Jude the Obscure

t F

ARYG

s for their sakes. Many also have perished, have erred, and sinned, for women...

ufficient size for the departing teacher's effects. For the schoolhouse had been partly furnished by the managers, and the only cumbersome article possessed by the master, in addition to the packing-case of books, was a cottage piano that he had boug

changes. He did not mean to return till the evening, when the new school-tea

re the instrument. The master had remarked that even if he got it into the cart he should not know what to do with it o

and as they rubbed their chins he spoke up, blushing at the sound of his own voice: "Aunt have got

notion," said

would house the piano till Mr. Phillotson should send for it. The smith and the bailiff started to see ab

g, Jude?" asked

fe, but one who had attended the night school only during the present teacher's term of office. The regular scholars, if the truth mu

hand, which Mr. Phillotson had bestowed on him

said Mr.

go, sir?" as

ouldn't understand my reasons, Jude.

I should

ching. My scheme, or dream, is to be a university graduate, and then to be ordained. By going to live at Christminster, or near it, I shall be at headquarters, so

he seemed willing to give the instrument standing-room there. It was accordingly left in the school till the

at nine o'clock Mr. Phillotson mounted beside his box of b

boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can. And if eve

w and after opening the well-cover to begin lowering the bucket he paused and leant with his forehead and arms against the framework, his face wearing the fixity of a thoughtful child's who has felt the pricks of life somewhat before his time. The well into which he was lookin

ng like this, and would never draw there any more. "I've seen him look down into it, when he was tired with his drawing, just as I do now

little foggy, and the boy's breathing unfurled itself as a thicker fog upo

er, will ye, you i

drew the water with what was a great effort for one of his stature, landed and emptied the big bucket into his own pair of smaller ones, and pausing a moment for

ginal church, hump-backed, wood-turreted, and quaintly hipped, had been taken down, and either cracked up into heaps of road-metal in the lane, or utilized as pig-sty walls, garden seats, guard-stones to fences, and rockeries in the flower-beds of the neighbourhood. In place of it a tall new building of modern Gothic design, unfamiliar to English eyes, had been erected on a new piece o

little rectangular piece of blue board, on which was painted in yellow letters, "Drusilla Fawley, Baker." Within the little lead pane

n-doors between his great-aunt, the Drusilla of the sign-board, and some other villagers. Having seen the sc

e, comparatively a stran

o-worse luck for 'n, Belinda" (turning to the right) "where his father was living, and was took wi' the shakings for death, and died in two days, as you know, Caroline" (turning to the left). "It would ha' been a blessing if Goddy-mighty had took thee too, wi' thy mother and father, poor useless boy! But I've got him here

's (as they called her indifferently) to have him with her-"to kip 'ee company in your lo

ather. His cousin Sue is just the same-so I've heard; but I have not seen the child for years, though she was born in this place, within these four walls, as it happened. My niece and her husband, after they were married, didn' get a house of their own for some year or more;

ad now arrived, and emerging from the garden by getting over the hedge at the back he pursued a path northward, till he came to a wide and lonely depression in the gene

uated the solitude. The only marks on the uniformity of the scene were a rick of last year's produce standing in the midst of the arable, the rooks that r

t is here!"

nch of ground had been the site, first or last, of energy, gaiety, horse-play, bickerings, weariness. Groups of gleaners had squatted in the sun on every square yard. Love-matches that had populated the adjoining hamlet had been made up there between reaping and carrying. Under the hedge which divided the field from a distant plantation girls had given themselves to lovers who would not turn their heads to lo

ch clack the rooks left off pecking, and rose and went away on their leisurely wings, burnished like tassets o

n a world which did not want them. Why should he frighten them away? They took upon more and more the aspect of gentle friends and pensioners-the only friends

shall. There is enough for us all. Farmer Troutham can afford to let

their appetite. A magic thread of fellow-feeling united his own life wit

smart blow upon his buttocks, followed by a loud clack, which announced to his surprised senses that the clacker had been the instrument of offence used. The birds and Jude started up simu

see if you say, 'Eat, dear birdies,' again in a hurry! And you've been idling at the schoolmaster's too, inste

and swinging his slim frame round him at arm's-length, again struck Jude on the hind parts with the flat side o

the hill, the rick, the plantation, the path, and the rooks going round and round him in an amazing circular race. "I-I sir-only meant that-there was a good crop in

instrument continuing to resound all across the field and as far as the ears of distant workers-who gathered thereupon that Jude was pursuing his business of clacking with great assi

on his legs, took a sixpence from his pocket and gave it him in payment for his day's

eption of the flaw in the terrestrial scheme, by which what was good for God's birds was bad for God's gardener; but with the awful sen

and across a pasture. Here he beheld scores of coupled earthworms lying half their length on the surface of the damp ground, as they alwa

next morning. He could scarcely bear to see trees cut down or lopped, from a fancy that it hurt them; and late pruning, when the sap was up and the tree bled profusely, had been a positive grief to him in his infancy. This weakness of character, as it may be called,

little girl, and when the customer was gone she said, "Well, how d

urned

ha

et the rooks have a few peckings of corn. And

xpence tragical

don't ye look so deedy! Farmer Troutham is not so much better than myself, come to that. But 'tis as Job said, 'Now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained

an for dereliction of duty, she rated him primarily from

that. Jude, Jude, why didstn't go off with that schoolmaster of thine to Christminster or somewhere?

place where Mr. Phillotson is gone to?" a

ear a score of miles from here. It is a place much too good fo

Phillotson alw

can I

go to s

ask such as that. We've never had anything to do with f

iting at the white brightness, vaguely reflecting. Growing up brought responsibilities, he found. Events did not rhyme quite as he had thought. Nature's logic was too horrid for him to care for. That mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another sickened his sense of harmony. As you got older, and felt yourself to b

himself growing up! He

er of the morning he helped his aunt, and in the afternoon, when there was nothing more

der; though I've never bin there-not I. I'

y about the city. The farmer had said he was never to be seen in that field again; yet Christminster lay across it, and the path was a public one. So, stealing out of the hamlet, he descended into the same hollow which had witnessed his punishment

I

top it was crossed at right angles by a green "ridgeway"-the Ickneild Street and original Roman road through the district. This ancient track ran east and west

ome few months earlier, and till now he had had no suspicion that such a wide, flat, low-lying country lay so near at hand, under the very verge of his upland world. The whole n

ty. He was about to pass it when he perceived a ladder against the eaves; and the reflection that the higher he got, the further he could see, le

for some time he took courage, and ascen

and what may yo

the city of Christmins

hat clump. You can see it-at least you c

k towards the quarter designated. "You can't often see it in weather like this," he said. "The time I'

salem," suggested

ought of it myself. ... But I ca

lity of his age he walked along the ridge-track, looking for any natural objects of interest that might lie in the banks thereabout. When he repasse

ter, and wished, since he had come two or three miles from his aunt's house on purpose, that he could have seen for once this attractive city of which he had been told. But even if he waited here i

e said that, if you prayed, things sometimes came to you, even though they sometimes did not. He had read in a tract that a man who had begun to build a church, and had no money to finish it, knelt down and prayed, and the money came in by the next post. Another man tried the sam

as it had already done elsewhere, and about a quarter of an hour before the time of sunset the westward clouds parted, the sun's position being part

nutes, till the topaz points showed themselves to be the vanes, windows, wet roof slates, and other shining spots upon the spires, domes, freestone-wo

uished candles. The vague city became veiled in mist. Turning to the west, he saw that the sun had disappeared.

the bleeding hole in his forehead and the corpses round him that remutinied every night on board the bewitched ship. He knew that he had grown out of belief in these horrors, ye

idized with age, so that you could hardly see the poor penny articles exhibited within, and forming part of a stock which a strong man

inter's imagination and less of the diamond merchant's in his dreams thereof than in those of the Apocalyptic writer. And the city acquired a tangibility, a permanence, a hold on his life, mainly from th

from the confines of the hamlet for an hour or two, which was not often, he would steal off to the Brown House on the hill and strain his eyes persistent

bly went a mile or two further, he would see the night lights of the city. It would be necessary to come back al

d from the same quarter, made the occasion dark enough. He was rewarded; but what he saw was not the lamps in rows, as he had half expected. No individual lig

ever communicated with anybody at Marygreen now; who was as if dead to them here. In the glow he

, and the fact now came into his mind. He parted his lips as he face

two hours ago, floating along the streets, pulling round the weather-cocks, touching Mr. Phill

ace-from some soul residing there, it seemed. Surely it was the sound of bells,

ched the place by dint of half an hour's serpentine progress from the bottom of the immense declivity. They had a load of coals behind them-a fuel that could only be got into the upland by this particular route. They were accompa

voices. Jude addressed them, inquiri

, with this lo

inster that, like a young lover alluding to his mistress, he felt bashful at mentioning i

r'-east than elsewhere, though I shouldn't ha' noti

ght them to read on his way hither before it grew dark, slipped and fell into t

to get your head screwed on t'other way be

asked t

that's learning too, for I never could understand it. Yes, 'tis a serious-minded place. Not but there's wenches in the streets o' nights... You know, I suppose, that they raise pa'sons there like radishes in a bed? And though it do take-how many years, Bob?-five years to turn a lirruping hobble-de-hoy chap into a solemn preaching man with no

should

be here in our bodies on this high ground, so be they in their minds-noble-minded men enough, no doubt-some on 'em-able to earn hundreds by thinking out loud. And some on 'em be strong young fellows that can earn a'most as much in silver cups. As for music, there's beautiful mus

is remarkably well-informed friend, who had no objection to telling him as they moved on more yet of the city-its towers and halls and churches. The waggon turn

there, and you be welcome to it. A-getting about the world as I do, and mixing with all classes of society, one can't help hearing of things. A friend o' mine

which he could call admirable. Should he find that place in this city if he could get there? Would it be a spot in which, without fear of farmers, or hindrance, or ridicule, he could watch and wait, and set hims

of light," he

grows there," he added

teachers of men sp

l a castle, manned by s

was silent a long w

d just s

ed pedestrian, whom, notwithstanding the gloom, he could perceive to be wearing an extraordinarily tall hat, a swallow-tailed coat, and a watch-chain that danced madly and t

l have to walk pretty fast if you keep

nk. Physici

, I see! That comes of b

stem of advertising. He was, in fact, a survival. The distances he traversed on foot were enormous, and extended nearly the whole length and breadth of Wessex. Jude had one day seen him selling a pot of coloured lard to an old woman as a certain cure for a bad leg, the woman arranging to pay a guinea, in instalments of a shilling a fortnight, for the precious salve, which, acco

been to Christmin

ied the long thin man. "T

city for scholar

do the washing of the colleges can talk in Latin-not good Latin, that I admit,

Gre

raining for bishops, that they may be able

arn Latin and

ou must get a gram

to Christmin

d pills that infallibly cure all disorders of the alimentary system, as well as asthma and

rammars if I promise

with pleasure-those

, for the amazing speed of the physician's walk kept him

you the grammars, and give you a first lesson, if you'll remember, at every house in the

you be with

s hour of five-and-twenty minutes past seven. My movements a

e to meet yo

rs for my

Phys

to recover breath, and went home with a conscio

o him-smiled with that singularly beautiful irradiation which is seen to spread on young faces at the inception of some glorious idea, a

e plateau, at the place where he had parted from Vilbert, and there awaited his approach. The road-physician was fairly up to time; but, to the surprise of Jude on striking into his pace, which the pedestrian did not diminish by a single unit of

said the latte

ome," s

Oh yes-to be sure!

s who were willing to test the virtues of the world-renowned pil

k grammars?" Jude's voi

about

urs, that you used befor

epending on my attention, you see, my man, that I can't

ake sure of the truth; and he repeated, in a v

e orders from sick people, and I'

dren showed him all at once what shoddy humanity the quack was made of. There was to be no intellectual light from this

rs from Alfredston, but to do that required money, and a knowledge of what books to order; and thoug

o kind as to get him the grammars in Christminster? He might slip a letter inside the case of the instrument, and it would be sure to reach th

tion would be to defeat it. I

next birthday, clandestinely placed the letter inside the packing-case, directed to his much-admired friend, being afrai

e his great-aunt was stirring. At last a packet did indeed arrive at the village, and he saw from the ends of it

rily, a rule, prescription, or clue of the nature of a secret cipher, which, once known, would enable him, by merely applying it, to change at will all words of his own speech into those of the foreign one. His childish idea was, in fact, a pushing to the extremity of mathematical precision what is ever

inster, he cut the string, opened the volumes, and turned to the Latin gra

earlier than his own day. But this was not the cause of Jude's amazement. He learnt for the first time that there was no law of transmutation, as in his innocence he had supposed (ther

he had often done before, he pulled his hat over his face and watched the sun peering insidiously at him through the interstices of the straw. This

ens of thousands! There were no brains in his head equal to this business; and as the little sun-rays continued to stream

ying that his notions were further advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come, because nobody

r vehicle might have been discerned moving along the lanes and

still further glorifying the erudition of Christminster. To acquire languages, departed or living in spite of such obstinacies as he now knew them inherently to possess, was a herculean performance which gradually led him on to a great

had grown in consequence. An aged horse with a hanging head had been purchased for eight pounds at a sale, a creaking cart with a whity-brown tilt obtained for a few

y, seated in front, would slip the reins over his arm, ingeniously fix open, by means of a strap attached to the tilt, the volume he was reading, spread the dictionary on his knees, and plunge into the simpler passages from Caesar, Virgil, or Horace, as the case might be, in his purblind stumbling

y good for him. The hampered and lonely itinerant conscientiously covered up the marginal readings, and used them merely on points of construction, as he would have used a comrade or tutor who sho

thoughts of these minds so remote yet so near, the bony old horse pursued his rounds, and Jude would be aroused from the woes

nt enough to himself, was not altogether a safe proceeding for other travellers along the same roads. There were murmurs. Then a private resident of an adjoining place informed the local policeman that the baker's boy should not be allowed to read while driving, a

he highways he could hardly study at all. The only thing to be done was, therefore, to keep a sharp eye ahead and around him as well as he could in the circumstances, and slip away his books as soon as anybody loomed in the distance, the policeman in particul

caused him to look up. The sun was going down, and the full moon was rising simultaneously behind the woods in the opposite quarter. His mind had become so impregnated with the poem that, in a moment of the same impulsive emotion which years before had caused him to kneel on the ladder, he

arumque pot

Jude repeated under the sway of a polytheistic fancy that

being a scholar, to be a Christian divine. It had all come of reading heathen works exclusively. The more he thought of it the more convinced he was of his inconsistency. He began to wonder whether he could

ossessed a copy, obtained by post from a second-hand bookseller. He abandoned the now familiar Ionic for a new dialect, and for a long time onward limited his reading almost entirely to the Gospels and Epistles in Griesbach's

nth-century brasses and tombs. On one of these pilgrimages he met with a hunch-backed old woman of great intelligence, who read everything she co

de or calling of any dignity or stability whatever on which he could subsist

requisite he inclined to. They built in a city; therefore he would learn to build. He thought of his unknown uncle, his cousin Susanna's father, an ecclesiastical worker in metal, and somehow medi?val a

t being available, and suspending his studies awhile, occupied his sp

vices to this man for a trifling wage. Here Jude had the opportunity of learning at least the rudiments of freestone-working. Some time later he went to a chu

ered himself would be better fitted for him, he yet was interested in his pursuit on its own account. He now had lodgings during the wee

, and he walked with his tools at his back, his little chisels clinking faintly against the larger ones in his basket. It being the end of the week he had left work early, and

now, in some capacity or other, but he preferred to enter the city with a little more assurance as to means than he could be said to feel at present. A warm self-content suffused him when he considered what he had already done. Now and then as he went along he tur

in particular." This was true, Jude possessing a facility in that language which enabled hi

r and Ajax in the fourteenth, the appearance of Achilles unarmed and his heavenly armour in the eighteenth, and the funeral games in the twenty-thi

irst six and the eleventh and twelfth books of

Fathers, and something of

on settling in Christminster. Once there I shall so advance, with the assistance I shall there get, that my present knowledge will appear to me but as childish ignora

D. before I

ere ￡5000 a year, he would give away ￡4500 in one form and another, and live sumptuously (for him) on the remainder. Well, on second thoughts, a bishop was absurd. He would dr

nster, the books I have not been able to get hold of here:

ed in light voices on the other side of the hedge,

n I must master other things: the Fathers thoroughly; Bede and ecclesiastic

ty-t

and it is that which tells... Yes, Christminster shall be my Alma M

till, looking at the ground as though the future were thrown thereon by a magic lantern. On a sudden something smacked h

countrymen used for greasing their boots, as it was useless for any other purpose. Pigs were rath

a small homestead, having a garden and pig-sties attached; in front of it, beside the brook, three young women were kneeling, with buckets and platters beside them containing heaps of pigs' chitterlings, which they were washing in the running water. One or two

