Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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‘Father. He’d make a row, perhaps.’
She pulled o
ff his boots. ‘Now,’ she whispered, ‘take hold of me––
never mind your weight. Now––
first stair, second stair——’
‘But,––are we out in our old house by Marygreen?’ asked the
stupe
fied Jude. ‘I haven’t been inside it for years till now! Hey? And
where are my books? That’s what I want to know?’
‘We are at my house, dear, where there’s nobody to spy out how ill
you are. Now––third stair, fourth stair––that’s it. Now we shall get
on.’
At Christminster Again
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VI.–vii.
A
 was preparing breakfast in the downstairs back room of
this small, recently hired tenement of her father’s. She put her head
into the little pork-shop in front, and told Mr. Donn it was ready.
Donn, endeavouring to look like a master pork-butcher, in a greasy
blue blouse, and with a strap round his waist from which a steel
dangled, came in promptly.
‘You must mind the shop this morning,’ he said casually. ‘I’ve to
go and get some innards and half a pig from Lumsdon, and to call
elsewhere. If you live here you must put your shoulder to the wheel,
at least till I get the business started!’
‘Well, for to-day I can’t say.’ She looked deedily into his face. ‘I’ve
got a prize upstairs.’
‘Oh?––What’s that?’
‘A husband––almost.’
‘No!’
‘Yes. It’s Jude. He’s come back to me.’
‘Your old original one? Well, I’m damned!’
‘Well, I always did like him, that I will say.’
‘But how does he come to be up there?’ said Donn, humour-
struck, and nodding to the ceiling.
‘Don’t ask inconvenient questions, father. What we’ve to do is to
keep him here till he and I are––as we were.’
‘How was that?’
‘Married.’
‘Ah. . . . Well it is the rummest thing I ever heard of––marrying
an old husband again, and so much new blood in the world! He’s
no catch, to my thinking. I’d have had a new one while I was
about it.’
‘It isn’t rum for a woman to want her old husband back for
respectability, though for a man to want his old wife back––well,
perhaps it is funny, rather!’ And Arabella was suddenly seized with a
fit of loud laughter, in which her father joined more moderately.
‘Be civil to him, and I’ll do the rest,’ she said when she had
recovered seriousness. ‘He told me this morning that his head ached
fit to burst, and he hardly seemed to know where he was. And no

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wonder, considering how he mixed his drink last night. We must
keep him jolly and cheerful here for a day or two, and not let him go
back to his lodging. Whatever you advance I’ll pay back to you again.
But I must go up and see how he is now, poor deary.’
Arabella ascended the stairs, softly opened the door of the 
first
bedroom, and peeped in. Finding that her shorn Samson* was asleep
she entered to the bedside and stood regarding him. The fevered
flush on his face from the debauch of the previous evening lessened
the fragility of his ordinary appearance, and his long lashes, dark
brows, and curly black hair and beard against the white pillow, com-
pleted the physiognomy of one whom Arabella, as a woman of rank
passions, still felt it worth while to recapture, highly important to
recapture as a woman straitened both in means and in reputation.
Her ardent gaze seemed to a
ffect him; his quick breathing became
suspended, and he opened his eyes.
‘How are you now, dear?’ said she. ‘It is I––Arabella.’
‘Ah!––where––O yes, I remember! You gave me shelter. . . . I am
stranded––ill––demoralized––damn bad! That’s what I am!’
‘Then do stay there. There’s nobody in the house but father and
me, and you can rest till you are thoroughly well. I’ll tell them at the
stone-works that you are knocked up.’
‘I wonder what they are thinking at the lodgings!’
‘I’ll go round and explain. Perhaps you had better let me pay up,
or they’ll think we’ve run away?’
‘Yes. You’ll 
find enough money in my pocket there.’
Quite indi
fferent, and shutting his eyes because he could not bear
the daylight in his throbbing eyeballs, Jude seemed to doze again.
Arabella took his purse, softly left the room, and putting on her
outdoor things went o
ff to the lodgings she and he had quitted the
evening before.
Scarcely half-an-hour had elapsed ere she reappeared round the
corner, walking beside a lad wheeling a truck on which were piled all
Jude’s household possessions, and also the few of Arabella’s things
which she had taken to the lodging for her short sojourn there. Jude
was in such physical pain from his unfortunate breakdown of the
previous night, and in such mental pain from the loss of Sue and
from having yielded in his half-somnolent state to Arabella, that
when he saw his few chattels unpacked and standing before his eyes
in this strange bedroom, intermixed with woman’s apparel, he
At Christminster Again
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scarcely considered how they had come there, or what their coming
signalized.
‘Now,’ said Arabella to her father downstairs, ‘we must keep
plenty of good liquor going in the house these next few days. I know
his nature, and if he once gets into that fearfully low state that he
does get into sometimes, he’ll never do the honourable thing by me
in this world, and I shall be left in the lurch. He must be kept
cheerful. He has a little money in the savings-bank, and he has given
me his purse to pay for anything necessary. Well, that will be the
license; for I must have that ready at hand, to catch him the moment
he’s in the humour. You must pay for the liquor. A few friends, and a
quiet convivial party would be the thing, if we could get it up. It
would advertise the shop, and help me too.’
‘That can be got up easy enough by anybody who’ll a
fford victuals
and drink. . . . Well yes––it would advertise the shop––that’s true.’
Three days later, when Jude had recovered somewhat from the
fearful throbbing of his eyes and brain, but was still considerably
confused in his mind by what had been supplied to him by Arabella
during the interval––to keep him jolly, as she expressed it––the quiet
convivial gathering suggested by her, to wind Jude up to the striking
point, took place.
Donn had only just opened his miserable little pork and sausage
shop, which had as yet scarce any customers; nevertheless that party
advertised it well, and the Donns acquired a real notoriety among a
certain class in Christminster, who knew not the colleges, nor their
works, nor their ways. Jude was asked if he could suggest any guest
in addition to those named by Arabella and her father, and in a
saturnine humour of perfect recklessness mentioned Uncle Joe, and
Stagg, and the decayed auctioneer, and others whom he remembered
as having been frequenters of the well-known tavern during his bout
therein years before. He also suggested Freckles and Bower o’ Bliss.
Arabella took him at his word so far as the men went, but drew the
line at the ladies.
Another man they knew, Tinker Taylor, though he lived in the
same street, was not invited; but as he went homeward from a late job
on the evening of the party he had occasion to call at the shop for
trotters. There were none in, but he was promised some the next
morning. While making his inquiry Taylor glanced into the back
room, and saw the guests sitting round, card-playing, and drinking,
Jude the Obscure
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and otherwise enjoying themselves at Donn’s expense. He went
home to bed, and on his way out next morning wondered how the