Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

part friends. Its verses will stand fast when all the rest that you call
religion has passed away.’
‘Well––don’t discuss it. Good-bye, Jude; my fellow-sinner, and
kindest friend!’
‘Good-bye, my mistaken wife. Good-bye!’
Jude the Obscure


---

VI.–v.
T
 next afternoon the familiar Christminster fog still hung over all
things. Sue’s slim shape was only just discernible going towards the
station.
Jude had no heart to go to his work that day. Neither could he go
anywhere in the direction by which she would be likely to pass. He
went in an opposite one, to a dreary, strange, 
flat scene, where boughs
dripped, and coughs and consumption lurked, and where he had
never been before.
‘Sue’s gone from me––gone!’ he murmured miserably.
She in the meantime had left by the train, and reached Alfredston
Road, where she entered the stream-tram and was conveyed into the
town. It had been her request to Phillotson that he should not meet
her. She wished, she said, to come to him voluntarily, to his very
house and hearthstone.
It was Friday evening, which had been chosen because the
schoolmaster was disengaged at four o’clock that day till the Monday
morning following. The little car she hired at The Bear to drive her
to Marygreen set her down at the end of the lane, half-a-mile from
the village, by her desire, and preceded her to the schoolhouse with
such portion of her luggage as she had brought. On its return she
encountered it, and asked the driver if he had found the master’s
house open. The man informed her that he had, and that her things
had been taken in by the schoolmaster himself.
She could now enter Marygreen without exciting much observa-
tion. She crossed by the well and under the trees to the pretty new
school on the other side, and lifted the latch of the dwelling without
knocking. Phillotson stood in the middle of the room, awaiting her,
as requested.
‘I’ve come, Richard,’ said she, looking pale and shaken, and sink-
ing into a chair. ‘I cannot believe––you forgive your––wife!’
‘Everything, darling Susanna,’ said Phillotson.
She started at the endearment, though it had been spoken
advisedly without fervour. Then she nerved herself again.
‘My children––are dead––and it is right that they should be! I am
glad––almost. They were sin-begotten. They were sacri
ficed to teach

---

me how to live!––their death was the 
first stage of my purification.
That’s why they have not died in vain! . . . You will take me back?’
He was so stirred by her pitiful words and tone that he did more
than he had meant to do. He bent and kissed her cheek.
Sue imperceptibly shrank away, her 
flesh quivering under the
touch of his lips.
Phillotson’s heart sank, for desire was renascent in him. ‘You still
have an aversion to me!’
‘O no, dear––I––have been driving through the damp, and I was
chilly,’ she said, with a hurried smile of apprehension. ‘When are we
going to have the marriage? Soon?’
‘To-morrow morning, early, I thought––if you really wish. I am
sending round to the vicar to let him know you are come. I have told
him all, and he highly approves––he says it will bring our lives to a
triumphant and satisfactory issue. But––are you sure of yourself ? It
is not too late to refuse now if––you think you can’t bring yourself to
it, you know?’
‘Yes, yes, I can! I want it done quick. Tell him, tell him at once!
My strength is tried by the undertaking––I can’t wait long!’
‘Have something to eat and drink then, and go over to your room
at Mrs. Edlin’s. I’ll tell the vicar half-past eight tomorrow, before
anybody is about––if that’s not too soon for you? My friend Gilling-
ham is here to help us in the ceremony. He’s been good enough to
come all the way from Shaston at great inconvenience to himself.’
Unlike a woman in ordinary, whose eye is so keen for material
things, Sue seemed to see nothing of the room they were in, or any
detail of her environment. But on moving across the parlour to put
down her mu
ff she uttered a little ‘O!’ and grew paler than before.
Her look was that of the condemned criminal who catches sight of
his co
ffin.
‘What?’ said Phillotson.
The 
flap of the bureau chanced to be open, and in placing her
mu
ff upon it her eye had caught a document which lay there. ‘O––
only a––funny surprise!’ she said, trying to laugh away her cry as she
came back to the table.
‘Ah! yes,’ said Phillotson. ‘The license. . . . It has just come.’
Gillingham now joined them from his room above, and Sue ner-
vously made herself agreeable to him by talking on whatever she
thought likely to interest him, except herself, though that interested