!" said Ju

ted one girl to her neighbour, as if u

the secon

w can you!" s

hing at all, it shoul

ed and continued their work, without looking

he wiped his face, an

o!" he said to the up-

a round and prominent bosom, full lips, perfect teeth, and the rich complexion of a Cochin hen's egg. She was a complete and substantial female animal-no more, no less; and Ju

ver be told," s

wasteful of other

at's no

to speak to

if you

s, or will you come to

e between herself and him, which, so far as Jude Fawley was concerned, had no sort of premeditation in it. She saw that he had singled her out from the three, as a woman is singled out in such cases, for no reasoned pu

she said: "Bring back

allel lines, one on each bank of the stream, towards the small plank bridge. As the girl drew nearer to it, she gave without Jude perceiving it, an adroit little suck to the interior of each of her cheeks in succession, by which curious and original man?uvre she bro

missile, seemed to expect her to explain why she had audacious

and forwards on her hand as it clutched the rail of the bridge; till

nk I would shy

h

n't want anything thrown away. He makes that into du

r?" Jude asked, politely accepting her assertion,

n't tell folk

I don't know

all I tell

D

onn. I'm li

ften come this way. But I mostly

e girls are helping me wash the inner

held Jude to the spot against his intention-almost against his will, and in a way new to his experience. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that till this moment Jude had never looked at a woman to consider her as such, bu

mured, though the words had not been neces

ee me Sundays!" s

pose I could

st now, though there med be in a week or two." She had

strangely, but could not

n't m

repeating the odd little sucking operation before mentioned, Jude being still unconscious of mo

es

l I c

es

lmost tenderly with her eyes in turning, and retracing he

here, which had evidently been hanging round him everywhere he went, for he knew not how long, but had somehow been divided from his actual breathing as by a sheet of glass. The

to that side of him which had been occupied with literary study and the magnificent Christminster dream. It had been no vestal who chose that missile for opening her attack on him. He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short fleeting while, as by the light of a falling lamp one might momentarily see an inscription on a wall before being enshrou

and she silently resumed her flicking and sous

?" laconically asked

rown something else than that!

s bread-cart out at Marygreen, till he 'prenticed himself at Alfredston. Since the

s, or anything about 'n. Do

t, he's as simple as a child. I could see it as you courted on the bridge, when he looked at 'ee as if he had never seen a woman before in hi

I

eiling, looking at the books on the table, and then at the black mark

r a special purpose,-the re-reading of his Greek Testament-his new one, with better type than his old copy, following Griesbach's text as amended by numerous correcto

ept only two nights a week. But a new thing, a great hitch, had happened yesterday in the gliding and noiseless current of his life, and

pened the book, and with his elbows firmly planted on the

ΝΗ ΔΙ

h was very winning, apart from promises. He ought not to break faith with her. Even though he had only Sundays and week-day evenings for reading he could afford one afte

d him hitherto. This seemed to care little for his reason and his will, nothing for his so-called elevated intentions, and moved him along, as a violent schoolmaster a schoolboy h

already arrayed himself in his best clothes. In three minutes he was out of the house and descending by the path across the w

back in two hours, easily, and a good long time

try to the west of the Brown House. Here at the base of the chalk formation he neared the brook that oozed from it, and followed the stream till he reached her dwellin

ugh the window, for a male

r young man come coor

was thinking of. He was going to walk with her, perhaps kiss her; but "courting" was too coolly purposeful to be anything

ther, an energetic, black-whiskered man, in the s

once, wouldn't you?"

to the Brown House and back,

ndings that he felt glad he had come, and all the

em now. He talked the commonest local twaddle to Arabella with greater zest than he would have felt in discussing all the philosophies with all the Dons in the recently adored university, and passed the spot where he had knelt to Diana and Ph?bus without remembering that there were any such people in the mythology, or that the sun was anything else t

the vast northern landscape from this spot they were struck by the rising of a dense volume of smok

bella. "Let's run and se

affording him excuse for a longer time with her. They started off down the hill almost at a trot; but on gaining level

being altogether about half-a-dozen miles from Marygreen, and three from Arabella's. The conflagration had been got under by the time they r

de, and whispered her surprise to her mistress in the background, that he, the student "who kept hisself up so particular," should have suddenly descended so low as to keep company with Arab

the spittoons underfoot filled with sawdust. The whole aspect of the scene had that depressing effect on Jude which few places can produce like a tap-ro

eally, for the tea, they said. "Yet what else can we

n have some beer

omehow it seems odd to come to a publi

we di

as out of such an uncongenial atmosphere; but

ted it. "Ugh

and beer very much now, it is true. I like it well enough, but it is

e or four ingredients that she detected in the liq

now!" he said g

ey had withdrawn from the lights of the town they walked closer together, till they touched each other. She wondered why he did

of her body against his, and putting his stick under his other a

gether, dear, aren'

adding to herse

ve become!" he

the gloom. From this point the only way of getting to Arabella's was by going up the incline, and dipping again into her va

sons and weathers-lovers and homeless dogs only,"

tittere

overs?" a

know

u can t

er. Jude took the hint, and encircling her waist

it matter since it was dark, said Jude to himself. When they were half-way up the long hill they p

there, if you would lik

inking how tr

ntending to be sitting down again to the New Testament by half-past five. It was nine

dark. He gave way, and followed her in. Immediately that the door was opened he found, in addition to her parents, several

easant walking with Arabella, that was all he had meant. He did not stay longer than to speak to her stepmother, a simple, quiet

were his books to him? what were his intentions, hitherto adhered to so strictly, as to not wasting a single minute of time day by day? "Wasting!" It depended on your

nting him. He went upstairs without a light, and the dim interior of his room accosted him with sad inquiry. There lay his book open, just as he h

ΝΗ ΔΙ

*

ings; and it was with a sense of futility that he threw into his basket up

rom himself. Arabella, on the contrary, made the

dy 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 stuff of nature" so depicted her past presence that a void

ions of the Saturday. She passed unheedingly the scene of the kiss, and the w

did he tel

. If Jude had been behind the fence he would have felt not a little surprised at le

t, 'nation if you han't!" murmured A

! 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

t chap, he's to be had, and as a husband, if

ng awhile. "What med be

you don't!" said Sa

hat is, than by plain courting, an

ked at the second.

she don't!

s one may say! Well, we can teach '

way to gain a man? Take me for an

husb

husb

that I should say a sojer, or sailor, or commercial gent from the towns, o

h as he, o

smirking. Then one went up close to Arabella, and, although nobody was near, imparted

t think of that way! ... But suppose he isn't ho

ble before you begin. You'd be safe enough with yours. I wish I had the

lent thought. "I'll try it!" s

I

abella 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

t Farm only yesterday, where Father bought 'em at a stiff price enough. They are wanting to get home again, the stupid toads! Will you s

ther, when he caught her for a moment and kissed her. The first pig was got back promptly; the second with some difficulty; th

't follow 'n!" said she

ntriving to keep the fugitive in sight. Occasionally they would shout to so

etting out of breath." She gave him her now hot hand wi

ed. "They always know the way back if you do

ed. 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

there. It don't matter now we know he's not lost or stolen on the wa

ide and flung herself down on the sod under a stunted thorn,

ly threw you down, didn'

s hill-top, gazing up into the blue miles of sky, and still retaini

falling in quick pants, her face flushed, her full red lips parted, and

oo. It was a

nearer than a mile to them without their seeing him. They were, in fact, on one of the summits of the county, and th

said Arabella. "A sort of a-caterpillar, of the mo

aid Jude,

there-you must co

head in front of hers. "N

es off-close to the moving leaf-there!"

t her cheek. "But I can, perhaps, standing up." He stood a

" she said crossly,

why should I?" he replied looki

hy

kiss you. I've been wa

hen with a slight curl of the lip sprang to her feet, and exclaiming abruptly

ne!" he

t!" sh

ed: "What's

m, talking calmly on indifferent subjects, and always checking him if he tried to take her hand or clasp her waist. Thus they desc

, somehow," Jude said to himself, as he wi

Her father was shaving before a little glass hung on the mullion of the window, and her mother and Arabella herself were shelling beans hard by. A n

la: "I zeed 'ee running with 'un-hee-

of consciousness into her f

ter, I hear, as soon

lately?" asked Arabella with a jea

or an opening. Ah well: he must walk about with somebody, I s'pose. Young men don't mea

nt you and Father to go and inquire how the Edlins be, this evening afte

s up to-ni

an't get un to come in when you are here. I shall let him sl

e med as well go

he green track along the ridge, which they followed to the circular British earth-bank adjoining, Jude thinking of the great age of the trackway, and of the drovers who had frequented it

aid Arabella, who had

s. When they arrived at her house he said lingeringly: "I won't come i

She tried the handle of t

he scraper she found the key and unlocked the door. "Now, you'l

ith alacrity, the case b

he would rather sit and talk to her. She took off her jacke

egg-shell. Or perhaps I had better put it in a safe

it?" said

re sort. I carry it about everywhere with me, a

o you ca

ide it being a piece of pig's bladder, in case of accidents. Having exhibited it to him she put it

do such a st

is natural for a woman to want to

d for me just now,

t. There-that's all

d, reaching over the back of it, p

ery shabb

the egg a second time; but before he could quite reach her she had put it back as quickly, laughing with the excitement of her strategy. Then there

e rose and said: "One kiss, now I can do i

too. "You must find

ndow being small he could not discover for a long time what had become of her, till

met constantly during the interval. Arabella seemed dissati

well, and she began telling him of her experiences. Arabella had been gloomy, but before he le

will be better both for you and for me. I wish some things had never

?" she said. "That's all very well to say! I haven't told

ked, turning

shall I do if

say that, my dear! You k

l th

e thought of this before... But, of course if that's the case, we

you would go away all the more for

smashing up of my plans-I mean my plans before I knew you, my dear. But what are they, after all! Drea

. Yet, such being the custom of the rural districts among honourable young men who had drifted so far into intimacy with a woman as he unfortunately had done, he was ready to abide by what he had

hem, declared that it was the sort of conduct they would have expected of such an honest young man as Jude in reparation of the wrong he had done his innocent sweetheart. The parson who married them seemed to think it satisfactory too. And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that

n far better if, instead of his living to trouble her, he had gone underground years before with his father and mother. Of this cake Arabella took some slices, wrapp

ut the urgent need of adding to income in ever so little a degree caused him to take a lonely roadside cottage between the Brown House and Marygreen, that he might have the profits of a vegetable garden, and utilize her past experiences by letting her keep a pig. But it was not the sort of life he had bargained for, and it was a long way to walk to

age, giving up his old room at his aunt's-where so much o

abella wore twisted up in an enormous knob at the back of her head, was deliberate

wn?" he said, with a s

s nowadays with t

e country it is supposed to be different.

But in town the men expect more, and

at Aldb

people put me up to getting this, and I bought it just for a fancy. The more you have the better in Aldbrickham, which

remain there for years without losing their simplicity of life and embellishments. Others, alas, had an instinct towards artificiality in their very blood, and beca

situation, and her manner to her acquaintance at the sense of it, which carries off the gloom of facts, and renders even the humblest bride independent awhile of the real. Mrs.

talking; the world seemed fun

irl to the wife. "I knew it would with such as him. He'

d Mrs. Fawl

n do you

Not at

ha

s mis

real stroke of genius! It is a thing I never thought o', wi' all my experience!

k to cry sham! 'Twasn'

to 'ee o' Saturday nights! Whatever it was, he'l

! He'll be glad I was wrong in what I said. He'll shake down, bless

n. The occasion was one evening at bedtime, and they were in their chamber in the lonely cottage by the wayside to which Jude walked home from his work every day. He had worked hard the whole twelv

ly producing in each cheek the dimple before alluded to, a curious accomplishment of which she was mistress, effecting it by a momentary suction. It seemed to him for th

d suddenly. "There is no harm in

t know you were awake!" she said. "How

id you l

hout any trouble when I was at the public-hous

they improve a woman-particularly a married

think ot

st men think, if they

so when I was servi

teration of the ale when we went and had some that Sunday evening. I thou

shed than I could have been by staying where I was born. There was not much

plenty to do now

o you

se-little thi

O

me exactly, instead of in such

ll

the d

ng to tell. I

ha

s a mi

n bed and looked at h

wrong thing

shouldn't have hurried on our affair, and brought you to a half-furnished hut before I was ready, if i

ear. What's done

no more

, and lay down; and there

the point in question he was compelled to accept her word; in the circumstances he could

his units of work to the general progress of his generation, because of a momentary surprise by a new and transitory instinct which had nothing in it of the nature of vice, and could be only at the most called weakness. He was inclined to inquire what he had done, or she lost

g the autumn months, and the butchering was timed to take place as soon as it was light in t

ong before dawn, and perceived that the ground was covered with snow-s

ler won't be able to co

e the water hot, if you want Challow to

Jude. "I like the wa

gh for him the sense of cheerfulness was lessened by thoughts on the reason of that blaze-to heat water to scald the bristles from the body of an animal that as yet lived, and

ow come?"

N

She went out, gazed along the road, and returning said, "He's not coming.

ly the water boiled for nothing. T

ctuals for the pig. He ate the last m

ng? What has he

thi

has been

r two, to save bother with the inner

or his crying so

self-I think I could. Though as it is such a big pig I had rather Challow had done it. How

it," said Jude. "I'll do

king the sinister look of the scene, flew away, though hungry. By this time Arabella had joined her husband, and Jude, rope in hand, got into the sty, and noosed the affrighted animal, who, beginning with a squeak of surprise, rose

It was not now rage, but the cry of d

t the pig than have had this to do!" said Jud

the sticking-knife-the one with the point. N

so as to make short work of

hilling a score if the meat is red and bloody! Just touch the vein, that's all. I was brought up to it, an

ude determinedly. Scraping the bristles from the pig's upturned throat, as he had s

ver I should say it! You've over-stuc

a, and have a little

to catch the blood

e had desired. The dying animal's cry assumed its third and final tone, the shriek of agony; his glazing eyes riveting themselves on

to know we are doing it ourselves." Picking up the knife from the ground whereon Jude had flung it, she slipped

better,"

eful busines

ust be

ked out with all his last strength. A tablespoonful of black clot c

Artful creatures-they always keep back

Jude stagger, and in recovering himself he kicked

assion. "Now I can't make any blackpo

plashed over the snow, and forming a dismal, sordid, ugly spectacle-to those who saw it as other than an ordinary ob

Jude said.

as a pig-killing, I should like to know!"

