbridge, sometimes as far
down as Exonbury, sometimes at Stoke-Barehills. Later still he was
at Kennetbridge,* a thriving town not more than a dozen miles south
of Marygreen, this being his nearest approach to the village where he
was known; for he had a sensitive dread of being questioned as to his
life and fortunes by those who had been acquainted with him during
his ardent young manhood of study and promise, and his brief and
unhappy married life at that time.
At some of these places he would be detained for months, at
others only a few weeks. His curious and sudden antipathy to
ecclesiastical work, both episcopal and nonconformist, which had
risen in him when su
ffering under a smarting sense of misconcep-
tion, remained with him in cold blood, less from any fear of renewed
censure than from an ultra-conscientiousness which would not allow
him to seek a living out of those who would disapprove of his ways,
also, too, from a sense of inconsistency between his former dogmas
and his present practice, hardly a shred of the beliefs with which he
had 
first gone up to Christminster now remaining with him. He was
mentally approaching the position which Sue had occupied when he
first met her.

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On a Saturday evening in May, nearly three years after Arabella’s
recognition of Sue and himself at the Agricultural Show, some of
those who there encountered each other met again.
It was the spring fair at Kennetbridge, and, though this ancient
trade-meeting had much dwindled from its dimensions of former
times, the long straight street of the borough presented a lively scene
about midday. At this hour a light trap, among other vehicles, was
driven into the town by the north road, and up to the door of a
temperance inn. There alighted two women, one the driver, an
ordinary country person, the other a 
finely built figure in the deep
mourning of a widow. Her sombre suit, of pronounced cut, caused
her to appear a little out of place in the medley and bustle of a
provincial fair.
‘I will just 
find out where it is, Anny,’ said the widow-lady to her
companion, when the horse and cart had been taken by a man who
came forward: ‘and then I’ll come back, and meet you here; and we’ll
go in and have something to eat and drink. I begin to feel quite a
sinking.’
‘With all my heart,’ said the other. ‘Though I would sooner have
put up at the Chequers or The Jack. You can’t get much at these
temperance houses.’
‘Now, don’t you give way to gluttonous desires, my child,’ said the
woman in weeds reprovingly. ‘This is the proper place. Very well:
we’ll meet in half-an-hour, unless you come with me to 
find out
where the site of the new chapel is?’
‘I don’t care to. You can tell me.’
The companions then went their several ways, the one in crape
walking 
firmly along with a mien of disconnection from her miscel-
laneous surroundings. Making inquiries she came to a hoarding,
within which were excavations denoting the foundations of a build-
ing; and on the boards without one or two large posters announcing
that the foundation-stone of the chapel about to be erected would be
laid that afternoon at three o’clock by a London preacher of great
popularity among his body.
Having ascertained thus much the immensely weeded widow
retraced her steps, and gave herself leisure to observe the movements
of the fair. By and by her attention was arrested by a little stall of
cakes and gingerbreads, standing between the more pretentious erec-
tions of trestles and canvas. It was covered with an immaculate cloth,