Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Christminster Again


---

They parted. When Phillotson had ascended the hill a few steps
he stopped, hastened back, and called her.
‘What is, or was, their address?’
Arabella gave it.
‘Thank you. Good afternoon.’
Arabella smiled grimly as she resumed her way, and practised
dimple-making all along the road, from where the pollard willows
begin to the old almshouses in the 
first street of the town.
Meanwhile Phillotson ascended to Marygreen, and for the 
first
time during a lengthened period he lived with a forward eye. On
crossing under the large trees of the green to the humble school-
house to which he had been reduced he stood a moment, and pic-
tured Sue coming out of the door to meet him. No man had ever
su
ffered more inconvenience from his own charity, Christian or hea-
then, than Phillotson had done in letting Sue go. He had been
knocked about from pillar to post at the hands of the virtuous almost
beyond endurance; he had been nearly starved, and was now
dependent entirely upon the very small stipend from the school of
this village where the parson had got ill-spoken of for befriending
him.* He had often thought of Arabella’s remarks that he should have
been more severe with Sue, that her recalcitrant spirit would soon
have been broken. Yet such was his obstinate and illogical disregard
of opinion, and of the principles in which he had been trained, that
his convictions on the rightness of his course with his wife had not
been disturbed.
Principles which could be subverted by feeling in one direction
were liable to the same catastrophe in another. The instincts which
had allowed him to give Sue her liberty now enabled him to regard
her as none the worse for her life with Jude. He wished for her
still, in his curious way, if he did not love her, and, apart from policy,
soon felt that he would be grati
fied to have her again as his, always
provided that she came willingly.
But arti
fice was necessary, he had found, for stemming the cold
and inhumane blast of the world’s contempt. And here were the
materials ready made. By getting Sue back and re-marrying her on
the respectable plea of having entertained erroneous views of her,
and gained his divorce wrongfully, he might acquire some comfort,
resume his old courses, perhaps return to the Shaston school, if not
even to the Church as a licentiate.
Jude the Obscure


---

He thought he would write to Gillingham to inquire his views,
and what he thought of his, Phillotson’s, sending a letter to her.
Gillingham replied, naturally, that now she was gone it were best to
let her be; and considered that if she were anybody’s wife she was the
wife of the man to whom she had borne three children and owed
such tragical adventures. Probably, as his attachment to her seemed
unusually strong, the singular pair would make their union legal in
course of time, and all would be well, and decent, and in order.
‘But they won’t––Sue won’t!’ exclaimed Phillotson to himself.
‘Gillingham is so matter-of-fact. She’s a
ffected by Christminster
sentiment and teaching. I can see her views on the indissolubility of
marriage well enough, and I know where she got them. They are not
mine; but I shall make use of them to further mine.’
He wrote a brief reply to Gillingham. ‘I know I am entirely wrong,
but I don’t agree with you. As to her having lived with and had three
children by him, my feeling is (though I can advance no logical or
moral defence of it, on the old lines) that it has done little more than
finish her education. I shall write to her, and learn whether what that
woman said is true or no.’
As he had made up his mind to do this before he had written to his
friend, there had not been much reason for writing to the latter at all.
However, it was Phillotson’s way to act thus.
He accordingly addressed a carefully considered epistle to Sue,
and, knowing her emotional temperament, threw a Rhadamanthine
strictness into the lines here and there, carefully hiding his heterodox
feelings, not to frighten her. He stated that, it having come to his
knowledge that her views had considerably changed, he felt com-
pelled to say that his own, too, were largely modi
fied by events
subsequent to their parting. He would not conceal from her that
passionate love had little to do with his communication. It arose from
a wish to make their lives, if not a success, at least no such disastrous
failure as they threatened to become, through his acting on what he
had considered at the time a principle of justice, charity, and reason.
To indulge one’s instinctive and uncontrolled sense of justice and
right, was not, he had found, permitted with impunity in an old
civilization like ours. It was necessary to act under an acquired and
cultivated sense of the same, if you wished to enjoy an average share
of comfort and honour; and to let crude loving-kindness take care of
itself.