," said he. "I

ecame aware of

!" The voice, which was husky, came from the garden-gate, and looking up from the scene of slaughter

lla. "Owing to your being late the meat is blooded and h

id, shaking his head, "and not have done this-in the delicate state, t

ella, laughing. Jude too laughed, but there was

common sense, and that the deed would have amounted to the same thing if carried out by deputy. The white snow, stained with the blood of his fellow-mortal, wore an illogical lo

by caring for books he was not escaping common-place nor gaining rare ideas, every working-man being of that taste now. When passing near the spot by the stream on which he had first made her acquaintance he one day heard voices just as he had done at that earlier time. One

ng venture nothing have,' I said. If I hadn't

ere was nothing the matter

was horridly unpleasant, and it rankled in his mind so much that instead of entering his own cottage when he reached it h

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 v

t meant to be enough to keep

houldn't ha

s too bad, when you kn

I told you was true. Doctor Vilbert thought s

riends of yours gave you bad advice. If they hadn't, or you hadn't taken it, we should at this moment have been

t my friends? What advice? I

'd rath

ought to. It is m

been revealed to him. "But I don't wish to

ng," she said, laughing coldly. "Every woman ha

herself; if the weakness of the moment could end with the moment, or even with the year. But when effects st

ht I to h

ourself about melting down that pig

t to-morrow morni

well

k; and the renewed work recalled the conversation which had accompanied

rmed she saw some of Jude's dear ancient classics on a table where they ought not to have been laid. "I won't have t

nds had become smeared with the hot grease, and her fingers consequently left very perceptible imprints on the book-covers. She continued deliberately to toss the books severally upon

go!" s

leave the

. "Let me go!

omi

pause:

ning, 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. The

nday mornings when I ought to be going to my church, an

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 unio

your mother, and your father's sister ill-used her husband?

till she was tired. He left the spot, and, after wandering vaguely a little while, walked in th

r, and my aunt her husband?" said Ju

of the by-gone bonnet that she always wore

spoken of, and

ogether, 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 difference, and took leave o

t North Wessex and Jude's mother, never

with her little maid. The Fawleys were not made for wedlock: it never seemed to sit well upon us. There's sommat in our blood that won't take ki

Mother part-by the Bro

es off, and the handpost stands. A gibbet once stood t

and the larger stars overhead came out slow and flickering. Jude put one foot on the edge of the ice, and then the other: it cracked under his weight; but this did not deter him. He ploughed his way inward to the centre, the ice making shar

sed he was not a sufficiently dignified person for suicide. Pe

ar, stereotyped resource of the despairing worthless. He began to see now why some men boozed at inns. He struck down the hill northwards and came to an obscure public-house. On entering and sitting down the sight of the

his new aspect. The house was in darkness when he entered, and in his stumbling state it was some time before he could get a light. Then he found that, though the marks of pig-dressing, o

my friends. Sh

fredston. He then cleaned up the premises, locked the door, put the key in a pl

not visited the house. The next day went in the same

elf or her. She further went on to say that her parents had, as he knew, for some time considered the question of emigrating to Australia, the pig-jobbing business being a poor one

shed to go, and one that might be to the advantage of both. He enclosed in the packet containing the let

and other effects had been sold off. When Jude learnt that there was to be an auction at the house of the Donns he packed his own household good

ing that the traffic out of Alfredston by the southern road was materially increased by the auction. A few days later he entered a dingy broker's shop in the main street of the town, and amid a heterogeneous collection of saucep

nt for Arabella, and had duly given her on their wedding-day. On the back was still to be read, "Jude

ortrait was of himself, "It is a small lot of stuff that was knocked down to me at a cottage sale out on the roa

of her sale of his portrait and gift, was the conclusive little stroke required to demolish all sentiment in him.

d be better otherwise, since she was bent on going, which perhaps was true. On the evening following their emigration, when his day's work was done, he came out of doors after

of that hill, inwardly fired for the first time with ardours for Christminster and scholarship. "Yet I am a man," he said. "I have a wif

from the spot at which the parting between his

He remembered that once on his way home he had proudly cut with his keen new chisel an inscription on the back of that milestone, embodying his aspirations. It had been done in the first week of his apprenticeship, before he had been diverted from

lan should be to move onward through good and ill-to avoid morbid sorrow even though he did see uglinesses in the world? B

evil star, and follow o

tually rose the faint halo, a small dim nebulousness, hardly recognizable save by the eye of faith. I

gings in a better mood

t S

RISTM

oul he hath no

mosque gradus

revit amo

cape of some three years' later leafage than had graced his courtship of Arabella, and the disruption of his coarse

tools at his back seemed to be in the way of making a new start-the start to which, barring the interruption

al at his age; this, with his great mass of black curly hair, was some trouble to him in combing and washing out the stone-dust that settled on it in the pursuit of his trade. His capabilities in the latter, having been acquired in the country, were of an all-round

the city in this direction, and was now walking the remaining four miles rathe

e his old aunt, and had observed between the brass candlesticks on her mantlepiece the photograph of a pretty girlish face, in a broad hat with radiating folds under the brim like the rays of a halo. He had asked who she was. His grand-aunt

im; and ultimately formed a quickening ingredient in his lat

rder, and almost with the tip of one small toe within it, at the northernmost point of the crinkled line along which the leisurely Thames strokes the fields of that ancien

-some of those lamps which had sent into the sky the gleam and glory that caught his strained gaze in his days of dreaming, so many years ago. They winked the

hing of the real city in the suburbs on this side. His first want being a lodging he scrutinized carefully such localities as seemed to offer on inexpensive terms the modest type of accommod

amp a map he had brought. The breeze ruffled and fluttered it, but he could see

enetrated to dark corners which no lamplight reached. Close to this college was another; and a little further on another; and then he began to be encircled as it were with the

red-and-one strokes had sounded. He must have made

he not imagined these scenes through ten bygone years, and what mattered a night's rest for once? High against the black sky the flash of a lamp would show crocketed pinnacles and indented battlements. Down obscure alleys, apparently never trodden now by the foot of man, and whose very existenc

tre, the sensation being that of one who walked but could not make himself seen or heard. He drew his breath pensively, a

d whose souls had haunted them in their maturer age. Some of them, by the accidents of his reading, loomed out in his fancy disproportionately large by comparison with the rest. The brushings of the wind against the angles, buttresses, and door-jambs were as the passing of these only o

ir as in framed portraits, but pink-faced, slim, and active as in youth; modern divines sheeted in their surplices, among whom the most real to Jude Fawley were the founders of the religious school called Tractarian; the well-known three, the enthusiast, the poet, and the formularist, the echoes of whose teachings had influenced him even in his obscure home. A start

less dreamy air; the scholar, the speaker, the plodder; the man whose mind gr

-lieutenants, in whom he took little interest; chief-justices and lord chancellors, silent thin-lipped figures of whom he knew barely the names. A keener regard attached to the prelates, by reason of his own former hopes. Of them he had an ample band

start at his absurdity. Perhaps those incoherent words of the wanderer were heard within the walls by some student or thinker over his lamp; and he may have raised his head, and wondered what voice it was, an

out of the shade; a

time on that plinth-stone, you

had been observing Jude wit

of the university. As he drew towards sleep various memorable words of theirs that he had just been conning seemed spoken by them in muttering utterances; some audible, some u

llectual life of our century, so serene! ... Her ineffable charm keeps ev

d just seen in the quadrangle with a great bell. Jude thought his s

ances should be resorted to now, namely, that there should be free access to the food of man from whatever quarter it may come... Deprive me of office to-morrow, you can never d

ilosophic world, to those evidences [miracles] which were presented by Omnipotence? ... The sages of Greece and Rome turned

the poet, the last

d is made fo

*

the Many hel

he race by a

siasts he had seen just now

s the result of an assemblage of concurring and converging probabilities ... that pr

, no polemic, murm

faint, and fea

, so Heaven has

spoken by the phantom with the

ery inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion;

ing whose meek, familiar rhyme, endeared to h

live, that

as little

me to

have gone, and everything spoke of to-day. He started u

ll the time! ... and my old schoolmaster, too." His words about his schoolm

ntasmal for a while, and compelled Jude to smother high thinkings under immediate needs. He had to ge

ir sympathetic countenances: some were pompous; some had put on the look of family vaults above grou

f the dead handicraftsmen whose muscles had actually executed those forms. He examined the mouldings, stroked them as one who knew their b

, been inflicted on the aged erections. The condition of several moved him as he would have been moved by maimed sentient

ive by work, and the morning had nearly gone. It was, in one sense, encouraging to think that in a place of crumbling stones there must be plenty for one of his trade to do in the b

ime-eaten on the walls. These were the ideas in modern prose which the lichened colleges presented in old poetry. Even some of those antiques might have b

on the bankers half worked, or waiting to be removed. They were marked by precision, mathematical straightness, smoothness, exacti

arly study within the noblest of the colleges. But he lost it under stress of his old idea. He would accept any employment which might be offered him on

that time see that medi?valism was as dead as a fern-leaf in a lump of coal; that other developments were shaping in the world around him, in which Gothic architect

er! At last he wrote to his aunt to send it. She did so, with a request, however, that he was not to bring disturbance into the family by going to see the girl or her relations. Jude, a ridiculously affectionate fellow, promised

ple moved round him he virtually saw none. Not as yet having mingled with the active life of the place it was largely non-existent to him. But the saints and prophets in the window-tracery, the paintings in the galleries, the statues, the busts, the gargo

f his own footsteps, smart as the blows of a mallet. The Christminster "sentiment," as it had been called, ate further and further

that enthusiasm he really was. Only a wall divided him from those happy young contemporaries of his with whom he shared a common ment

rsistent preparation for this place, to be peculiarly akin to his own thoughts. Yet he was as far from them as if he had been at the antipodes. Of course he was. He was a young workman in a white blouse, and with stone-dust in the creases of his clothes; and in pa

e. So he thanked God for his health and strength, and took courage. For the present he was outside the gates of everything, colleges inclu

's yard-that a job was waiting for him. It was his firs

and six-pence, and obtained a good light. Then he got pens, paper, and such other necessary books as he had been unable to obtain elsewhere. Then, to the consternation of his landlady, he shifted all the furniture of his room-a single

y money since the time of those disastrous ventures, and till his wages began to come in he was obliged to live in the narrowest way. After buying a book or two he cou

l of the city. The tall tower, tall belfry windows, and tall pinnacles of the college by the bridge he could also g

the one thing necessary was to get ready by accumulating money and knowledge, and await whatever chances were afforded to such an one of becoming a son of the University. "For wisdom is a de

dehead and her relations. Sue's father, his aunt believed, had gone back to London, but the girl remained at Christminster. To make her still more objectionable, she was an artist or designer of some sort in what w

ventured to enter on a trivial errand, and having made his purchase lingered on the scene. The shop seemed to be kept entirely by women. It contained Anglican books, stationery, texts, and fancy goods: little plaster angels on brackets, Gothic-framed pictures of saints, ebony crosses that were almost crucifixes, prayer-books that were almost missals. He felt very shy of looking at the girl in the desk; she was so pretty that he could not believe it possible tha

Christian business,

t been acquired from her father's occupation as an ecclesiastical worker in metal. The lettering

unt to disregard her request so incontinently. She had used him roughly, but she had brought him up: and the fact of

ousers that he felt he was as yet unready to encounter her, as he had felt about Mr. Phillotson. And how possible it was that she had inherited the antipathies of her family, and would scorn him, as

of her living presence stimulated him. But she remained more or less an ideal

treet, in getting a block of worked freestone from a waggon across the pavement, before hoisting it to the parape

liquid, untranslatable eyes, that combined, or seemed to him to combine, keenness with tenderness, and mystery with both, their expression, as well as that of her lips, taking its life from some wo

gh as she had never once seen him she could not possibly do so; and might very well never have heard even his name. He could perceive that

ght, of the type dubbed elegant. That was about all he had seen. There was nothing statuesque in her; all was nervous motion. She was mobile, living, yet a painter might not have called her handsome or beautiful. But the much that she

zed locality he dwelt in, insensibly began to precipitate itself on this half-visionary form; and he perceived that, what

ay, since there were crushing reasons why he sh

ve even when circumstances seemed to favour the passion. The third: even were he free, in a family like his own where marriage usually meant a tr

l way as some one to be proud of; to talk and nod to; later on, to be invited to tea by, the emotion spent on her being rigorously that

I

and the next Sunday he went to the morning service in the Cathedral church of Cardinal C

s accessible, and he stood in a corner while the bell was going. A few minutes before the hour for service she appeared as one of the figures walking along under the college walls, and at sight of her he a

only a luxury of the emotional and leisured classes. In the dim light and the baffling glare of the clerestory windows he could discern the opposite worshippers indistinctly only, but he saw that Sue was among them. He had not lo

ll a young man

sequences; then to think of putting an end to himself; then to go recklessly and get drunk. The great waves of pedal music tumbled round the choir, and, nursed on the supernatural as he had been, it is not wonderful that he

frequenter of this place, and, steeped body and soul in church sentiment as she must be by occupation and habit, had, no doubt, much in common with him. To an impressionable and lonely young man the consciousness of ha

might have said to him that the atmosphere b

he time he reached the door she was half-way down the broad path. Being dressed up in his Sunday suit he was inclined to follow he

ffectation, and he said, "It can't be! I, a man with a wife, must not know her!" Still Sue was his own kin, and the fact of his having a wife, even though she was not in evidence in this hemisphere, might be a help in one sense. It would put all

walk into the country with a book in her hand. It was one of those cloudless days which sometimes occur in Wessex and elsewhere between days of cold and wet, as if intercalated by caprice of the weather-god. She went along for a mile or two until she came

med to see portrayed, among them being a Venus of standard pattern, a Diana, and, of the other sex, Apollo, Bacchus, and Mars. Though the figures were many yards away from her the south-west sun brought them out so brilliantly against the green herbage that she could discern their contours with luminous distinctness; and being almost in a line between herself and the church towers of the city they awoke in her an oddly foreign and contrasting set of ideas by comparis

ching with her finger the Venus and the

uld have them f

and to her surprise the image-man drew them from their wire sta

ment she trembled at her enterprise. When she handled them the white pipeclay came off on her gloves and jacket. After carrying them along a little way openly an idea came to her, and, pulling some huge burdock leaves,

allals!" she said. But she was still in a trembling state

g parallel to the main one, and round a corner to the side door of the establishment to which she was attached. Her purchases were taken straight up to her own chamber, and she at once

suburb of Beersheba before-mentioned, which Jude also had begun to attend. She was the daughter of a clergyman in reduced circumstances, and at his death, which had occurred several years before this date, she boldly av

rl did not respond for a moment, entered the room just as

, Miss Bridehead?" she asked, r

ng to ornament my

-text scrolls, and other articles which, having become too stale to sell, had been used to furnish this obscure chamber. "What is it? How bulky!

of a travelling ma

sai

es

t on

nd St.-St. M

o and finish that organ-text, if

of drawers, a candle on each side of them, she withdrew to the bed, flung herself down thereon, and began reading a book she had taken from her box, which Miss Fontover knew nothing of. It was a volume of Gibbon, and she read the chapter dealing with the reign of Julian the Apostate. Occasiona

nquered, O p

grown grey f

she put out the candles, undressed, a

light from the street to show her the white plaster figures, standing on the chest of drawers in odd contrast to their environment of text and

ll him at his usually early time, and hence he had stayed up, as was his custom, two or three hours later than he could afford to do on any other day of the week. Just then he was earnestly reading from his Griesbach's text. At the very time that Sue was tossing and star

o Pater, ex hou ta pant

th reverent loudness, as

Christos, di hou ta pa

to cut the fragment of moulding which merges in that leafage, as if it were a degradation to do the second half of one whole. When there was not much Gothic mo

he parson entered Jude came down from his ladder, and sat with the half-dozen people forming the congregation, till the prayer should be ended, and he could res

take their leave: it was that he dared not, in this holy spot, confront the woman who was beginning to influence him in such an indescribable manner. Those three enormous reasons why he must not attempt intimate acquaintance with Sue Bridehead, now that his interest in her had shown itself to be unmistakably of a sexual kind, loom

ead of thinking less of her, and experiencing a fearful bliss in doing what was erratic, informal, and unexpected. Surrounded by her influence all day, walkin

ld be to cure himself of this unexpected and unauthorized passion. A voice

work in a neighbouring village church alone, he felt it to be his duty to pray against his weakness. But much as he wished to be an exemplar in these things he could not get on. It was quite impossible, he found, to ask to be delivered from temptation when your heart's desire was to be tempted unto seventy times seven. So he excused himself. "After all," he said, "it is not altogether an erotolepsy that is th

on's yard with some hesitation, and, lifting her skirts to avoi

" said one of the me

he?" aske

chap Bridehead who did all the wrought ironwork at St. Silas' ten years ago, and went away to

that Jude had gone out somewhere or other that afternoon, which information she received with a look of disappointment, and

te from her-a first note-one of those documents which, simple and commonplace in themselves, are seen retrospectively to have been pregnant with impassioned consequences. The very unconsciousness of a looming drama which is

g in Christminster, and reproached him with not letting her know. They might have had such nice times together, she said, for she was thrown much upon herself, a

ht of, and it spurred him to write all the more quickly to her. He would meet her that very evening, he sai

er. It was, in fact, the country custom to meet thus, and nothing else had occurred to him. Arabella had been met in the same way, unfortunately, and it might not seem respec

figure on the other side, which turned out to be hers, and they both converged toward

ust there, for the first time

waiting her pleasure, Jude watched till she showed signs of closing in, when he did likewise, the

ll," began Jude with the bashfulness of a lover. "But

he place you chose was so horrid-I suppose I ought not to say horrid-I mean gloomy and inauspicious in its associations... But isn't

me more than I kno

seen you n

s, and didn't speak? A

friend here somewhere, but I don't quite like to call on him just yet. I wonder if you

e lives a little way out in the country,

s impossible! Only a schoolmaster still! Do

ted books to him, thou

couldn'

ould have had a day of despair if the news had not arrived during his sweet Sue's presence, but even at this mom

uppose we go and call upon him?" s

and then the school-house. They inquired of a person in the street if Mr. Phillotson was likely to be at home, and were informed that he was always at home. A knock

school-master's figure in Jude's imagination ever since their parting. It created in him at the same time a sympathy with Phillotson as an obviously mu

y pupils, you say? Yes, no doubt; but they number so many thousands by this time of my life,

reen," said Jude, wi

hort time. And is thi

to you for some grammars, if y

dimly recall t

en, when your goods were on the waggon, you wished me good-bye, and said your scheme was to be a university man and en

y; but I wonder I did not keep my own c

which brought me to this part of the cou

hillotson. "And y

ell on the nervous little face and vivacious dark eyes and hair of Sue, on the earnest features of her cousin, and on the schoolmaster's own maturer face and figure, showing him to be a spare and thoughtful personage of

that he still thought of the Church sometimes, and that though he could not enter it as he had intended to do in former years he mig

vibrant that everything she did seemed to have its source in feeling. An exciting thought would make her walk ahead so fast that he could hardly keep up with her; and her sensitiveness on some points was such that it might have been misread as vanity. It was with hea

