Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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‘ ’Tis my belief she knew there was nothing the matter when she
told him she was . . . ’
What had Arabella been put up to by this woman, so that he
should make her his ‘mis’ess,’ otherwise wife? The suggestion was
horridly unpleasant, and it rankled in his mind so much that instead
of entering his own cottage when he reached it he 
flung his basket
inside the garden-gate and passed on, determined to go and see his
old aunt and get some supper there.
This made his arrival home rather late. Arabella, however, was
busy melting down lard from fat of the deceased pig, for she had
been out on a jaunt all day, and so delayed her work. Dreading lest
what he had heard should lead him to say something regrettable to
her he spoke little. But Arabella was very talkative, and said among
other things that she wanted some money. Seeing the book sticking
out of his pocket she added that he ought to earn more.
‘An apprentice’s wages are not meant to be enough to keep a wife
on, as a rule, my dear.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have had one.’
‘Come, Arabella! That’s too bad, when you know how it came
about.’
‘I’ll declare afore Heaven that I thought what I told you was true.
Doctor Vilbert thought so. It was a good job for you that it wasn’t
so!’
‘I don’t mean that,’ he said hastily. ‘I mean before that time. I
know it was not your fault; but those women friends of yours gave
you bad advice. If they hadn’t, or you hadn’t taken it, we should at
this moment have been free from a bond which, not to mince
matters, galls both of us devilishly. It may be very sad, but it is true.’
‘Who’s been telling you about my friends? What advice? I insist
upon your telling me.’
‘Pooh––I’d rather not.’
‘But you shall––you ought to. It is mean of ’ee not to!’
‘Very well.’ And he hinted gently what had been revealed to him.
‘But I don’t wish to dwell upon it. Let us say no more about it.’
Her defensive manner collapsed. ‘That was nothing,’ she said,
laughing coldly. ‘Every woman has a right to do such as that. The
risk is hers.’
‘I quite deny it, Bella. She might if no life-long penalty attached to
it for the man, or, in his default, for herself; if the weakness of the
At Marygreen
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moment could end with the moment, or even with the year. But
when e
ffects stretch so far she should not go and do that which
entraps a man if he is honest, or herself if he is otherwise.’
‘What ought I to have done?’
‘Given me time. . . . Why do you fuss yourself about melting
down that pig’s fat to-night? Please put it away!’
‘Then I must do it to-morrow morning. It won’t keep.’
‘Very well––do.’
Jude the Obscure
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I.–xi.
N
 morning, which was Sunday, she resumed operations about
ten o’clock; and the renewed work recalled the conversation which
had accompanied it the night before, and her back into the same
intractable temper.
‘That’s the story about me in Marygreen, is it––that I entrapped
’ee? Much of a catch you were, Lord send!’ As she warmed she saw
some of Jude’s dear ancient classics on a table where they ought not
to have been laid. ‘I won’t have them books here in the way!’ she
cried petulantly; and seizing them one by one she began throwing
them upon the 
floor.
‘Leave my books alone!’ he said. ‘You might have thrown them
aside if you had liked, but as to soiling them like that, it is disgust-
ing!’ In the operation of making lard Arabella’s hands had become
smeared with the hot grease, and her 
fingers consequently left very
perceptible imprints on the bookcovers. She continued deliberately
to toss the books severally upon the 
floor, till Jude, incensed beyond
bearing, caught her by the arms to make her leave o
ff. Somehow, in
doing so, he loosened the fastening of her hair, and it rolled about her
ears.
‘Let me go!’ she said.
‘Promise to leave the books alone.’
She hesitated. ‘Let me go!’ she repeated.
‘Promise!’
After a pause: ‘I do.’
Jude relinquished his hold, and she crossed the room to the door,
out of which she went with a set face, and into the highway. Here she
began to saunter up and down, perversely pulling her hair into a
worse disorder than he had caused, and unfastening several buttons
of her gown. It was a 
fine Sunday morning, dry, clear and frosty, and
the bells of Alfredston Church could be heard on the breeze from
the north. People were going along the road, dressed in their holiday
clothes; they were mainly lovers––such pairs as Jude and Arabella
had been when they sported along the same track some months
earlier. These pedestrians turned to stare at the extraordinary spec-
tacle she now presented, bonnetless, her dishevelled hair blowing in

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the wind, her bodice apart, her sleeves rolled above her elbows for
her work, and her hands reeking with melted fat. One of the passers
said in mock terror: ‘Good Lord deliver us!’
‘See how he’s served me!’ she cried. ‘Making me work Sunday
mornings when I ought to be going to my church, and tearing my
hair o
ff my head, and my gown off my back!’
Jude was exasperated, and went out to drag her in by main force.
Then he suddenly lost his heat. Illuminated with the sense that all
was over between them, and that it mattered not what she did, or he,
her husband stood still, regarding her. Their lives were ruined, he
thought; ruined by the fundamental error of their matrimonial
union: that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary
feeling which had no necessary connection with a
ffinities that alone
render a life-long comradeship tolerable.
‘Going to ill-use me on principle, as your father ill-used your
mother, and your father’s sister ill-used her husband?’ she asked. ‘All
you Fawleys be a queer lot as husbands and wives.’
Jude 
fixed an arrested, surprised look on her. But she said no
more, and continued her saunter till she was tired. He left the spot,
and after wandering vaguely a little while walked in the direction of
Marygreen. Here he called upon his great-aunt, whose in
firmities
daily increased.
‘Aunt––did my father ill-use my mother, and my aunt her
husband?’ said Jude abruptly, sitting down by the 
fire.
She raised her ancient eyes under the rim of the bygone bonnet
that she always wore. ‘Who’s been telling you that?’ she said.
‘I have heard it spoken of, and want to know all.’
‘You med so well, I s’pose; though your wife––I reckon ’twas
she––must have been a fool to open up that. There isn’t much to
know, after all. Your father and mother couldn’t get on together, and
they parted. It was coming home from Alfredston market, when you
were a baby––on the hill by the Brown House barn––that they had
their last di
fference, and took leave of one another for the last time.
Your mother soon afterwards died––she drowned herself, in short,
and your father went away with you to South Wessex, and never
came here any more.’
Jude recalled his father’s silence about North Wessex and Jude’s
mother, never speaking of either till his dying day.
‘It was the same with your father’s sister. Her husband o
ffended