Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (651 page)

“Why?”

“If she is really compelling herself to this against her instincts — merely from this new sense of duty or religion — I ought perhaps to let her wait a bit.”

“Now you’ve got so far you ought not to back out of it. That’s my opinion.”

“I can’t very well put it off now; that’s true. But I had a qualm when she gave that little cry at sight of the licence.”

“Now, never you have qualms, old boy. I mean to give her away to-morrow morning, and you mean to take her. It has always been on my conscience that I didn’t urge more objections to your letting her go, and now we’ve got to this stage I shan’t be content if I don’t help you to set the matter right.”

Phillotson nodded, and seeing how staunch his friend was, became more frank. “No doubt when it gets known what I’ve done I shall be thought a soft fool by many. But they don’t know Sue as I do. Though so elusive, hers is such an honest nature at bottom that I don’t think she has ever done anything against her conscience. The fact of her having lived with Fawley goes for nothing. At the time she left me for him she thought she was quite within her right. Now she thinks otherwise.”

The next morning came, and the self-sacrifice of the woman on the altar of what she was pleased to call her principles was acquiesced in by these two friends, each from his own point of view. Phillotson went across to the Widow Edlin’s to fetch Sue a few minutes after eight o’clock. The fog of the previous day or two on the low-lands had travelled up here by now, and the trees on the green caught armfuls, and turned them into showers of big drops. The bride was waiting, ready; bonnet and all on. She had never in her life looked so much like the lily her name connoted as she did in that pallid morning light. Chastened, world-weary, remorseful, the strain on her nerves had preyed upon her flesh and bones, and she appeared smaller in outline than she had formerly done, though Sue had not been a large woman in her days of rudest health.

“Prompt,” said the schoolmaster, magnanimously taking her hand. But he checked his impulse to kiss her, remembering her start of yesterday, which unpleasantly lingered in his mind.

Gillingham joined them, and they left the house, Widow Edlin continuing steadfast in her refusal to assist in the ceremony.

“Where is the church?” said Sue. She had not lived there for any length of time since the old church was pulled down, and in her preoccupation forgot the new one.

“Up here,” said Phillotson; and presently the tower loomed large and solemn in the fog. The vicar had already crossed to the building, and when they entered he said pleasantly: “We almost want candles.”

“You do — wish me to be yours, Richard?” gasped Sue in a whisper.

“Certainly, dear: above all things in the world.”

Sue said no more; and for the second or third time he felt he was not quite following out the humane instinct which had induced him to let her go.

There they stood, five altogether: the parson, the clerk, the couple, and Gillingham; and the holy ordinance was resolemnized forthwith. In the nave of the edifice were two or three villagers, and when the clergyman came to the words, “What God hath joined,” a woman’s voice from among these was heard to utter audibly:

“God hath jined indeed!”

It was like a re-enactment by the ghosts of their former selves of the similar scene which had taken place at Melchester years before. When the books were signed the vicar congratulated the husband and wife on having performed a noble, and righteous, and mutually forgiving act. “All’s well that ends well,” he said smiling. “May you long be happy together, after thus having been ‘saved as by fire.’“

They came down the nearly empty building, and crossed to the schoolhouse. Gillingham wanted to get home that night, and left early. He, too, congratulated the couple. “Now,” he said in parting from Phillotson, who walked out a little way, “I shall be able to tell the people in your native place a good round tale; and they’ll all say ‘Well done,’ depend on it.”

When the schoolmaster got back Sue was making a pretence of doing some housewifery as if she lived there. But she seemed timid at his approach, and compunction wrought on him at sight of it.

“Of course, my dear, I shan’t expect to intrude upon your personal privacy any more than I did before,” he said gravely. “It is for our good socially to do this, and that’s its justification, if it was not my reason.” Sue brightened a little.

CHAPTER VI

The place was the door of Jude’s lodging in the out-skirts of Christminster — far from the precincts of St. Silas’ where he had formerly lived, which saddened him to sickness. The rain was coming down. A woman in shabby black stood on the doorstep talking to Jude, who held the door in his hand.