How can you do otherwise than cling to a city in whose his

ory of the world? ... What a funny reason for caring to

, one of the partners whom I serve, is offended

d that

some statua

Wilfu

loor and stamped on it, because it was not according to her taste, and ground the

e? No doubt she called them popish images

o that. She saw the mat

n I am s

s. So I was led to retort upon her; and the end of it was that I resolved not

teaching again? You

ming it; for I was getti

and go to a training college, and become a first-class certificated mistress, you get

Jude! I am so glad we have met at last. We nee

uch he agreed with her, and went his way to

quences, and the next evening he again set out for Lumsdon, fearing to trust to the pe

"Of course your cousin would do, personally; but she has had no experience. O

uenced the schoolmaster that he said he would engage her, assuring Jude as a friend that unless his cousin really meant to follow on in the same course, and regarded this ste

d more warmly to the idea of tuition; and that she had agreed to come. It did not occur for a moment to the schoolmaster and recluse that Jude's ard

, and Sue had been taken as stop-gap. All such provisional arrangements as these could only last till the next annual visit of H.M. Inspector, whose approval was necessary to make them permanent. Having taught for some two years in London, though she had abandoned that vocation of late, Miss Bridehead was not exactly a n

did cross, a light hat tossed on her head; and he watched her as a curiosity. A new emanation, which had nothing to do with her skill as a teacher, seemed to surround her

the taught were of different sexes. Richard Phillotson thought of the absurdity of the regulation in this case, when he was old enough to be the girl's father; but he faithfully acted up to it; and sat dow

she assumed that, being the master, he must perceive all that was passing in her brain, as right or wrong. Phillotson was not really thinking of th

little thumb cocked up against its stem; and Phillotson behind in his long dangling coat, handling his walking-stick genteelly, in the musing mood which had come over him since her arrival. The afternoon was one of sun and dust, and when they entered the exhibition room few people were present but themselves. The model of the ancient city stood in the middle of the apartment, and the proprietor, with a fine

nd, "that this model, elaborate as it is, is a very imaginary production. How does anyb

ctural maps, based on actual vis

escended from the Jews. There was nothing first-rate about the place, or peopl

rl, consider wh

white flannel jacket, his form being bent so low in his intent inspection of the Valley of Jehoshaphat that his face was almost hidden fr

n her quick, light voice. "Jude-ho

aw that schools were admitted in the afternoons, and thought you might come; but I got so deeply interested that I didn't remember where I was. How i

it unmercifully," said Phillotson, with good-humoured

girl-there are too many of that sort now!" answered Sue sensitively. "I only

ardently (although he did not). "

e, her voice revealing a tremor which she herself felt to be absurdly uncalled for by sarcasm so gentle. She had not the least conception how the hea

he juvenile flock in their clean frocks and pinafores, filing down the street towards the country beside Phillotson and Sue, and a sad, dissatisfied sense of being out of the scheme of the latters' lives h

the blackboard in Sue's class, Phillotson was surprised to find upon it, skilfully dr

erest in the model, and ha

she, "but I remembe

an I had remem

test the teaching unawares; and two days later, in the middle of the morning lessons, the latch

her teaching some half-minute before she became aware of his presence. She turned, and realized that an oft-dreaded moment had come. The effect upon her timidity was such that she uttered a cry of fright. Phillotson, with a strange instinct of solicitude quite beyond his control, was at he

ctor's surprise-visits was imminent! Oh, what shall I do! Now he'll write

r little girl. You are th

oved, and regretted that she had upbraide

d, on returning to his room to read, found himself quite unable to concentrate his mind on the page. On Friday, as soon as he had got himself up as he thought Sue would like to see him, and made a hasty tea, he set out, notwithstanding that the eve

er head, and they had evidently been paying a visit to the vicar-probably on some business connected with the school work. And as they walked along the wet and deserted lane Jude saw Phillotson place his arm round the girl's waist; whereupon she gently removed it; but he replaced it; and she let it remain

cried Jude in all the terrible sic

hat he must on no account stand in the schoolmaster's way with Sue. Phillotson was perhaps twenty years her senior, but many a happy marriage had been made in such conditi

lt of a victorious struggle against his inclination to turn aside to the village of Lumsdon and obtain a miserable interview with

d to a neighbour, and with the proceeds of this and her savings she was comfortably supplied with necessaries and more, a widow of the same village living with her and min

ue bor

were living here at that t

anted t

!" said the harsh old woman

I was not t

gossiped

es

r cared much about her. A pert little thing, that's what she was too often, with her tight-strained nerves. Many's the time I've smacked her for her impertinence. Why, one day when she was wa

little ch

twelve

r she's of a thoughtful, quivering,

pringing up in bed. "Don'

of cour

ed never trouble you again. And there'll be a worse thing if you, tied and bound as you be, should have a fancy for Sue. If your cousin is civil to you, take her civil

g against her, Aun

d little maid Sue had been when a pupil at the village school across the green opposite, before her father went to London-how, when the vicar arranged readings and recitations, she appeared on the platform, the smallest of them all, "in her little white frock,

rim, and an

rom the Nig

at thy lor

ht's Pluto

"as she stood there in her little sash and things, that you could see un a'most before your

so of Sue's accomplis

th her little curls blowing, one of a file of twenty moving along against the sky like shapes painted on glass, and up the back slide without stopping. All boys exc

e left the cottage of his aunt that day with a heavy heart. He would fain have glanced into the school to

ring his residence here were standing in a group in their b

here right e

hat he did no

Light' you used to talk to us about as a

re!" cri

in it for my part; auld crumbling buildings, half c

ntre of thought and religion-the intellectual and spiritual granary of this country. All that silence and absence of go

wo I was there; so I went in and had a pot o' beer, and a penny loaf, and a ha'porth o' cheese,

. "I am almost as f

w s

pped his

ces be not for such as you-only

Jude, with some bitterness

sure to a seat in the paradise of the learned. He was set regarding his prospects in a cold northern light. He had lately felt that he could not quite satisfy himself in his Greek-in the Greek of the dramatists particularly. So fatigued was he sometimes after his da

done of late. What was the good, after all, of using up his spare hours in a va

scheme at all than to do it without seeing clearly where I am going, or what I am aiming at... This hovering outside the walls of

e enclosure near the spot at which Jude chanced to be sitting. The gentleman came nearer, and Jude looked anxiously at his face. It seemed benign, considerate, yet rather reserved. On second thoughts Jude felt that he could not go up

d among the provosts, wardens, and other heads of houses; and from those he ultimately selected five whose physiognomies seemed to say to him that they wer

lgar, pushing, applications which are so common in these days," he thought. "Why couldn't I know better than address utter strangers in such

otson was giving up the school near Christminster, for a larger one further south, in Mid-Wessex. What this meant; how it would affect his cousin; whether, as seemed possible, it was a practical move of the schoolmaster's towards a larger income, in view of a provi

y what he had long uneasily suspected, that to qualify himself for certain open scholarships and exhibitions was the only brilliant course. But to do this a good deal of coaching would be necessary, and much natural ability. It was next to im

mation he began to reckon the extent of this material obstacle, and ascertained, to his dismay, that, at the rate at which, with the best of fortune, he would be able to save money,

g to do. "Let me only get there," he had said with the fatuousness of Crusoe over his big boat, "and the rest is but a matter of time and energy." It would have been far better for him in every way if he had never come within sight and sound of the delusive precincts, had gone to some busy commercial town with the sole object of

h's inspired a

ley mocking f

d the painful details of his awakening to a sense of his limitations should now be spared her as far as possible. After all, s

ld be gained. Jude's eyes swept all the views in succession, meditatively, mournfully, yet sturdily. Those buildings and their associations and privileges were not for him. From the looming roof of the great library, into which he hardly ever had time to enter, his gaze travelled on to the varied spires, halls, gables, streets, chapels, gardens, q

ith his fate. With Sue as companion he could have renounced his ambitions with a smile. Without her it was inevitable that the reaction from the long strain to which he had subjected himself should affect him disastrously.

e light of the flickering lamps he rambled home to supper, and had not long been sitting at table when his landlady brought up a letter that had just arrived for him. She laid it down as if impr

ly what he had expected; though it really

oll C

ture to think that you will have a much better chance of success in life by remaining in your own sphere and stick

etup

Fawley, St

rise recklessly from the table, and, instead of reading as usual, to go downstairs and into the street. He stood at a bar and tossed off two or three glasses, then unconsciously sauntered along till

lf an inch and a half on the balls of his toes, smiled, and l

begun," he re

city. It was literally teeming, stratified, with the shades of human groups, who had met there for tragedy, comedy, farce; real enactments of the intensest kind. At Fourways men had stood and talked of Napoleon, the loss of America, the execution of King Charles, the burning of the

ruggling men and women before him were the reality of Christminster, though they knew little of Christ or Minster. That was one of the humo

oom full of shop youths and girls, soldiers, apprentices, boys of eleven smoking cigarettes, and light women of the more respectable and amateur class. He had tapped th

some girls who made advances-wistful to gain a little joy. At ten o'clock he came away, choosing

om his pocket the lump of chalk which as a workman

am not inferior to you: yea, who knowe

I

e laugh was not a healthy one. He re-read the letter from the master, and the wisdom in its lines,

s lost to him through his marriage returned upon him with cruel persistency, till, unable to bear it longer, he again rushed for distraction to the real Christminster life. He now sought it out in an obscure and low-ceiled tavern up a court which was

yed church-ironmonger who appeared to have been of a religious turn in earlier years, but was somewhat blasphemous now; also a red-nosed auctioneer; also two Gothic masons like himself, called Uncle Jim and Uncle Joe. There were present, too, some clerks, and a gown- and surplice-maker's assistant; two ladies who sported moral characters of various depths of shade, according to their com

in authority being sincerely pitied for their shortcomings, while opinions on how they ought to conduct them

ms having been what they were for so many years, everything the others said turned upon his tongue, by a sort of mechanical craze, to the subject of sc

cursed master of arts in the university! What I know is that I'd lick 'em on their own

tes from the corner, where they we

you state. Now with me 'twas different. I always saw there was more to be learnt outside

tch yer hopes so high as that, why not give us a specimen of your scholarship? Canst sa

nk so!" said

conceit!" screamed

its in his tumbler, rapped with it on the counter, and announced, "The gentleman in the corner is go

t!" sai

y!" said the s

t!" said

n!" said Ti

l, come now, stand me a small Scotc

the undergraduate, throwing

mongst animals of an inferior species, and the glass was handed across to Jude, wh

tentem, Factorem coeli et terrae,

e undergraduates, who, however, had not

hoing sonorously into the inner parlour, where the landlord was dozing, and bringing h

Pilato passus, et sepultus est. Et res

the second undergraduate. "

ol knows, except you, that the N

et un go on!" sa

he could not get on. He put his hand to his fore

he'll fetch up and get thro

without looking, and having swallowed the liquor, went on in a moment in a revived voi

Patre Filioque procedit. Qui cum Patre et Filio simul a

unum Baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et exspecto R

g the last word, as being the firs

he fumes from his brain, as

? It might have been the Ratcatcher's Daughter in double Dutch for all that your be

feared a riot, and came outside the counter; but Jude, in his sudden flash of reason,

the influence of a childlike yearning for the one being in the world to whom it seemed possible to fly-an unreasoning desire, whose ill judgement was not apparent to him now. In the course of an hour, whe

d tapped with his finger on the pa

d from the apartment, and in a second or two the door was un

s! My dear, dear cousi

as it was! So I have been drinking, and blaspheming, or next door to it, and saying holy things in disreputable quarters-repeating in idle bravado words which

hand holding the candle and the other supporting him, she led him indoors, and placed him in the only easy chair the meagrely furnished house afforded, stretching hi

ling him to go to sleep, and that she would come down early in the morning

stliness of a right mind. She knew the worst of him-the very worst. How could he face her now? She would soon be coming down to see about breakfast, as she had said, and there would he be in a

is employer; and having packed up he turned his back upon the city that had been such a thorn in his side, and struck southward into Wessex. He had no money left in his pocket, his small savings, deposited at one of the banks in Chr

rick that night. At dawn he rose, shook off the hayseeds and stems from his clothes, and started again, breasting the long white road up the h

arness of brain, he sat down by the well, thinking as he did so what a poor Christ he made. Seeing a trough of water near he bathed

under lids heavy as pot-covers, no other cause for his tumbled appearance sugg

vily. "I think I mus

if he had awakened in hell. It was hell-"the hell of conscious failure," both in ambition and in love. He thought of that previous abyss into which he had fallen before leaving this pa

dergoing. But that relief being denied to his virility, he clenched his teeth in misery, b

rtly, and the vane on the new Victorian-Gothic church in the new spot had already begun to creak. Yet apparently it was not always the outdoor wind that made the deep murmurs; it was a voice. He guessed its origin

ich was open, and a man looked

here I am, just come home; a fellow gone to the bad; though I had the best intentions in th

lling less upon the intellectual and ambitious side of his dream, and more upon the theolog

sity hopes one jot. I wouldn't begin again if I were sure to succeed. I don't care for social success any more at all. But I do fee

a real call to the ministry, and I won't say from your conversation that you do not, for it is that of a thoughtful

y enough, if I had any ki

t T

ELCH

other girl, O brid

(H. T. W

d on to the culminating vision of the bishopric had not been an ethical or theological enthusiasm at all, but a mundane ambition masquerading in a surplice. He feared that his whole scheme had degenerated to, even though it might not have originated in, a social unrest which had no foundation in

s career than that of the humble curate wearing his life out in an obscure village or city slum-that might have a touch of go

ce to his intellectual career-a career which had extended over the greater part of a dozen years. He did nothing, however, for some long stagnant time to advance his new desire, occupying himself with little local jobs in putti

at she had passed some sort of examination for a Queen's Scholarship, and was going to enter a training college at Melchester to complete herself for the vocation she had chosen, partly by his influence. There was a theological college at Melchester; Melchester was a qu

than to get employment at the further city, and pursue this plan of reading? That his excessive human interest in the new place was entirely of Sue's making, while at the same time Sue was to be regarded even

ted him as being that of his exemplar when he first began to teach in Galilee. This would allow him plenty of time for delibera

hat he should postpone his arrival for a month or so, till the days had lengthened. She had acquiesced so readily that he wished he had not proposed it-she evidently did not much care about him, t

stical designer's; worse than anywhere. She felt utterly friendless; could he come immediately?-though when he did come she would only be able to see him at limited times, the

ude felt unreasonably glad. He packed up his things and went t

to eat he walked out into the dull winter light over the town bridge, and turned the corner towards the Close. The day was foggy, and standing under the walls of the most graceful architectural pile in E

signified that the cathedral was undergoing restoration or repair to a considerable extent. It seemed to him, full of the superstitions of his beliefs, that thi

le of dark hair above it; the girl with the kindling glance, daringly soft at times-something like that of the girls he had seen in engr

ing-school, with mullioned and transomed windows, and a courtyard in front shut in from the road by a wall. Jude opened the gate and we

screens and subtleties of convention had likewise disappeared. Yet neither was she quite the woman who had written the letter that summoned him. That had plainly bee

d wretch-for coming to you as I

hat had caused it. I hope I shall never have any doubt of

Her hair, which formerly she had worn according to the custom of the day was now twisted up tightly, and she had altogether the air of a woman

not perceive the least sign that Sue regarded him as a lover, or ever would do so, now that she knew the worst of him, even if he had the right to behave as one; and thi

something of shame, that she was dreadfully hungry. They were kept on very short allowances in the college, and a dinner, tea, and supper all in one was the present she most desired in the world. Jude thereupo

rning, with all the bitterness of a young person to whom restraint was new. To all this he listened; but it was not what he wanted especially to know-her relations with Phillotson. That was what she did not tell. When they had sat and e

her rough, Jude, ar

e if they held a malle

'm rather glad I came to this training-school, after all. See how independent I shall be after the two years'

icion, a fear," said Jude, "that he-cared about yo

be such a

omething about

ould it matter? An

t so very old. And I kn

g me-that I

ng his arm rou

ut I didn't know

ut if it, Sue, and i

r, and her eye to blink, at something

I tell you everything, and

othingly. "I have no real right to

will marry him when I come out of the training-school two years hence, and have got my certificate; his plan being that we shall then take

urse it is right-you co

ords. Then he drew his hand quite away from hers, and turned his face in es

I am wrong, I suppose! I ought not to have let you come to see me! We had better not

ught him round at once. "Oh yes, we will," he said quickly. "Your being engaged can make n

e spoiling our evening together. What does it matt

he subject drift away. "Shall we go and sit in the

ion," she answered, a remnant of vexation still in her voice. "Tha

dern yo

w years! The cathedral was a very good place four or five centuries ago; but it is played

oked di

of view, or you wouldn't think so much of me, or care whether I was engaged or not. Now there's ju

it was not so easy to get as at Christminster, there being, as a rule, less stone-cutting in progress in this quiet city, and hands being mostly permanent. But he edged himself in by degrees. His first work was some carving at the cemetery on the hill; and ultimately he became engaged on the labour he most desired-the cathed

e rectories and deaneries at which his landlady had lived as trusted servant in her time, and the parlour downstairs bore a clock on the mantelpiece inscribed to the effect that it was presented to the same serious-minded woman by her fellow-servants on th

it and direction from his former course. As a relaxation from the Fathers, and such stock works as Paley and Butler, he read Newman,

rand day, you know.

