Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Melchester
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‘Good God, Sue––don’t be so awfully merciless! . . . There, dear
one, I didn’t mean it!’
‘Ah––you are vexed!’ she said regretfully, as she blinked away an
access of eye moisture. ‘And I promised never to vex you! . . . I
suppose I ought not to have asked you to bring me in here. O I
oughtn’t! I see it now. My curiosity to hunt up a new sensation
always leads me into these scrapes. Forgive me! . . . You will, won’t
you Jude?’
The appeal was so remorseful that Jude’s eyes were even wetter
than hers as he pressed her hand for Yes.
‘Now we’ll hurry away, and I won’t do it any more!’ she continued
humbly, and they came out of the building, Sue intending to go on to
the station to meet Phillotson. But the 
first person they encountered
on entering the main street was the schoolmaster himself, whose
train had arrived sooner than Sue expected. There was nothing
really to demur to in her leaning on Jude’s arm; but she withdrew her
hand; and Jude thought that Phillotson had looked surprised.
‘We have been doing such a funny thing!’ said she smiling can-
didly. ‘We’ve been to the church, rehearsing as it were. Haven’t we
Jude?’
‘How?’ said Phillotson curiously.
Jude inwardly deplored what he thought to be unnecessary frank-
ness; but she had gone too far not to explain all, which she accord-
ingly did, telling him how they had marched up to the altar.
Seeing how puzzled Phillotson seemed, Jude said as cheerfully as
he could, ‘I am going to buy her another little present. Will you both
come to the shop with me?’
‘No,’ said Sue, ‘I’ll go on to the house with him;’ and requesting
her lover not to be a long time she departed with the schoolmaster.
Jude soon joined them at his rooms, and shortly after they pre-
pared for the ceremony. Phillotson’s hair was brushed to a painful
extent, and his shirt collar appeared sti
ffer than it had been for the
previous twenty years. Beyond this he looked digni
fied and thought-
ful, and altogether a man of whom it was not unsafe to predicate that
he would make a kind and considerate husband. That he adored Sue
was obvious; and she could almost be seen to feel that she was
undeserving his adoration.
Although the distance was so short he had hired a 
fly from the Red
Lion, and six or seven women and children had gathered by the door
Jude the Obscure
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when they came out. The schoolmaster and Sue were unknown,
though Jude was getting to be recognized as a citizen; and the couple
were judged to be some relations of his from a distance, nobody
supposing Sue to have been a recent pupil at the Training School.
In the carriage Jude took from his pocket his extra little wedding-
present which turned out to be two or three yards of white tulle,
which he threw over her, bonnet and all, as a veil.
‘It looks so odd over a bonnet,’ she said. ‘I’ll take the bonnet o
ff.’
‘O no––let it stay,’ said Phillotson. And she obeyed.
When they had passed up the church and were standing in their
places Jude found that the antecedent visit had certainly taken o
ff
the edge of this performance, but by the time they were half way on
with the service he wished from his heart that he had not undertaken
the business of giving her away. How could Sue have had the temer-
ity to ask him to do it––a cruelty possibly to herself as well as to him?
Women were di
fferent from men in such matters. Was it that they
were, instead of more sensitive, as reputed, more callous, and less
romantic; or were they more heroic? Or was Sue simply so per-
verse that she wilfully gave herself and him pain for the odd and
mournful luxury of practising long-su
ffering in her own person,
and of being touched with tender pity for him at having made him
practise it? He could perceive that her face was nervously set,
and when they reached the trying ordeal of Jude giving her to
Phillotson she could hardly command herself; rather, however, as it
seemed, from her knowledge of what her cousin must feel, whom
she need not have had there at all, than from self-consideration.
Possibly she would go on in
flicting such pains again and again, and
grieving for the su
fferer again and again, in all her colossal
inconsistency.
Phillotson seemed not to notice, to be surrounded by a mist which
prevented his seeing the emotions of others. As soon as they had
signed their names and come away, and the suspense was over, Jude
felt relieved.
The meal at his lodging was a very simple a
ffair, and at two o’clock
they went o
ff. In crossing the pavement to the fly she looked back;
and there was a frightened light in her eyes. Could it be that Sue had
acted with such unusual foolishness as to plunge into she knew not
what for the sake of asserting her independence of him, of retaliating
on him for his secrecy? Perhaps Sue was thus venturesome with men