Jude the Obscure (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (39 page)

“0, I am not going to be a philosopher any longer! I only see what’s under my eyes.”

“Well—I don’t agree with your instinct, Dick!” said Gillingham gravely. “I am quite amazed, to tell the truth, that such a sedate, plodding fellow as you should have entertained such a craze for a moment. You said when I called that she was puzzling and peculiar: I think you are!”

“Have you ever stood before a woman whom you know to be intrinsically a good woman, while she has pleaded for release—been the man she has knelt to and implored indulgence of?”

“I am thankful to say I haven’t.”

“Then I don’t think you are in a position to give an opinion. I have been that man, and it makes all the difference in the world, if one has any manliness or chivalry in him. I had not the remotest idea—living apart from women as I have done for so many years—that merely taking a woman to church and putting a ring upon her finger could by any possibility involve one in such a daily, continuous tragedy as that now shared by her and me!”

“Well, I could admit some excuse for letting her leave you, provided she kept to herself But to go attended by a cavalier—that makes a difference.”

“Not a bit. Suppose, as I believe, she would rather endure her present misery than be made to promise to keep apart from him? All that is a question for herself. It is not the same thing at all as the treachery of living on with a husband and playing him false.... However, she has not distinctly implied living with him as wife, though I think she means to.... And to the best of my understanding it is not an ignoble, merely animal, feeling between the two: that is the worst of it; because it makes me think their affection will be enduring. I did not mean to confess to you that in the first jealous weeks of my marriage, before I had come to my right mind, I hid myself in the school one evening when they were together there, and I heard what they said. I am ashamed of it now, though I suppose I was only exercising a legal right. I found from their manner that an extraordinary affinity, or sympathy, entered into their attachment, which somehow took away all flavour of grossness. Their supreme desire is to be together—to share each other’s emotions, and fancies, and dreams.”

“Platonic! ”

“Well no. Shelleyan would be nearer to it. They remind me of—what are their names—Laon and Cynthna. Also of Paul and Virginia,
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a little. The more I reflect, the more entirely I am on their side!”

“But if people did as you want to do, there’d be a general domestic disintegration. The family would no longer be the social unit.”

“Yes—I am all abroad, I suppose!” said Phillotson sadly. “I was never a very bright reasoner, you remember.... And yet, I don’t see why the woman and the children should not be the unit without the man.

“By the Lord Harry!—Matriarchy! ... Does she say all this too?”

“O no. She little thinks I have out-Sued Sue in this—all in the last twelve hours!”

“It will upset all received opinion hereabout. Good God—what will Shaston say!”

“I don’t say that it won’t. I don’t know—I don’t know! ... As I say, I am only a feeler, not a reasoner.”

“Now,” said Gillingham, “let us take it quietly, and have something to drink over it.” He went under the stairs, and produced a bottle of cider-wine, of which they drank a rummer
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each. “I think you are rafted,
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and not yourself,” he continued. “Do go back and make up your mind to put up with a few whims. But keep her. I hear on all sides that she’s a charming young thing.”

“Ah yes! That’s the bitterness of it! Well, I won’t stay. I have a long walk before me.”

Gillingham accompanied his friend a mile on his way, and at parting expressed his hope that this consultation, singular as its subject was, would be the renewal of their old comradeship. “Stick to her!” were his last words, flung into the darkness after Phillotson; from which his friend answered “Ay, ay!”

But when Phillotson was alone under the clouds of night, and no sound was audible but that of the purling tributaries of the Stour, he said, “So Gillingham, my friend, you had no stronger arguments against it than those!”

“I think she ought to be smacked, and brought to her senses—that’s what I think!” murmured Gillingham, as he walked back alone.

The next morning came, and at breakfast Phillotson told Sue:

“You may go—with whom you will. I absolutely and unconditionally agree.”

Having once come to this conclusion it seemed to Phillotson more and more indubitably the true one. His mild serenity at the sense that he was doing his duty by a woman who was at his mercy almost overpowered his grief at relinquishing her.

Some days passed, and the evening of their last meal together had come—a cloudy evening with wind—which indeed was very seldom absent in this elevated place. How permanently it was imprinted upon his vision; that look of her as she glided into the parlour to tea; a slim flexible figure; a face, strained from its roundness, and marked by the pallors of restless days and nights, suggesting tragic possibilities quite at variance with her times of buoyancy; a trying of this morsel and that, and an inability to eat either. Her nervous manner, begotten of a fear lest he should be injured by her course, might have been interpreted by a stranger as displeasure that Phillotson intruded his presence on her for the few brief minutes that remained.

“You had better have a slice of ham, or an egg, or something with your tea? You can’t travel on a mouthful of bread and butter.”

She took the slice he helped her to; and they discussed as they sat trivial questions of housekeeping, such as where he would find the key of this or that cupboard, what little bills were paid, and what not.

“I am a bachelor by nature, as you know, Sue,” he said, in a heroic attempt to put her at her ease. “So that being without a wife will not really be irksome to me, as it might be to other men who have had one a little while. I have, too, this grand hobby in my head of writing ‘The Roman Antiquities of Wessex,’ which will occupy all my spare hours.”

“If you will send me some of the manuscript to copy at any time, as you used to, I will do it with so much pleasure!” she said with amenable gentleness. “I should much like to be some help to you still—as a—friend.”

Phillotson mused, and said: “No, I think we ought to be really separate, if we are to be at all. And for this reason, that I don’t wish to ask you any questions, and particularly wish you not to give me information as to your movements, or even your address.... Now, what money do you want? You must have some, you know.”