r we can get to and come back from in that

n we can do Fonthill if we li

thic ruins-and

classic building-Corinthian, I

like the sound of Co

il of the outing was a facet reflecting a sparkle to Jude, and he did not venture to meditate on the life

the trains-everything formed the basis of a beautiful crystallization. Nobody stared at Sue, because she was so plainly dressed, which comforted Jude in the thought that only himself knew the charms those habiliments subdued. A matter

intention was

ought the remark unnecessar

Sue paused patiently beside him, and stole critical looks into his face as, regarding the Virgins, Holy Families, and Saints, it grew reverent and abstracted. When she had thoroughly estimated him at this, she would m

to the north of their present position, and intercept the train of another railway leading back to Melchester, at a station about seven miles off. Sue, who was

her look like a shepherdess. About half-way on their journey they crossed a main road running due east and west-the old road from London to Land's End. They paused, and looked up and

each the other station it would be rather awkward. For a long time there was no cottage visible on the wide expanse of down and turnip-land; but presently they came to a sheepfold, and next to the shep

a single tooth, to whom they were as civil as strangers can be when the

tle cottage

ere the thatch is to come from I can't tell, for straw do get that dear, tha

as ye will. But mid you be thinking o' getting back to Melchester to-night by train? Because you'll never do it in this world,

start

place is welcome to ye. 'Tis hard lying, rather, but volk may do wor

o!" sa

nd you and I can lie in the outer chimmer after they've gone through. I can

ffer, and drew up and shared with the shepherd and

ertainers were clearing away the dishes. "Outsi

e a product of civilization," said Jude, a recollect

nd all that, but I crave to get back to

u seem to me to have nothing un

You don't know w

ha

Ishma

miss is wh

e disagreement,

complished pleasantly. When they had reached Melchester, and walked to the Close, and the gables of the old building in whic

e great bell

orgotten," she said quickly, searching her pocket. "I

med to be an ominous glance on his face when he opened the g

I

ning-School at Melchester, formed a very mixed community, which included the daughters of mechanics, curates, surgeons, shopkeepers, farmers, dairy-men, soldiers, sailors, and v

ent, who knew about young men. "And Miss Traceley saw her at

r cousin," observed

in this school to be effectual in saving our

of the pupils who had made the same statement in order to gain meetings with her lover. The aff

s being pronounced three times sonorously b

, and every girl's thought was, Where is Sue Bridehead? Some of the students, who had seen Jude from the window, felt that they would not mi

oulded, which by no possible exertion of their willing hearts and abilities could be made strong while the inexorable laws of nature remain what they are. They formed a pretty, suggestive, pathetic sight, of whose pathos and beauty they were themselves unconscious,

ttle dressing-table at the foot, which, like all the rest, was ornamented with various girlish trifles, framed photographs being not the least

mistress. "Strictly speaking, relations' portr

dent in the next bed-"is the schoolma

undergraduate in cap

r was. She has nev

of these two wh

N

'twas not the

a young man wit

at games she had carried on in London and at Christminster before she came here, some of the more restless ones getting out o

alf-toilet, and when they had come up to dress for breakfast, the bell of the entrance gate was heard to ring loudly. The mistress of the do

out to greet her or to make inquiry. When they had gone downstairs they found that she did not follow them into the dining-hall to breakfast, and they then

d sent in to the principal, asking for a remission of Sue's punishment. No notice was taken. Towards even

t it has been ascertained that the young man Bridehead stayed out with was not her cousin, for th

take her word," s

inster for drunkenness and blasphemy in public-houses,

ss, and the mistress left the room to inqu

say that Sue Bridehead had got out of the back window of the room in which she had been confined, escaped in the dark across the lawn, and disapp

ery bush and shrub being examined, but she was nowhere hidden. Then the porter of the front gate was interrogated, and on reflection he said that he

ed through the rive

herself," sai

ssible half-column detailing that event in all the newspapers, which, added to the scandal

t no doubt that the too excitable girl had waded through a depth of water reaching nearly to her shoulders-for this was the chief river of the county, and was mentioned in all the geogr

ng else to do but to sit reading and learning all day what many of the thoughtless inmates despised. But to-night, having finished tea and brushed himself up, he was deep in the perusal of the Twenty-ninth Volume of Pusey's Library of the Fathers, a set of books which he had purc

(from

ue

I come up with

ye

ome down. Shu

e had fled to him in her trouble as he had fled to her in his. What counterparts they were! He unlatched the door of his room, heard a stealthy rustle on the dark stairs, and in a moment she app

ugh her chattering teeth. "C

from her as she moved, the idea of drying herself was absurd. "Whatever have yo

unjust that I couldn't bear it, so I got out of the window and escaped across the stream!" She had begun the explanation in her us

l your things! And let me see-you must bor

God's sake! We are so near the sc

put on mine.

h

s single chamber, because there was not room for it to be otherwise. He opened a drawer, took

min

y arm-chair he saw a slim and fragile being masquerading as himself on a Sunday, so pathetic in her defencelessness that his heart felt big w

nonsense! They are only a woman's clothes-sexless cloth and linen... I wish I didn't feel so ill and si

. You must stay here. Dear, dea

t in addition, and then ran out to the nearest public-house, whence he returned with a little

he dressing-table, and administered the spirit in some water. She

ep. Jude, dying of anxiety lest she should have caught a chill which might permanently injure her, was glad to hear the regular breathing. He softly went nearer to her, and observed that

pted by the creak of foots

thrust it under the bed, and sat down to his book. Somebody

Mr. Fawley. I wanted to know if you would re

n to-night. Will you bring supper up on a

als with the family, to save trouble. His landlady brought up the su

ey were far from dry. A thick woollen gown, he found, held a deal of water. So he hung them

she sai

ght. How do

fell asleep, didn't I? What

s pas

t shall I do!" she

here yo

. But I don't know what they w

ven't to go out anywhere. Perhaps you will be saved a severe illness by resting there.

I thought I was well; and I ought not to be here, ought I?" But the supper fortified her s

eternaturally wakeful afterwards, though Jude, who had not taken a

mething, didn't you?" she said, breaking a silen

hy

ovokingly wrong. I am a

phical. 'A negation'

being learned?" she asked

talk quite like a girl-well, a

translations, and other books too. I read Lemprière, Catullus, Martial, Juvenal, Lucian, Beaumont and Fletcher, Boccaccio, Scarron, De Brant?me, Sterne, De

aid with a sigh. "How came you to

t about them as most women are taught to feel-to be on their guard against attacks on their virtue; for no average man-no man short of a sensual savage-will molest a woman by day or night, at home or abroad, unless she invites him. Until she says by a look 'Come on' he is always afraid

riendship

or three years after he had taken

od deal of hi

o away if he didn't agree to my plan, he did so. We shared a sitting-room for fifteen months; and he became a leader-writer for one of the great London dailies; till he was taken ill, and had to go abroad. He said I was breaking his heart by holding out against him so long at such close quarters; he could never have believed it of woman. I might play th

s!-what did

lto note of tragedy coming suddenly into her silve

not. Tel

hen I returned to Christminster, as my father- who was also in London, and had started as an art metal-worker near Long-Acre-w

lly the creature he had given shelter to. His voice trembled as he said: "Howeve

ly innocent, as you

hed th

lay-figure you

he was brimming with tears. "But I have never yielded myself to

some women would not hav

sexless-on account of it. But I won't have it! Some of the most passiona

llotson about this uni

e never made any sec

did he

y said I was everything to him, wh

rther and further away from him with her stran

traordinary tenderness that it hardly seemed to come from the same woman who had just t

m vexed or not. I know I

or you as for any

here, I ought not to sa

him cruelly, though he could not quite say in what way. Her

subject. "I am absorbed in theology, you know. And what do you think I should be doing just abo

d rather not, if you don't mind. I

't propose it. You must remember that I

ined, I thi

es

the idea?-I thought that pe

felt as I do about that, as you were so mixed up

er knew, and the most moral. And intellect at Christminster is new wine in old bottles. The medi?valism of Christminster must go, be sloughed off, or Christminster itself will have to go. To be sure, at times one c

saints, dead limbs o

good friend of min

motional throat-note had come ba

ugh I was resentful because I couldn't get there." He spoke

is, of course; but few of the people in the colleges do. You prove it in your own person. You are one of the very men Christminster was intended for when the coll

what it confers. I car

tellect in Christminster is pushing one way, and religion the othe

ld Mr. Ph

ll of fetishists

to some generalizations about the offending university. Jude was extremely, morbidly, cur

too," he said. "I am fearful o

ood and dear!"

ped, and he m

, putting on flippancy to hide real feeling, a common trick with h

time I read a chapter, and then say prayers, as I told you. Now will you concentrate your attention on any boo

look a

n't tea

who was going to be good for ever after, turning her back upon him accordingly. A small Bible other tha

e back to her; "will you let me make you a new New Test

How was t

book with Thessalonians, following on with the Epistles, and putting the Gospels much further on. Then I had the volume rebound. My university friend Mr.-but ne

de, with a sen

way the real nature of that rhapsody. You needn't be alarmed: nobody claims inspiration for the chapter headings. Indeed, many divines treat them with contempt.

"You are quite Volta

over with ecclesiastical abstractions such ecstatic, natural, human love as lies in that great and passionate song!" Her speech had grown

t you!" he said, taking her hand, and surprised at

he people in the training-school-at least you seem almost to be! What I insist on is, that to explain such verses as this: 'Whi

thing! I am-only too inclined just now to apply the words profa

eyes met, and they shook hands like cronies in a tavern, and Jude saw the absurdity of quarrelling on such

"But I did want and long to ennoble some man to high aims; and when I saw you, and knew you wanted to be my comrade, I-s

t. Life isn't long enough to work out everything in Eucl

you might take

aps I have done so!"

her, aren't we, and never, never, vex each other any more?" She look

ys care for y

ngle-hearted, and forgiving to you

he could only get over the sense of her sex, as she seemed to be able to do so easily of his, what a comrade she would make; for their difference of opinion on conjectural subjects only drew them clos

fire anew. About six o'clock he awoke completely, and lighting a candle, found that her clothes were dry. Her chair being a far more comfortable one than his she still slept on inside his

ed she was dre

anybody seeing me?" she asked

ave had no

morning, don't they? What Mr. Phillotson will say I don't know! It was quite by his wish that I went there. He is the onl

im and explai

for him! He may think what he l

ust this m

fellow-students in the training-school, who has asked me to visit her. She has a school near Shaston, about eight

coffee, in a portable apparatus he kept in his room for use on

aid; "and off we go. You can have a

lodging and quickly withdrawn. Sue still seemed sorry for her rashness, and to wish she had not rebelled; telling him at parting that she would let him know

" he said hurriedly as the train came up.

"I know one of the

ha

me. You are to l

in sympathy as she bade him adieu through the carriage window. And then

e to the cathedral services. The next morning there came a letter from her, which, with her usual promptitude, she had writ

me that when you were out of sight I felt what a cruel and ungrateful woman I was to say it, and it has reproached

ive your thoughtless friend for her cruelty? and w

u

ch should have rendered a long residence with a female friend quite unnecessary for Sue. He felt he might have been

more meaning to Sue's impulsive note

ived no further communication; and in the intensity of his solicitude he sent another note, s

rrived; the postman did not stop. This was Saturday, and in a feverish state of anxiety about her he sent o

e. Conjectures were put an end to by his arrival at the village school-house near Shaston on the bright morning of Sunday, between eleven and twelve o'clock,

Bridehead is up-stairs," she said.

?" asked Ju

little-n

ich way to turn-the voice of Sue calling his name. He passed the doorw

beside her and taking her hand.

"I did catch a bad cold-but I cou

ightening me

write to you any more. They won't have me back at the schoo

el

e me, but they gave me a

ha

owed I never would tell you, Jude

t abo

es

do te

ay you and I ought to marry as soon as possible, for the sake of m

poor

met as total strangers. But my marrying you, dear Jude-why, of course, if I had reckoned upon marrying you I shouldn't have come to you so often! And I never supposed you thought of such a thin

d and unreal, and they regarded

ou have-to look upon me as a sweetheart without saying a word, and leaving me to discover it myself! Your at

I was feeling about you. I admit that our meeting as strangers prevented a sense of relationship, and that it was a sort of subterfuge to avail my

wards him, and then looked away a

e. Some men would have cast scruples to the winds, and ventured it, oblivious both of Sue's declaration of her neutral feelings, and of the pair of autographs in the vestry chest of Arabella's parish church. Jude

way," he sorrowed. "You ought not, and you are right. You

h I didn't ask him to come. You are glad, of course, that h

at his honest acquiescence in his rival, if Jude's feelings

ining-school authorities are not all the world. Yo

hillotson," she

hopelessly unhappy. But he had seen her, and sat with her. Such intercourse as that would have to content him for the

le, not to say capricious. Then, in illustration of what he had begun to discern as one of her redeeming cha

ly miserable at my horridness. It was so dear of you not to be angry! Jude, please still

ings away from the T. S., &c. I could walk with you

u

d asked her to call for him at t

hard Phillotson, who had recently removed from the mixed village school at Lumsdon near Christminster, to undertake a

ch neither the Church nor literature had much in common. Essentially an unpractical man, he was now bent on making and saving money for a practical purpose-that of keeping a wif

begun to sit in his parlour during the dark winter nights and re-attempt some of his old studies-one branch of which had included Roman-Britannic antiquities-an unremunerative labour for a national school-master but a subject, that, after his abandonment of the university

he had collected, instead of calling round upon his new neighbours, who for their part had showed themselves willing enough to be friendly with him. But it was not the real, or the whole, reason, after all. Thus on a particular evening in the month, when it had

acted research-more than creditable to a man who had had no advantages beyond those of his own making. And yet the tale, true enough till latterly, was not true now. What he was regard

just such ones as would be written during short absences, with no other thought than their speedy destruction, and chiefly concerning books in reading and other experiences of a training school, forgotten doubtless by the writer with the passing of the day of their inditing. In one of them-quite a recent note-the young woman said that she had received his considerate letter, and that it was honourable and generous of him to say he would not co

woman, her dark eyes and hair making a very distinct and attractive picture of her, which just disclosed, too, the thoughtfulness that lay behind her lighter moods. It was a duplicate of the one she had given Jude, and would have give

is speech was a little slow, but his tones were sincere enough to make his hesitation no defect. His greying hair was curly, and radiated from a point in the middle of his crown. There were four lines across his forehead, and he o

ck and penetrating regard would frequently become almost intolerable to the self-conscious master in his present anxious care for Sue,

et out one Saturday afternoon to pay her an unexpected call. There the news of her departure-expulsion as it might almost have been considered-was flashed upon him

as fourteen days old. A short reflection told him that this proved nothing, a natu

l committee. In his bewilderment Phillotson entered the adjacent cathedral, just now in a direly dismantled state by reason of the repairs. He sat down on a block of freestone, regardless of t

him; and since Phillotson's success in obtaining at least her promise had become known to Jude, he had frankly recognized that he did not wish to see or hear of his senior any more, learn anything of his pursuits, or even imagine again what excellencies might appertain to his character. On this v

ot where Phillotson had been sitting. Jude offered him a piece of sackcl

trying to remember where he was. "I won't keep you long. It was merely that I have heard that you have seen my

said. "About her escaping from the t

es

onourable in every other relation of life, he could send off Phillotson in agony and defeat by saying that the scandal was true, and that Sue had irretrievably committed herself with him. But his act

ha

with all my

cquired a corpselike sharpness in its lines. "I ha

t were I in a position to marry her, or someone, and settle down,

meant was simply

a man who felt that a sharp smart now was better than a long agony of suspense hereafter. "Cases arise, and th

ight at the shepherd's, her wet arrival at his lodging, her indisposition from

our final word, and I know I can believe you, that the suspici

solemnly. "Absolute

n of their recent experiences, after the manner of friends; and when Jude had taken him round, and shown him some fe

e he saw his beloved ahead of him in the street leading up from the North Gate, walking as if no way looking for h

e was expected to take as an answer, though it was not one. Finding her to be in

Phillotson to-day?" h

e cross-examined about him; and if y

that-" He stoppe

ha

nice in your real presence

curiosity. "Well, that's strange; but I feel just the same abo

they were getting upon dangerous ground. It was no

was that which made me write and say-I didn't

or seemed to imply, was nullified by his intention, an

have," mu

ever told you my

ss it. I k

ce of his with Arabella; which in a few months had ceased to be a

went on with a gloomy tongue. "And you had bet

place of a romantic field or solemn aisle for his tale, it was told while they walked up and down over a floor littered with rotten cabbage-leaves, and amid all the usual squalors of decayed vegetable matter and unsaleable refuse. He

t you tell

t seemed so cr

. So it was better

nfidence seemed suddenly to have ended, and the antagonisms of sex to sex were left without any counter-poising predil

t the marriage," he continued. "I can't explain it precisel

ight love me, or something of the sort!-just out of charity-and all the time-oh, it i

till quite lately; so I felt it did not matter! Do you care for me

in the circumstances Sue

very pretty woman, even if she

enough, as far

than I am,

ave never seen her for years... But s

will the demi-gods in your Pantheon-I mean those legendary persons you call saints-intercede for you after this? Now if I had done such a thing it wo

you like to be-a perfect Voltaire!