“I am lonely, destitute, and houseless — that’s what I am! Father has turned me out of doors after borrowing every penny I’d got, to put it into his business, and then accusing me of laziness when I was only waiting for a situation. I am at the mercy of the world! If you can’t take me and help me, Jude, I must go to the workhouse, or to something worse. Only just now two undergraduates winked at me as I came along. ‘Tis hard for a woman to keep virtuous where there’s so many young men!”

The woman in the rain who spoke thus was Arabella, the evening being that of the day after Sue’s remarriage with Phillotson.

“I am sorry for you, but I am only in lodgings,” said Jude coldly.

“Then you turn me away?”

“I’ll give you enough to get food and lodging for a few days.”

“Oh, but can’t you have the kindness to take me in? I cannot endure going to a public house to lodge; and I am so lonely. Please, Jude, for old times’ sake!”

“No, no,” said Jude hastily. “I don’t want to be reminded of those things; and if you talk about them I shall not help you.”

“Then I suppose I must go!” said Arabella. She bent her head against the doorpost and began sobbing.

“The house is full,” said Jude. “And I have only a little extra room to my own — not much more than a closet — where I keep my tools, and templates, and the few books I have left!”

“That would be a palace for me!”

“There is no bedstead in it.”

“A bit of a bed could be made on the floor. It would be good enough for me.”

Unable to be harsh with her, and not knowing what to do, Jude called the man who let the lodgings, and said this was an acquaintance of his in great distress for want of temporary shelter.

“You may remember me as barmaid at the Lamb and Flag formerly?” spoke up Arabella. “My father has insulted me this afternoon, and I’ve left him, though without a penny!”

The householder said he could not recall her features. “But still, if you are a friend of Mr. Fawley’s we’ll do what we can for a day or two — if he’ll make himself answerable?”

“Yes, yes,” said Jude. “She has really taken me quite unawares; but I should wish to help her out of her difficulty.” And an arrangement was ultimately come to under which a bed was to be thrown down in Jude’s lumber-room, to make it comfortable for Arabella till she could get out of the strait she was in — not by her own fault, as she declared — and return to her father’s again.

While they were waiting for this to be done Arabella said: “You know the news, I suppose?”

“I guess what you mean; but I know nothing.”

“I had a letter from Anny at Alfredston to-day. She had just heard that the wedding was to be yesterday: but she didn’t know if it had come off.”

“I don’t wish to talk of it.”

“No, no: of course you don’t. Only it shows what kind of woman — ”

“Don’t speak of her I say! She’s a fool! And she’s an angel, too, poor dear!”

“If it’s done, he’ll have a chance of getting back to his old position, by everybody’s account, so Anny says. All his well-wishers will be pleased, including the bishop himself.”

“Do spare me, Arabella.”

Arabella was duly installed in the little attic, and at first she did not come near Jude at all. She went to and fro about her own business, which, when they met for a moment on the stairs or in the passage, she informed him was that of obtaining another place in the occupation she understood best. When Jude suggested London as affording the most likely opening in the liquor trade, she shook her head. “No — the temptations are too many,” she said. “Any humble tavern in the country before that for me.”

On the Sunday morning following, when he breakfasted later than on other days, she meekly asked him if she might come in to breakfast with him, as she had broken her teapot, and could not replace it immediately, the shops being shut.

“Yes, if you like,” he said indifferently.

While they sat without speaking she suddenly observed: “You seem all in a brood, old man. I’m sorry for you.”

“I am all in a brood.”

“It is about her, I know. It’s no business of mine, but I could find out all about the wedding — if it really did take place — if you wanted to know.”

“How could you?”

“I wanted to go to Alfredston to get a few things I left there. And I could see Anny, who’ll be sure to have heard all about it, as she has friends at Marygreen.”

Jude could not bear to acquiesce in this proposal; but his suspense pitted itself against his discretion, and won in the struggle. “You can ask about it if you like,” he said. “I’ve not heard a sound from there. It must have been very private, if — they have married.”

“I am afraid I haven’t enough cash to take me there and back, or I should have gone before. I must wait till I have earned some.”

