Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Marygreen


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stood still. He was on the spot where he had given her the 
first kiss.
As the sun had only just risen it was possible that nobody had passed
there since. Jude looked on the ground, and sighed. He looked
closely, and could just discern in the damp dust the imprints of their
feet as they had stood locked in each other’s arms. She was not there
now, and ‘the embroidery of imagination upon the stu
ff of nature’ so
depicted her past presence that a void was in his heart which nothing
could 
fill. A pollard willow stood close to the place, and that willow
was di
fferent from all other willows in the world. Utter annihilation
of the six days which must elapse before he could see her again as he
had promised would have been his intensest wish if he had had only
the week to live.
An hour and half later Arabella came along the same way with her
two companions of the Saturday. She passed unheedingly the scene
of the kiss, and the willow that marked it, though chattering freely
on the subject to the other two.
‘And what did he tell ’ee next?’
‘Then he said––’ And she related almost word for word some of
his tenderest speeches. If Jude had been behind the fence he would
have felt not a little surprised at learning how very few of his sayings
and doings on the previous evening were private.
‘You’ve got him to care for ’ee a bit, ’nation if you han’t!’
murmured Anny judicially. ‘It’s well to be you!’
In a few moments Arabella replied in a curiously low, hungry tone
of latent sensuousness: ‘I’ve got him to care for me; yes! But I want
him to more than care for me; I want him to have me; to marry me! I
must have him. I can’t do without him. He’s the sort of man I long
for. I shall go mad if I can’t give myself to him altogether! I felt I
should when I 
first saw him!’
‘As he is a romancing, straightfor’ard, honest chap, he’s to be
had and as a husband, if you set about catching him in the right
way.’
Arabella remained thinking awhile. ‘What med be the right way?’
she asked.
‘O you don’t know––you don’t!’ said Sarah, the third girl.
‘On my word I don’t!––No further, that is, than by plain courting,
and taking care he don’t go too far?’
The third girl looked at the second. ‘She don’t know!’
‘’Tis clear she don’t!’ said Anny.
Jude the Obscure


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‘And having lived in a town, too, as one may say! Well, we can
teach ’ee som’at then, as well as you us.’
‘Yes. And how do you mean––a sure way to gain a man? Take me
for an innocent, and have done wi’ it!’
‘As a husband.’
‘As a husband.’
‘A countryman that’s honourable and serious-minded, such as he;
God forbid that I should say a sojer or sailor, or commercial gent
from the towns, or any of them that be slippery with poor women!
I’d do no friend that harm.’
‘Well, such as he, of course!’
Arabella’s companions looked at each other, and turning up their
eyes in drollery, began smirking. Then one went up close to Arabella,
and, although nobody was near, imparted some information in a low
tone, the other observing curiously the e
ffect upon Arabella.
‘Ah!’ said the last-named slowly. ‘I own I didn’t think of that way!
. . . But suppose he isn’t honourable? A woman had better not have
tried it.’
‘Nothing venture nothing have. Besides, you make sure that he’s
honourable before you begin. You’d be safe enough with yours. I
wish I had the chance! Lots of girls do it; or do you think they’d get
married at all?’
Arabella pursued her way in silent thought. ‘I’ll try it!’ she whis-
pered; but not to them.
At Marygreen


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I.–viii.
O
 week’s end Jude was as usual walking out to his aunt’s at Mary-
green from his lodgings in Alfredston, a walk which now had large
attractions for him quite other than his desire to see his aged and
morose relative. He diverged to the right before ascending the hill
with the single purpose of gaining on his way a glimpse of Arabella
that should not come into the reckoning of regular appointments.
Before quite reaching the homestead his alert eye perceived the top
of her head moving quickly hither and thither over the garden
hedge. Entering the gate he found that three young unfattened
pigs had escaped from their sty by leaping clean over the top, and
that she was endeavouring unassisted to drive them in through the
door which she had set open. The lines of her countenance
changed from the rigidity of business to the softness of love when
she saw Jude, and she bent her eyes languishingly upon him. The
animals took advantage of the pause by doubling and bolting out
of the way.
‘They were only put in this morning,’ she cried, stimulated to
pursue in spite of her lover’s presence. ‘They were drove from
Spaddleholt Farm only yesterday, where father bought ’em at a sti
ff
price enough. They are wanting to get home again, the stupid toads!
Will you shut the garden gate, dear, and help me to get ’em in? There
are no men-folk at home, only mother, and they’ll be lost if we don’t
mind.’
He set himself to assist, and dodged this way and that over the
potato rows and the cabbages. Every now and then they ran together,
when he caught her for a moment and kissed her. The 
first pig was
got back promptly; the second with some di
fficulty; the third, a long-
legged creature, was more obstinate and agile. He plunged through a
hole in the garden hedge, and into the lane.
‘He’ll be lost if I don’t follow ’n!’ said she. ‘Come along with me!’
She rushed in full pursuit out of the garden, Jude alongside her,
barely contriving to keep the fugitive in sight. Occasionally they
would shout to some boy to stop the animal, but he always wriggled
past and ran on as before.
‘Let me take your hand, darling,’ said Jude. ‘You are getting out of

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breath.’ She gave him her now hot hand with apparent willingness;
and they trotted along together.
‘This comes of driving ’em home,’ she remarked. ‘They always
know the way back if you do that. They ought to have been carted
over.’
By this time the pig had reached an unfastened gate admitting to
the open down, across which he sped with all the agility his little legs
a
fforded. As soon as the pursuers had entered and ascended to the
top of the high ground it became apparent that they would have to
run all the way to the farmer’s if they wished to get at him. From this
summit he could be seen as a minute speck, following an unerring
line towards his old home.
‘It is no good!’ cried Arabella. ‘He’ll be there long before we get
there. It don’t matter now we know he’s not lost or stolen on the way.
They’ll see it is ours, and send un back. O dear, how hot I be!’
Without relinquishing her hold of Jude’s hand she swerved
aside and 
flung herself down on the sod under a stunted thorn,
precipitately pulling Jude on to his knees at the same time. ‘O I
ask pardon––I nearly threw you down, didn’t I. But I am so
tired!’
She lay supine, and straight as an arrow, on the sloping sod of this
hill-top, gazing up into the blue miles of sky, and still retaining her
warm hold of Jude’s hand. He reclined on his elbow near her.
‘We’ve run all this way for nothing,’ she went on, her form heav-
ing and falling in quick pants, her face 
flushed, her full red lips