urt woman: "Ah-you should have told me before you gave me that idea that you wanted to be allowed to love me! I had no feeling before that moment at

, dear!" h

eant to-love you; but becaus

s momentary desire was the means of her rallying. "No, no!" she said, drawing back stringently, and wiping her eyes. "Of

have ached less had she appeared anyhow but as she did appear; essentially large-minded and generous on reflect

olish? I do blame you a little bit for not telling me before. But, after all, it doesn't

, Sue! This is th

m engaged to somebody else. As to our going on together as we were going, in a sort of friendly way, the people round us would have made it unable to continue. Their views of the relations of man and woman are limited, as is proved by their

hey parted she had almost regained her vivacious glance, her reciprocity of tone, her gay ma

y. One was what I have said; another, that it was always impressed upon me that I ought

d to say th

aid it always ended b

y father used to s

mption: that a union between them, had such been possible, would have

with nervous lightness. "Our family have been un

riends and warm correspondents, and have happy genial times when they met, even if they met less frequently than before. Their parting was

I

two after passed across Ju

a somewhat serious kind by catching sight of the signature-which was in he

are to be married quite soon-in three or four weeks. We had intended, as you know, to wait till I had gone through my course of training and obtained my certificate, so as to assist him, if necessary, in the teachin

ou are to, and you mustn't re

orence Mar

en presently he went back to his work and laughed the usual bitter laugh of a man so confronted. Everything seem

e said as he worked. "You do

sons, practical and social, for her decision; but Sue was not a very practical or calculating person; and he was compelled to think that a pique at having his secret sprung upon her had moved her to give way to Phillotson's probable repre

t her; but he could not write the requested good wishes for a day or

it a trouble? I have been looking at the marriage service in the prayer-book, and it seems to me very humiliating that a giver-away should be required at all. According to the ceremony as there printed, my bridegroom chooses me of his o

orence Mar

elf up to heroic

s you have no house of your own, you do not marry from your school friend's, but from mine. It would be m

a new and terribly formal way? Surely you car

u

n-the phrase "married relation"-What an idiot it made him seem as her lover! If Sue had wri

thanks, accepting the convenience. Sue also thanked him. Jude immediately moved into more commodious quarters, as much to es

t she should come into residence on the following Saturday, which would allow of a ten days' s

a morning's work and pay, she said (if this were her true reason). But so well by this time did he know Sue that the remembrance of their mutual sen

ot know; their conversation was mechanical, though she did not look pale or ill. Phillotson came frequently, but mostly when Jude was absent. On the morning of the wedding, when Jude had given himself a holiday, Sue and her cousin had break

ter, Jude?" she

his chin on his hands, looking into a futurity w

noth

w. That's what they call t

ntitles him to be called that!" But he w

new view of things, and had taken breakfast apart. What oppressed Jude was the thought that, having done a wrong thing of this sort himself, he was aiding and abett

. By the irony of fate, and the curious trick in Sue's nature of tempting Providence at critical times, she took his arm as they walked through the muddy street-a thing s

e church,"

going to b

es

I should like to go in and see what the spot

f, "She does not realiz

loomy building was a charwoman cleaning. Sue still held Jude's arm, almost as if she loved him. Cruelly sweet, i

an find

ld fall, such a

o much for y

silence, turning then and walking down the nave again, her hand still on his arm, precisely like

the delicate voice of an epicure in emotions,

ou do!" s

er been done before. I shall walk down the church lik

ubt yo

this when you

wfully merciless! ... There,

o vex you! ... I suppose I ought not to have asked you to bring me in here. Oh, I oughtn't! I see it now. My cur

Jude's eyes were even wetter than

t Phillotson. But the first person they encountered on entering the main street was the schoolmaster himself, whose train had arrived sooner than Sue exp

she, smiling candidly. "We've been to the ch

Phillotson

ess; but she had gone too far not to explain all, which she acc

erfully as he could, "I am going to buy her another li

h him"; and requesting her lover not to be a

ared stiffer than it had been for the previous twenty years. Beyond this he looked dignified and thoughtful, and altogether a man of whom it was not unsafe to pre

oor when they came out. The schoolmaster and Sue were unknown, though Jude was getting to be recognized as a citizen; and the coup

dding-present, which turned out to be two or three yards of w

bonnet," she said. "I'

y," said Phillots

ferent 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 perverse that she wilfully gave herself and him pain for the odd and mournful luxury of practising long-suffering 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 w

ented his seeing the emotions of others. As soon as they had signed th

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 retaliatin

ned round, saying that she had forgotten somet

ck. "It is my handkerchief

to his eyes with her own tearful ones, and her lips suddenly parted as if she were going

I

whether it were that she had miserably wished to tell him of a lo

tempted to drown his misery in alcohol he went upstairs, changed his dark clothes for his

She could not possibly go home with Phillotson, he fancied. The feeling grew and stirred. The moment that the clock

had bee

e room adjoining his own in which she had slept so many previous days. Her actions were always unpredictable: why should she not come? Gladly would he have compounded for the denial of her as a sweetheart and wife by having her live thus as a fellow-lodger and

the larger stars made themselves visible as faint nebul? only. It was a new beginning of Sue's history. He projected his mind into the future, and saw her with children more or less in her own likeness around her. But the consolation of regarding them as a continuation of her identity was denied to him, as to all such dreamers, by the wilfulness of Nature in not allowing issue from one pa

blue sky as zinc. Then he received news that his old aunt was dangerously ill at Marygreen, which intelligence almost coincided with a letter from his former employer at Christminster, who offered him permanent work

ming her of the state of her aunt, and suggesting that she might like to see her aged relative alive. He would meet her at Alfredston Road, the following evening, Monday, on his way back from Christminster, if she

er seen the place look more beautiful. He came to the street in which he had first beheld Sue. The chair she had occupied when, leaning over her ecclesiastical scrolls, a hog-hair brush in her hand, her girlish figure had arrested the gaze of his inquiring eyes, stood precisely in its former

ar the ritualistic church of St. Silas. The old landlady who opened the door seemed glad to see him again, a

l to him; he felt it impossible to engage himself to return and stay in this place of vanished dr

e met Tinker Taylor, the bankrupt ecclesiastical ironmonger, at Fourways, who proposed that they should adjourn to a bar and drink together. They walked along the street till they stood before one of the great palpitating centres of Christminster life, the inn w

d been gutted and newly arranged throughout, mahogany fixtures having taken the place of the old painted ones, while at the back of the standing-space there were stuffed sofa-benches. The room was divided into compartments in the approved manner, between which were screens of ground g

unning along their front, on which stood precious liquids that Jude did not know the name of, in bottles of topaz, sapphire, ruby and amethyst. The moment was enlivened by the

the glass behind her was occasionally caught by his eyes. He had only observed this listlessly, when she turned he

than formerly, was accentuated by a bunch of daffodils that she wore on her left bosom. In the compartment she served stood an electro-plated fountain of water over a spirit-lamp, whose blue flame sent a steam from the top, all this being visib

ried gaily. "Mr. Cockman, what do you use to make your moustache curl so beautifu

ll have a cura?ao; a

ottles and striking a match held it to his ciga

from your husband late

ound," s

re i

ralia; and I suppos

yes grew

you part

estions, and you

g from me for the last quarter of an hour; and I'll rom

he caught her fingers and held them. There was a sligh

s life Arabella now seemed to be. He could not realize their nominal closeness. And, this being the

ered it, and went forward to the counter. Arabella did not recognize him for a moment. Then

thought you were und

O

e. But never mind! What shall I treat you to this afternoon? A Scotch and s

d." The fact was that her unexpected presence there had destroyed at a stroke his momentary

now you could ge

have you b

Sydney three months ago. I alway

ou came to

saw the situation in an advertisement. Nobody was likely to know me here,

return from

sons... Then you

N

en a re

N

rather reverend di

as I

her hands were smaller and whiter than when he had lived with her, and that on the hand which pulled the engine she wore an ornamental rin

ving a living husb

wkward if I called myself a w

known here

-for as I said I didn't expect

were

d evasively. "I make a very good living, a

lla was obliged to go and attend to him. "We can't talk here," she said, stepping back a moment. "Can't you wait till nine? Sa

, "I'll come back. I suppose w

ng! I'm not going t

and, as you say, we can't talk he

untrustworthy, he thought there might be some truth in her implication that she had not wished to disturb him, and had really supposed him dead. However, there was only one thing now to be done, and th

he town wherein he avoided the precincts of every cloister and hall, because he could not bear to behold them, he repaired to the tavern bar while the hundred and one strokes were resounding from the Great Bell of Cardinal College, a coincidence which seemed to him gratuitous irony. The inn was now brilliantly lighted up, and the scene

d from without the hubbub of their voices; but the customers were fewer at last. He nodd

we should not be seen going together." She drew a couple of liqueur glasses of brandy; and though she had evidently, from her countenance, already taken in enough alcoh

her. "I live quite near," she said, taking his arm, "and can let myself

ot go by; the probable disappointment of Sue that he was not there when she arrived, and the missed pleasure of her company on the

o-morrow morning. I thin

ore sympathy than a tigress with his relations or him, coming to the bedside of hi

suspicion that I have anything to do with you. As we are going towards the station, suppose we take the nine-forty train to Aldbrickham? We shall be there in little more than

you

ging. Sometimes when late I sleep at the hotel where I am

ade the half-hour's journey to Aldbrickham, where they entere

oilet to catch the train, Arabella looked a little frowsy, and her face was very far from possessing the animation which had characterized it at the bar the night before. When they came out of the sta

eble me!" he mu

?" sa

hich I came into Christmins

ck. And as I said, I shan't ask for the day to go with you to see your aunt. So perhaps we had bette

tting up this morning that you had somet

u promise? As an honest woman I wish you to know it... It was what I began telling you in the night-about tha

impatiently. "Of course I don

kept pressing me to marry him. I never thought of coming back to England again; and being out

-marr

es

-legally-i

ut I did! There, now I've told you. Don't round upon me! He talks of coming b

od pale

n't you tell me la

Won't you make it

nd' to the bar gentlemen you

Come, don't

Jude. "I have nothing at all to say

you take it like that I shall go back to him! He was very fond of me, and we lived honourable

a good deal; but perhaps it would be

ncy we've seen enough of one another for the present! I shall thi

urveyed Chief Street stretching ahead, with its college after college, in picturesqueness unrivalled except by such Continental vistas as the Street of Palaces in Genoa; the lines of the buildings being as distinct in the morning air as in an architectural drawing. But Jude was far from seeing or criticizing these things; they were hidden by an i

ess at the name than at the voice. To his great surprise no other than Sue stood like a vision before him-her loo

ck, uneven accents not far from a sob. Then she flushed as she

ached Marygreen alone, and they told me Aunt was a trifle better. I sat up with her, and as you did not come all night I was frightened about you-I thought that perhaps, when you found yourself back in the old city, you were upset at-at thinking I was-married, and not there as I used to

me up, and deliver m

the morning train and try t

er break out again as I did, I am sure. I may have been doing not

she said, the faintest pout entering into her tone, "you

at nine o'clock-too late for me to catch the train

trembling through her limbs, he felt heartily ashamed of his earthliness in spending the hours he had spent in Arabella's company. There was something rude and immoral in thrusting these recent facts of his life upon the mind of

ow my aunt is by this time... And so, Sue, you really came on my account

instead of going to bed when it got light I started. And now you

her-where they sat down side by side, Sue between him and the window. He regarded the delicate lines of her profile, and the small, tight, applelike convexities of her bodice, so different from

me; and yet we have been in such a hurr

essity," she qu

rhaps not..

he entreated. "It distresses me, rather. Forgive

though it would have been a relief to tell her of his meeting with an unexpected one. But the latter's final ann

al. Yet she seemed unaltered-he could not say why. There remained the five-mile extra journey into the country, which it was just as easy to walk as to drive, the greater part of it being uphill. Ju

l kept the conversation from herself. At l

or once, even against his principles-for he is strongly opposed to giving casual holidays-only I wouldn't let him. I felt it would be better to come alone. Aunt Drusilla, I knew,

illotson was being expressed. "Mr. Phillotson o

cour

to be a h

course

, as yet. It is not so many week

s in "The Wife's Guide to Conduct." Jude knew the quality of every vibration in Sue's voice, could read every symptom of her mental condition; and he was convinced that she was unhappy, although sh

od wishes now as alwa

ched him b

Bridehead, only you don't know it! Wifedom has not yet squashed up and d

ed, till she answered, "Nor has h

e said, shaking

had lived and quarrelled, he turned to look at it. A squalid family lived there now. He could not help saying to Sue:

you was what the school-h

very happy there a

ll she glanced at him to see how he was taking it. "Of course I may h

as good to me as a man can be, and gives me perfect liberty-which elderly husbands don't

nything against

y things to distr

ill

or other, in taking Phillotson as a husband, Sue fe

rs earlier. On ascending to the village and approaching the house they found Mrs. Edlin standing at the door, who at sight of them lifted her hands depr

lankets, and turning upon them a countenance like that of Sebastiano's Laz

that by a feller that don't know half as well as you do yourself! ... Ah-you'll rue this marrying as well as he!" she added, turning to Sue. "All our fam

most women m

to say you l

t to say anyt

e lov

ask me,

gs, but-there be certain men here and there that no woman of any niceness can stomach. I should have said

Jude followed her, and found

stress. "She means well, but is ve

, trying to dry her eyes. "I do

is it,

what she say

don't like him

hastily. "That I ought-perhaps

her aunt took rather kindly to Sue, telling her that not many young women newly married would have come so far to see

o the station, if y

rap, and Jude helped her into it, perhaps with unnec

me day, when I am back again at Mel

, dear-you are not to come yet. I

" said Jude

e waved her ha

I won't go!"

ncy to love her. He read sermons on discipline, and hunted up passages in Church history that treated of the Ascetics of the second century. Before he had returned from Marygreen to

r from her Australian husband, formerly manager of the hotel in Sydney. He had come to England on purpose to find her; and had taken a free, fully-licensed public, in Lambeth, where he wished her to join him in conducting

to join him as he urged. She could not help feeling that she belonged to him more than to Jude, since she had properly married him, and had lived with him much longer than with her first husband. In thus wishing Jude