“Oh — I can pay the journey for you,” he said impatiently. And thus his suspense as to Sue’s welfare, and the possible marriage, moved him to dispatch for intelligence the last emissary he would have thought of choosing deliberately.

Arabella went, Jude requesting her to be home not later than by the seven o’clock train. When she had gone he said: “Why should I have charged her to be back by a particular time! She’s nothing to me — nor the other neither!”

But having finished work he could not help going to the station to meet Arabella, dragged thither by feverish haste to get the news she might bring, and know the worst. Arabella had made dimples most successfully all the way home, and when she stepped out of the railway carriage she smiled. He merely said “Well?” with the very reverse of a smile.

“They are married.”

“Yes — of course they are!” he returned. She observed, however, the hard strain upon his lip as he spoke.

“Anny says she has heard from Belinda, her relation out at Marygreen, that it was very sad, and curious!”

“How do you mean sad? She wanted to marry him again, didn’t she? And he her!”

“Yes — that was it. She wanted to in one sense, but not in the other. Mrs. Edlin was much upset by it all, and spoke out her mind at Phillotson. But Sue was that excited about it that she burnt her best embroidery that she’d worn with you, to blot you out entirely. Well — if a woman feels like it, she ought to do it. I commend her for it, though others don’t.” Arabella sighed. “She felt he was her only husband, and that she belonged to nobody else in the sight of God A’mighty while he lived. Perhaps another woman feels the same about herself, too!” Arabella sighed again.

“I don’t want any cant!” exclaimed Jude.

“It isn’t cant,” said Arabella. “I feel exactly the same as she!”

He closed that issue by remarking abruptly: “Well — now I know all I wanted to know. Many thanks for your information. I am not going back to my lodgings just yet.” And he left her straightway.

In his misery and depression Jude walked to well-nigh every spot in the city that he had visited with Sue; thence he did not know whither, and then thought of going home to his usual evening meal. But having all the vices of his virtues, and some to spare, he turned into a public house, for the first time during many months. Among the possible consequences of her marriage Sue had not dwelt on this.

Arabella, meanwhile, had gone back. The evening passed, and Jude did not return. At half-past nine Arabella herself went out, first proceeding to an outlying district near the river where her father lived, and had opened a small and precarious pork-shop lately.

“Well,” she said to him, “for all your rowing me that night, I’ve called in, for I have something to tell you. I think I shall get married and settled again. Only you must help me: and you can do no less, after what I’ve stood ‘ee.”

“I’ll do anything to get thee off my hands!”

“Very well. I am now going to look for my young man. He’s on the loose I’m afraid, and I must get him home. All I want you to do to-night is not to fasten the door, in case I should want to sleep here, and should be late.”

“I thought you’d soon get tired of giving yourself airs and keeping away!”

“Well — don’t do the door. That’s all I say.”

She then sallied out again, and first hastening back to Jude’s to make sure that he had not returned, began her search for him. A shrewd guess as to his probable course took her straight to the tavern which Jude had formerly frequented, and where she had been barmaid for a brief term. She had no sooner opened the door of the “Private Bar” than her eyes fell upon him — sitting in the shade at the back of the compartment, with his eyes fixed on the floor in a blank stare. He was drinking nothing stronger than ale just then. He did not observe her, and she entered and sat beside him.

Jude looked up, and said without surprise: “You’ve come to have something, Arabella? … I’m trying to forget her: that’s all! But I can’t; and I am going home.” She saw that he was a little way on in liquor, but only a little as yet.

“I’ve come entirely to look for you, dear boy. You are not well. Now you must have something better than that.” Arabella held up her finger to the barmaid. “You shall have a liqueur — that’s better fit for a man of education than beer. You shall have maraschino, or curaçao dry or sweet, or cherry brandy. I’ll treat you, poor chap!”

“I don’t care which! Say cherry brandy… Sue has served me badly, very badly. I didn’t expect it of Sue! I stuck to her, and she ought to have stuck to me. I’d have sold my soul for her sake, but she wouldn’t risk hers a jot for me. To save her own soul she lets mine go damn! … But it isn’t her fault, poor little girl — I am sure it isn’t!”