“0, of course, Richard, I couldn’t think of having any of your money to go away from you with! I don’t want any either. I have enough of my own to last me for a long while, and Jude will let me have———”

“I would rather not know anything about him, if you don’t mind. You are free, absolutely; and your course is your own.”

“Very well. But I’ll just say that I have packed only a change of two of my own personal clothing, and one or two little things besides that are my very own. I wish you would look into my trunk before it is closed. Besides that I have only a small parcel that will go into Jude’s portmanteau.”

“Of course I shall do no such thing as examine your luggage! I wish you would take three-quarters of the household furniture. I don’t want to be bothered with it. I have a sort of affection for a little of it that belonged to my poor mother and father. But the rest you are welcome to whenever you like to send for it.”

“That I shall never do.”

“You go by the six-thirty train, don’t you? It is now a quarter to six.”

“You ... You don’t seem very sorry I am going, Richard!”

“O no—perhaps not.”

“I like you much for how you have behaved. It is a curious thing that directly I have begun to regard you as not my husband, but as my old teacher, I like you. I won’t be so affected as to say I love you, because you know I don’t, except as a friend. But you do seem that to me!”

Sue was for a few moments a little tearful at these reflections, and then the station omnibus came round to take her up. Phillotson saw her things put on the top, handed her in, and was obliged to make an appearance of kissing her as he wished her good-bye, which she quite understood and imitated. From the cheerful manner in which they parted the omnibusman had no other idea than that she was going for a short visit.

When Phillotson got back into the house he went upstairs and opened the window in the direction the omnibus had taken. Soon the noise of its wheels died away. He came down then, his face compressed like that of one bearing pain; he put on his hat and went out, following by the same route for nearly a mile. Suddenly turning round he came home.

He had no sooner entered than the voice of his friend Gillingham greeted him from the front room.

“I could make nobody hear; so finding your door open I walked in, and made myself comfortable. I said I would call, you remember.”

“Yes. I am much obliged to you, Gillingham, particularly for coming to-night.”

“How is Mrs.——”

“She is quite well. She is gone—just gone. That’s her teacup, that she drank out of only an hour ago. And that’s the plate she—” Phillotson’s throat got choked up, and he could not go on. He turned and pushed the tea-things aside.

“Have you had any tea, by-the-bye?” he asked presently in a renewed voice.

“No—yes—never mind,” said Gillingham, preoccupied. “Gone, you say she is?”

“Yes.... I would have died for her; but I wouldn’t be cruel to her in the name of the law. She is, as I understand, gone to join her lover. What they are going to do I cannot say. Whatever it may be she has my full consent to.”

There was a stability, a ballast, in Phillotson’s pronouncement which restrained his friend’s comment. “Shall I—leave you?” he asked.

“No, no. It is a mercy to me that you have come. I have some articles to arrange and clear away. Would you help me?”

Gillingham assented; and having gone to the upper rooms the schoolmaster opened drawers, and began taking out all Sue’s things that she had left behind, and laying them in a large box. “She wouldn’t take all I wanted her to,” he continued. “But when I made up my mind to her going to live in her own way I did make up my mind.”

“Some men would have stopped at an agreement to separate.”

“I’ve gone into all that, and don’t wish to argue it. I was, and am, the most old-fashioned man in the world on the question of marriage—in fact I had never thought critically about its ethics at all. But certain facts stared me in the face, and I couldn’t go against them.”

They went on with the packing silently. When it was done Phillotson closed the box and turned the key.

“There,” he said. “To adorn her in somebody’s eyes; never again in mine!”

FOUR-AND-TWENTY HOURS before this time Sue had written the following note to Jude:

As she was carried by the omnibus further and further down from the mountain town—the single passenger that evening—she regarded the receding road with a sad face. But no hesitation was apparent therein.

The up-train by which she was departing stopped by signal only. To Sue it seemed strange that such a powerful organization as a railway-train should be brought to a standstill on purpose for her—a fugitive from her lawful home.

The twenty minutes’ journey drew towards it close, and Sue began gathering her things together to alight. At the moment that the train came to a standstill by the Melchester platform a hand was laid on the door and she beheld Jude. He entered the compartment promptly. He had a black bag in his hand, and was dressed in the dark suit he wore on Sundays and in the evening after work. Altogether he looked a very handsome young fellow, his ardent affection for her burning in his eyes.

“O Jude!” She clasped his hand with both hers, and her tense state caused her to simmer over in a little succession of dry sobs. “I—I am so glad! I get out here?”

“No. I get in, dear one! I’ve packed. Besides this bag I’ve only a big box which is labelled.”

“But don’t I get out? Aren’t we going to stay here?”

“We couldn’t possibly, don’t you see. We are known here—I, at any rate, am well known. I’ve booked for Aldbrickham; and here’s your ticket for the same place, as you have only one to here.”

“I thought we should have stayed here,” she repeated.

“It wouldn’t have done at all.”

“Ah!—Perhaps not.”

“There wasn’t time for me to write and say the place I had decided on. Aldbrickham is a much bigger town—sixty or seventy thousand inhabitants—and nobody knows anything about us there.”
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“And you have given up your Cathedral work here?”

“Yes. It was rather sudden—your message coming unexpectedly. Strictly, I might have been made to finish out the week. But I pleaded urgency and I was let off. I would have deserted more than that for you!”

“I fear I am doing you a lot of harm. Ruining your prospects of the Church; ruining your progress in your trade; everything!”

“The Church is no more to me. Let it lie! I am not to be one of

if any such there be! My point of bliss is not upward, but here.”

“0 I seem so bad—upsetting men’s courses like this!” said she, taking up in her voice the emotion that had begun in his. But she recovered her equanimity by the time they had travelled a dozen miles.