Christminster was too sad a place to bear, while the proximity of Shaston to Melchester might afford him the glory of worsting the Enemy in a close engagement, such as was deliberately sought by the priests and virgins of the early Church, wh

y of Arabella for twelve hours seemed instinctively a worse thing-even though she had not told him of her Sydney husband till afterwards. He had, he verily believed, overcome all tendency to fly to liquor-which, indeed, he had never done from taste, but merely as an escape from intol

from notation with some accuracy. A mile or two from Melchester there was a restored village church, to which Jude had originally gone to fix the new

new hymn which Jude had heard of as being by a Wessex composer was to be tried and prepared for the following week. It turned out to

es. The score was in manuscript, the name of the composer being at t

ht up and educated in Christminster traditions, which accounts for the quality of the piece. I think he plays in the large church there, and has a surpliced

himself was about Sue and Arabella, and troubled as was his conscience by the complication of his position, how he would like to know that man! "He of all men would understand my diff

ge the very next Sunday. He duly started, early in the morning, for it was only by a series of crooked railways that he could get to

way further on. Also that the gentleman himself had

asked Jude

ong homeward

ouched felt hat no considerable distance ahead. Stretching out his legs yet more widely, he s

do so there and then, now that he had got here, the distance home being too great for him to wait till late in the afternoon. This man of soul would understand scant ceremony, a

rang the bell,

ng, and frank in manner, Jude obtained a favourable reception. He was neverthel

lchester," he said. "And we have this week practised 'The Fo

year or

think it supre

people-they want the copyright of an obscure composer's work, such as mine is, for almost less than I should have to pay a person for making a fair manuscript copy of the score. The one you speak of I have lent to various friends about here and Melchester, and so it

forth the various clarets, champagnes, ports, sherries, and other wines with which he purposed to initiate his new venture. It to

what it had been while Jude's appearance and address deceived him as to his position and pursuits. Jude stammered out somet

an he found awaiting him a letter which had arrived that morning a few minutes after he had left the house. It was a contrite little note from Sue, in which she said, with sweet humility, that she felt she had been horrid in t

r special intervention of Providence to keep him away from temptation. But a growing impatience of faith, which he had noticed in himself more than once of late, made him pass over in ridicule the idea that God sent people on fools' errands.

might come that afternoon if he wished, this being the earliest day on which she could welcome him, for she was now assistant-teache

t F

SHA

Man and the plain Exigence of Charity, let him profess Papist, or Pr

ancient Briti

ion first such str

ating atmosphere and limitless landscape around him can scarcely dispel. The spot was the burial-place of a king and a queen, of abbots and abbesses, saints and bishops, knights and squires. The bones of King Edward "the Martyr," carefully removed hither for holy preservation, brought Shaston a renown which made it the resort of pilgrims from every part of Europe, and enabled i

which were noted by many writers in ages when scenic beauty is said to have been unappreciated, are pass

en over three counties of verdant pasture-South, Mid, and Nether Wessex-being as sudden a surprise to the unexpectant traveller's eyes as the medicinal air is to his lungs. Impossible to a railway, it

thin living memory, horses, donkeys and men may have been seen toiling up the winding ways to the top of the height, laden with tubs

hree consolations to man, such as the world afforded not elsewhere. It was a place where the churchyard lay nearer heaven than the church steeple, where beer was more plentiful than water, and where there were more wanton women than honest wives and maids. It is also said that after the Middle Ages the inhabitants we

ly at fairs and markets. As strange wild birds are seen assembled on some lofty promontory, meditatively pausing for longer flights, or to return by the course they followed thither, so here, in this cliff-town, stood in stultified silence the yellow a

pupils were still in school, humming small, like a swarm of gnats; and he withdrew a few steps along Abbey Walk, whence he regarded the spot which fate had made the home of all he loved best in the world. In front of the schools, which were extensive and stone-built, grew two enormous beeches with smooth mouse-colour

peared dancing along the paths which the abbess, prioress, subprioress, and fifty nuns had demurely paced three centuries earlier. Retracing his steps he found that he had wai

n a few minutes. A piano stood near-actually the old piano that Phillotson had possessed at Marygreen-and though the dark afternoon almost prevented

e took no notice, till the person came close and laid her fingers lightly upon h

earnt it before I left Melchester. They

before you! P

l-I don

he, like him, was evidently touched-to her own surprise-by the recalled air; and when she had finished, and he

ce quite changed, "that I shoul

use w

that sor

asily

quite me

that sort, for you are

ot at

nd; and by an unpremeditated instinct

elinquished his quickly. "How funny!" she

we are both alike

ts! Perhaps a litt

ake one blaspheme that the composer of that hym

you kn

t to s

just what I should ha

e not alike,"

ncient dwelling across the way called Old-Grove Place. It is so antique and dismal that it depresses me dreadfully. Such houses are very well to visit, but not to live in-I feel crushed into th

t, and when she returned, followed by the maiden with tea, they sat down by the same

ng-presents to me," she sa

" sai

ange the subject he said, "Do you know of any good readable edition of the uncan

ne. I am not familiar with it now, though I was interested in i

ge to the "former friend"-by whom she meant, as he knew, the university co

here was ever a second silent conversation passing between their emotions, so perfect was the reciprocity between them. "It is quite like the genuine article. All cut up into verses, too; so tha

ing Divinity ha

ded him c

k at me like th

o you wan

norant of in that subject. You must have learnt

Will you be carving out at that church again

perh

you there? It is in this direction, and I coul

Don't

be friends, then, any l

N

thought you were always

I am

I thought we two-" The tremolo in

hink you are a flir

nly jumped up; and to his surprise he saw b

very much the reverse of what you say so cruelly-Oh, Jude, it was cruel to say that! Yet I can't tell you the truth-I should shock you by letting you know how I give way to my impulses, and how much I feel that I shouldn't have been provided with attractiveness unless it were meant to be exercised! Some women's love of being lo

e y

ntion! Honestly I don't think I am sorry.

had hardly gone from the door when, with a dissatisfied look, she jumped on a form and opened the iron casement of a

e coach that runs to meet it goes

do with yoursel

se. Perhaps I shall go an

have thought enough of churches, Heaven knows,

he

a day's work to come to see me! ... You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude. And a tragic Don Quixote. And sometimes yo

t he could not get at her, she seemed not to mind indu

es of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but

Jude. "When

her hand and stroked his forehead pitifully-just once

ched the Duke's Arms in the Market Place the coach had gone. It was impossible for him to get to the station on fo

rough the venerable graveyard of Trinity Church, with its avenues of limes, in the direction of the schools again. They were entirely in

house was built. Sue, evidently just come in, was standing with her hat on in this front parlour or sitting-room, whose walls were lined with wainscoting of panelled oak reaching from floor to ceiling, the latter being crossed by huge

photograph. Having contemplated it a little while she pre

andle in hand. It was too dark for her to see Jude without, but he could see her face

ourney home. "Whose photograph was she looking at?" he said. He had on

with gentle irreverence, called his demi-gods, would have shunned such encounters if they doubted their own strength. Bu

man did. The next morning but on

ere too free, under the influence of that morbid hymn

Floren

ace, when she subscribed herself at length thus. But, whatever h

lesson in renunciation which I sup

u

ther forces and laws than theirs were in operation. On Easter Monday morning he received a

s sinking.

e field across which the short cut was made to the village. As he ascended on the other side a labouring man, who had been watching his approac

d Mrs. Edlin had sent out the

like a doll wi' glass eyes; so it didn'

their beer, and gone, he sat down alone in the silent place. It was absolutely necessary to communicate wit

een taken almost suddenly. The

ther that she would come than that she would not. Having timed her by her only possible train, he locked the door about mid-day, and crossed the hollow field to the verge of the upland by the Brown House, where

k, while the passenger began ascending the hill. He knew her; and she looked so slender to-day that it seemed as if she might be crushed in the intensity of a too passionate embrace-such as it was not for him to give. Tw

"that it would be so sad to let you attend the

ful Sue!" m

e burial. A pathos so unusually compounded as that which attached to this hour was unlikely to repeat itself for years, if ever, and Jude woul

ortant funeral an hour later, three miles off. Drusilla was put into the new ground, quite away from her ancestors. Sue and Jude had gone

iage, from first to last

rly for members

s, and remained

sad family, don't

wives. Certainly we make unhappy

religious thing, it is possibly wrong; but if it is only a sordid contract, based on material convenience in householding, rating, and taxing, and the inheritance of land and money by ch

d so, anyho

couples, do you think, where one disl

ther cares for another

ce undulated, and he guessed things-"merely because she had a personal feeling against it-a physical objection-a fastidiousness, or whatever

ences go contrary to my dogmas. Speaking as an order-loving man-which I hope I am, though I fear I am not-I shoul

n a woman be unhappy who has only been marr

se fr

to go back by the six o'clock train. Y

affairs. This house is gone now.

ame from Sue. "I think not. Y

u to Shaston. You must stay and go back to-morrow. Mrs. E

ously. "I didn't tell him

ining, to let her know; and returni

anced, Sue-horrible!" he said abrup

! W

ought not to have married him. I saw it before you had done it,

s you assume a

through your feathers

e, and Jude put his upon

ore strict and formal than you, if it comes to that; and that you should obj

e fancied it was a sort of trick of ours-too frequent perhaps.

; ve

must te

ho

cha

essary. But as it means nothing it

re you mean it o

have no feelings o

. How has it

een Ara

then said curiously,

s at Chris

u never told me! I suppose

as you live wi

for want of attention, and through them at the outer distance, till he

to say to me is still true-I mean if it were true then! Of course

nce, I suppose, he

e resentment. "You are teasing me-that'

w. I don't w

rything; and he is very interesting, from the amount of general knowledge he has acquired by reading everything that comes in his way

what they feel

ion, and she had to go on unaided, which she

him-it is a torture to me to-live with him as a husband!-There, now I have let it out-I couldn't help it, although I have been-pretending I am happy.-Now you'll have a contempt

oman shrinks from-in the early days of her marriage-she shakes down to with comfortable indifference in half a dozen years. But that is much like sayi

d, "I thought there was something w

responsive to this man whenever he wishes, good as he is morally!-the dreadful contract to feel in a particular way in a matter whose essence is its voluntariness! ... I wish he would beat me, or be faithless to me, or do some open thing that I could talk about as a justificat

ce against hers-or rather against h

you not

ugh my being married before we met, didn't it? You would have

erself, went out of the house. Jude did not follow her. Twenty minutes later he saw her cross the village green towards M

it disappeared behind the night shade. He knew that Sue was sitting within its walls equally

ed by a shrill squeak that had been familiar enough to him when he lived regularly at Marygreen. It was the cry of a rabbit caught in a gin. As was the little creature's habit, it did

uld tug during the ensuing six hours till the iron teeth of the trap had stripped the leg-bone of its flesh, when, should a weak-springed instrument enable it to escape, it would die in th

light of the moon went across the green in the direction of the sound. He reached the hedge bordering the widow's garden, when he stood still. The faint click of the trap as dr

casement at a window on the ground floor of the adjacent cottage

, de

nking of what it suffered, till I felt I must come down and kill it! But I am so glad yo

he was visible down to her waist. She let go the casement-stay an

p you awake

was

was t

t a married woman in trouble of a kind like mine commits a mortal sin i

at may have been my view; but my do

ur belief. But-I am so glad to see you!-and, oh, I didn't mean to

said. "I'll never care about my doctrines or my religion any more! Le

't admit so much as that. There! Guess what yo

re happy, what

, for me to tell my distress to you, if I had been able to tell it to anybody else. But I have nobody. And I must tell somebody! Jude, before I married him I had never thought out fully what marriage meant, even though I knew. It was idiotic of me-there is no excuse. I was old enough, and I thought I was very experienced. So I rushed on, when I had got into that training

er, darling Sue! H

st go i

carcely perceptible little kiss upon the top of his head, withdrawing quickly, so that he could not put his arms

I

ecurred to Jude's mind all the

oot down the hill path which led into the lonely road to Alfredston. An hour passed before he returned along the

fully that it was hardly proper of him as a parson in embryo to think of such a thing as kissing her even in farewell as he now wished to do. Then she had conceded that the fact of the kiss would be nothing: all would

oth had looked round simultaneously. That look behind was fatal to the reserve hitherto more or less maintained. They had quickly run back, and met, an

sistent for him to pursue the idea of becoming the soldier and servant of a religion in which sexual love was regarded as at its best a frailty, and at its worst damnation. What Sue had said in warmth was really the cold truth. When to defend his affection tooth and nail, to persis

ostleship-had also been checked by a woman. "Is it," he said, "that the women are to blame; or is it the artificial system of things, u

of personal gain. Yet with a wife living away from him with another husband, and himself in love erratically, the loved one

confront the obvious, which was that he had made himsel

re not saleable at a much higher price than waste-paper value, and preferred to get rid of them in his own way, even if he should sacrifice a little money to the sentiment of thus destroying them. Lighting some loose pamphlets to begin

here now, passing cottagers talk

e? Ay; a lot gets heaped up in nooks and corner

ned the paper shreds with the fork, the sense of being no longer a hypocrite to himself afforded his mind a relief which gave him calm. He might go on believing as before, but he professed nothing, and no longer owned a

he was not a lover, and made her give way to an impulse to act unconventionally, if not wrongly. She was inclined to call it the latter; for Sue's logic was extraordinarily compounded, and s

least for a long time, to impress him with my dignity! And I hope it will hurt him very much-expecting a letter to-morrow morning, and the next, and the next, and no letter coming. He'll suf

ite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation with Phillotson, possibly wi

n telling her of his day's doings, and how his friend Gillingham, a neighbouring schoolmaster whom he had not seen for years, had called upon him. While ascending to th

my hand a long while. I don't k

far different mould, said vaguely, "O

He wanted to,

m. I should think it

judge, he might have entered on his notes the curious fact that Sue had place

ce-numbers, it was a quarter to twelve o'clock. Entering their chamber, which by day commanded a view of some thirty or forty miles over the Vale of Blackmoor, and even into Outer Wessex, he went to the window, and, pressing his face against the pane, gazed with ha

. Thinking Sue was

lator in the class-room. The wind blows down upo

the dilapidated "Old-Grove Place," and the massive chimney-piece reaching to the ceiling, stood in odd contrast to the new and shining brass bedstead, a

eing the way in which

ave forgotten some kitchen detail and gone downstairs for a moment to see to it, he pulled off his coat and idled quietly e

in her voice, from the

there at midnight-tiring

m reading; and there

as not there, even now. Lighting a candle he hastily s

nd. Under the staircase was a large clothes-closet, without a window; they seemed to come from it. The door was shut, but

doing in the

ou I came here, a

d no ventilation! Why, you'll be

not. Don't tro

a piece of string, which broke at his pull. There being no bedstead she had flung down som

she sprang out of her lai

" she cried excitedly. "It is not becoming i

wn against the shadowy lumber-hole that he was quite wo

iven you every liberty; and it is mons

rong and wicked of me, I suppose! I am very sor

s then

suppose-things in general, becau

vant.) "Just think if either of the parsons in this town was to see us now! I hate such eccentricities, Sue. There's no order or regularity in your

ownstairs. There was a little nest where she had lain, and spiders' webs hung overhead. "Wha

st upon the pavement-or rather roadway, pavements being scarce here-which was two or three feet above the

at once; "would you mind

ere doing when I married you. What th

me any the better

object

d how I was turned out of the training school you had taken such time and trouble to prepare me for and get me into; and this frightened me and it seemed then that the one thing I could do would be to let the engagement stand. Of course I, of all people, ought not to have cared what was said, for it was just what I fancied I never did

that I weighed its probability an

id with pain

't doub

ou inq

k his

said. "But you haven't answered me. Will you let me

irreg

should be classified. If people are at all peculiar in character they have to

we ma

ances," she burst out, "if they make you miser

mitting a sin in

t... For a man and woman to live on intimate terms when one feels as I do is adultery,

, Susanna, by su

be looked after. Then we might be friends, and meet without pain to either. Oh Richard, be my friend and have pity! We shall both be dead in a few years, and then what will it matter to anybody that you re

urts me! And you

e to bind yourself to love always as to believe a creed always,

living away from me

ted, yes. But I mea

his

I ch

tson w

life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the apelike one of imitation.' J. S. Mill'

fe! Do you mind my saying that I have guessed what never once occurred to me

begun. But do you suppose that if I had been I sho

uch a convincing argumentum ad verecundiam as she, in her loss of courage at the last moment, meant it to appear. She was beginning to be

ugh the glass partition whenever he turned his eyes that way. As he went on giving and hearing lessons his forehead and eyebro

to work at all. I don't know what

d of her pretty head as she read it, her lips slightly crisped, to prevent undue expression under fire of so many young eyes. He could not see her hands, but she changed her position, and

ry to say that it

lace of his brows twitched again. In ten minutes he called up t

you comfortable and happy. But I cannot agree to such a preposterous notion as your goin

part was enacted in the cl

(to quote your Humboldt) is to my mind far above respectability. No doubt my tastes are low-in your view-hopelessly l

returned

rote

't bear! No poor woman has ever wished more than I that Eve had not fallen, so that (as the primitive Christians believed) some harmless mode of vegetation mig

sed, and then he r

know I don't! Give me a little time. I a

ne fro

rt, Richard. I do not

her through the glazed partition; and he f

emed more composed under the new arrangement; but the irksomeness of their position worked on her temperament, and the fibre

ted hobby of Roman antiquities. For the first time since reviving the subject he felt a return of his old interes

t to the room that he and his wife had occupied when he first became a tenant of Old-Grove Place, which

ut upon the floor on the side away from him, which was towards the window. This was somewhat hidden by the canopy of the bedstead, and in a moment he heard her flinging up th

e steps to the level of the ground, and there on the gravel before him lay a white heap. Phillotson seized it in his arms, and bringing Sue into t

and though not particularly large in general they appeared so now. She pressed her side and rubbed

! Though it's not for want of

s of the old rooms and to the high level of the ground without. Beyond a sc

him. "And something frightened me-a terrible dream-I thought I saw you-

on flung it round her. "Shall I help you upstairs?" he asked drearily; f

ard. I am very litt

cally said, as if lecturing in school. "T

't lock. All the doo

Then he fastened up the front door, and returning, sat down on the lower stairs, holding the newel with one hand, and bowing his face into the other. Thus he remained for a long long time-a pitiable object enough to one who had seen h

of Shaston, saying he required no tea, and not informing Sue where he was going. He descended from the town level by a steep road in a north-wester

fe is the tra

tour's a-ro

increasing obscurity of evening. Agai

rey-topp

re, as pa

y..

just discern the pinnacled tower of Trinity Church. The air down here, tempered by the thick damp bed of tenacious clay, was not as it

h the shade, as a man goes on, night or day, in a district over which he

receives h

eere founta

ttle town of three or four thousand inhabitants-where he went on to

in as he could. He discovered his friend putting away some books from which he had been giving evening lessons. The light of the paraffin lamp fell on Phillotson's face-pale and wretch

But you don't look wel

g, and Gillingham closed the cupboa

you were out; and upon my word it is such a climb after dark that I have been waiting

ters, they occasionally used a dialect-word

will understand my motives if other people question them anywhen-as they may, indeed certainly will... But anythi

n-anything wrong between

ho not only does not love me, but-but- Well, I won't sa

sh

and I took advantage of her inexperience, and toled her out for walks, and got her to agree to a long engagemen

g the

athy, or similarity, between the pair. He is her cousin, which perhaps accounts for some of it. They seem to be one person split in two! And with her unconquerable aversion to myself as a husband, even though she may like me as a friend, 'tis too much to bear longe

t over it,

om by accident, she jumped out of window-so strong was her dread of me! She pretended it was a dream, but that was to soothe me. Now when a woman jumps out of window without caring whether she breaks her neck

t her go? And w

ong in refusing her. I, like other men, profess to hold that if a husband gets such a so-called preposterous request from his wife, the only course that can possibly be regarded as right and proper and honourable in him is to refuse it, and put her virtuously under lock and key, and murder her lover perhaps. B

tion of neighbours and society

philosopher any longer! I on

o tell the truth, that such a sedate, plodding fellow as you should have entertained such a c

trinsically a good woman, while she has pleaded for releas

ful to say

anliness 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 ch

leave you, provided she kept to herself. But to g

d, 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

ato

t are their names-Laon and Cythna. Also of Paul and Virginia a l

'd be a general domestic disintegration. Th

r a very bright reasoner, you remember. ... And yet, I don't see why

atriarchy! ... Does s

have out-Sued Sue in this-al

d opinion hereabout. Good

know-I don't know! ... As I say, I

d a bottle of cider-wine, of which they drank a rummer each. "I think you are rafted, and not yourself," he continued. "Do g

s of it! Well, I won't stay.

ltation, singular as its subject was, would be the renewal of their old comradeship. "Stick to her!" w

audible but that of the purling tributaries of the Stour, he said, "So G

ght to her senses-that's what I think!" mu

e, and at breakfast

u will. I absolutely and

tably the true one. His mild serenity at the sense that he was doing his duty by

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

egg, or something with your tea? You can't

rivial questions of housekeeping, such as where he would find the key

ithout 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,

sed to, I will do it with so much pleasure!" she said with amenable gentl

his reason, that I don't wish to ask you any questions, and particularly wish you not to give me informati

ey to go away from you with! I don't want any either. I have enough

him, if you don't mind. You are free,

, and one or two little things besides that are my very own. I wish you would look into my trunk

ousehold furniture. I don't want to be bothered with it. I have a sort of affection for a little of it tha

shall ne

y train, don't you? It i

seem very sorry I

-perha

o regard you as not my husband, but as my old teacher, I like you. I won't be so affected as

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 unders

ken. Soon the noise of its wheels died away. He came down then, his face compressed like that of one bearing pain;

e voice of his friend Gillingham

door open I walked in, and made myself comf

you, Gillingham, particul

is

out of only an hour ago. And that's the plate she-" Phillotson's throat got

y the by?" he asked pres

d Gillingham, preoccupie

me of the law. She is, as I understand, gone to join her lover. What they a

son's pronouncement which restrained his fri

have come. I have some articles to arr

all Sue's things that she had left behind, and laying them in a large box. "She wouldn't take all I wanted h

e stopped at an agr

man in the world on the question of marriage-in fact I had never thought critically about

ntly. When it was done Phillotson

orn her in somebody's ey

e this time Sue had written

ather frightened, and therefore ask you to be sure you are on the Melchester platform to meet me. I arrive at a little to seven. I know you

our m

mountain town-the single passenger that evening-she regarded the r

emed strange that such a powerful organization as a railway train should be

he 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 th

r tense state caused her to simmer over in a little su

acked. Besides this bag I've on

out? Aren't we go

ny rate, am well known. I've booked for Aldbrickham; and here's

uld have stayed h

't have do

erhaps

cided on. Aldbrickham is a much bigger town-sixty or seventy

ven up your cath

een made to finish out the week. But I pleaded urgency and I was let off. I would hav

ning your prospects of the Church; ruinin

e to me. Let it lie!

-saints who

ach to his po

My point of bliss is

king up in her voice the emotion that had begun in his. But she re

she resumed. "And here's a note I found

, glancing at the note. "And I am ashamed of

ly," she answered smiling. "But I am so cold, or devoid of gratitude, or so something, that even this generosity hasn't made me love

he had been less kind, and you had run

ver would

he suddenly kissed her; and was going to kis

r a silence. "Arabella has actually written to ask me to get a divorce from her-in kindness to her, she says. She

ave you

ant to injure her in any way. Perhaps she's no worse than I am, after all! But nobody knows about it over here, and I find it

ou'll b

shall

he asked, with the discontin

kham, as

very late when

I wired for a room for us a

ne

s-o

st the corner of the compartment. "I thought you might do

d themselves with a stultified expression on

comfited he was she put her face against h

. "But-I understood it like that..

such a question; and I shan

ing more than a mere-selfish fellow, I hope. Have it as you wish!" On reflection his brow showed perplexity. "But perhaps it is that you don't love

is moment. I may hold the opinion that, in a proper state of society, the father of a woman's child will be as much a private matter of hers as the cut of her underlinen, on whom nobody will have any right to question her. But partly, perhaps, because it is by his generosity that I am now free, I would rather not be other th

ot lovers, we are not. Phillotson thought so, I am sure. See, here is wh

ay be cruel at times. You are made for each other: it is obvious, palpable, to any unbiased older pe

o resigned almost! I never was so near being in love with him as when he made such thoughtful arrangements for my being comfortable

don't,

so terribly t

Nor anybody perhaps! Sue, sometimes, when I am vexe

ng for you is not as some women's perhaps. But it is a delight in being with you, of a supremely delicate kind, and I don't want to go further and risk it by-an attempt to intensify it! I

ou do like me very much, Sue? Say you do! Say that you do a

iss me, and tha

once o

't be a g

f which she had told him-of the poor Christminster graduate whom she had handled thus, ret

king a cat's paw of me with Phillotson all this time. Upon my

ou did kiss me just now, you know; and I didn't dislike you to, I own it, Jude. Only I don't

e well knew). And they sat side by side with join

t Temperance Inn, after you

y n

see wel

nce your marrying Phillotson because of a stupid scandal, that under the affectatio

's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him t

or old chap, and then repented, and to make reparation, mar

ike that-that and the scandal together-and your conc

, and soothed her, saying: "There, dear; don't mind! Crucify me, i

I know you think that!" she said

whom neither length nor breadth, nor thing

arrived at Aldbrickham, the county town of North Wessex. As she would not go to the Temperance Hotel because of the form of his telegram, Jude inquired for another; and a youth who volunteered

id not at first recognize the place. When they had engaged their respective rooms they w

coming here once before-late, just like this, with his wife-a lady, at an

sickness of heart. "Though I think you

handsome, full-figured wo

plaintively, at their parting that night upon the landing, "it is not so nice and pleasant as it use

eem, dear! Why do y

as cruel to b

hy

with Arabella. There

same! I really didn't know it, Sue. Well-it is not cruel, si

it you were here?

nster, when we went back to Marygreen

ry was that you had met as estranged people, who were not husband an

p," he said sadly. "

ou, my last hope! And I sha

are only to be friends, not lovers!

can be

have to concede everything to you. After all, you

hat he was obliged to take her into her room and close the door lest the people should hear. "Was it this room? Yes it was-I

, after all, my l

nees Sue buried her fa

dog-in-the-manger feeling," said Jude. "I

g? Why don't you? Why are you so g

out of

't exp

er feelings very well. But he did a litt

ired nobody in the world but me at th

and don't now!" said Jud

have thought m

either-women never do! Why should you

or that, perhaps I would have gone on to the Temperance Hotel, after a

consequence!" sai

left you of her own accord years and years ago! My sense of it was, that

et I must tell you one thing, which would settle the matter in any case. She has married

a crime-as the world treat

all never inform against her! And it is evidently a prick of conscience in her that has led her to urge me to

hing of this when you saw her?"

things, I don't think you

shan't go to the

et, tantalizing phantom-hardly flesh at all; so that when I put my arms round you I almost expect them to pass through you as through air! Forgive me for being gross, as you call it! Remember

hidion' as if they meant me!" she solicited, slanting

ny poetry," he r

These are

Being whom m

sioned wander

*

aven, too gent

that radiant f

so I won't go on! But s

dear; exactl

She put the tip of her finger gingerly to her cheek; and he did as command

id with a sigh; and

ey did not honour him for his miscellaneous acquirements as he would have been honoured elsewhere, retained for him a sincere regard. When, shortly aft

without remark, Sue's services having been of a provisional nature only. When, however, a month had passed, and Phillotson casually admitted to an acquaintance that he did not know where his wife was staying, curiosity be

not allow him to do so when misapprehensions as to Sue's conduct spread abroad. On a Monday morning the chairman of the sch

this true as to your domestic affairs-that your wife's going away was on

otson. "There was n

one to vis

N

at has h

s that usually call for condolence wi

as if he had not app

over, and I let her. Why shouldn't I? A woman of full age, it was a question of her own conscien

ds, said that Mr. Phillotson had helped in his wife's packing, had offered her what money she required, and had written a friendly letter to her young man, telling him to take care of her. The chairman of committee thought the matter over, and talked

ey have requested me to send in my resignation on account of my scandalous conduct in giving

nk I w

t doesn't affect me in my public capacit

see, they have to consider what you did as done by a teacher of youth-and its effects as such upon the

, however, Phillots

gning I acknowledge I have acted wrongly by her; when I am more and more convinced every day t

t he should not accept dismissal; and called a public meeting, which he attended, although he looked so weak and ill that his friend implored him to stay at home. When he stood up to give his reasons for contesting the decision of the managers he advanced them firmly, as he had done to his friend, and contended, moreover

own were against Phillotson to a man. But, somewhat to his surprise, s

. Although Phillotson had never spoken to one of these gentlemen they now nobly led the forlorn hope in his defence. The body included two cheap Jacks, a shooting-gallery proprietor and the ladies who load

s split, three panes of the school windows were broken, an inkbottle was spilled over a town-councillor's shirt front, a churchwarden was dealt such a topper with the map of Palestine that his head went right through Samaria, and many black eyes and bleeding noses were given, one of which, to everybody's horror, was the venerable incumbent's,

he pathetic state of mind of a middle-aged man who perceives at length that his life, intellectual and domestic, is

ng about me!" said Phill

't know yo

better for

er lover and

e; at least he was livi

r, the letter being enclosed in an envelope addressed to Jude at the diocesan capital. Arriving at that place it was forwarded to Ma

ws like tongues of fire to the eyes of the rustics in that vale, the sick man fancied that he heard somebody come to the house, and a f

-like the flitting in of a moth. He turned his eyes upon her, a

"But I heard you were ill-very ill; and-and as I know that you recogniz

ll, my dear frie

raid that only a severe illness

ittle too soon-that's all I mean. Still, let us make the b

at abo

nother place. The managers and I don't ag

talked on slight and ephemeral subjects, and when his tea was brought up he told the amazed little servant that a cup was to be set for Sue. That young person was much more interested in their history than

crossing the mist of the vale. But I lose them all, as

e this particular one? I

! But I

help y

stead can't

e how I

rried it to a spot by the window where it could catch the sunshine,

re it will cheer you-I do so hope it will!" She spoke with a chil

he murmured as the sun glowed in his eyes. "The id

e doesn't know I have come; he was out when I started; so I must return home almost directly. Richard,

k so," said Phillotson husk

she put her hand in his or rather allowed it to flit through his; for she was significantly light in touch. She had nearly clos

knew it while he pursued it. But

to make it up, and stay? I'll for

!" she said hastily. "Yo

now, in effect, yo

is obtaining a divorce

together news to me

a bad ma

e yo

hers. She wrote and told him it would be a kindness to her, sinc

ess to her to release her altogether... But I

ack now I have been so wicke

ever he changed from friend to husband, and which made her adopt any line of

to go, even now.

must. As you are not so ill

t shamefacedness at letting even him know what a slipshod lack of thoroughness, from a man's point of view, characterized her transferred allegiance, prevented her telling him of her, thus far, incomplete relat

although, there and back, it was a journey of nine miles, which had to be performed between tea and supper, after a hard day's work in school. When he called on

nce you called last

s. Phil

es

have ma

h her little white hand, played the though

anged! A li

do you

noth

do you

, capricious little woman!

esn't belong to me? I know-I feel absolutely certain-that she would welcome my taking such a step as the greatest charity to her. For though as a fellow-creature she sympathizes with, and pities me, and even weeps for me, as a husband she cannot endure me-she loathes me-there's no use in mincing words-she loathes me, and my only manly, and dignified, and merciful course is to complete what I have begun... And for worldly reasons, too, it will be better for her to be independent. I have hopele

e, too? A queer co

n do her no possible harm, and will open up a chance of happiness for her which she has never

gently, for he respected views he could not share. "But I think you are righ

t F

CKHAM AND

re they have an upward tendency, still in obedience to the disposition of the unive

ver the series of dreary months and incidents that followed the events of the

en themselves when she left Shaston to join him the year before. The proceedings in the law-courts had r

ounds a year, with three-pounds-ten extra for rates and taxes, and furnished with his aunt's ancient and lumbering goods

s morning Sue held up a le

it about?" he sai

son versus Phillotson and Fawley, pronounced

Jude, as

t a month or two earlier. Both cases had been too insignificant to be reported

u can do what you like!" He loo

as free now as if we ha

ergyman may object personally to remarry y

ow it is generally. But I have an uncomfortable feeling

ow

nced. It is only, is it, because we have made no defence, and have led them into

alse pretences? You have only yours

o be touchy about that still

s to your question, we were not obliged to prove anything

h not in th

ngs are done for us in a rough and ready fashion. It was the same with me and Arabella. I was afraid her criminal second marriage would have been discovered, and she punished; but nobody too

the fields, even if they had to put up with a cold dinner on account of it. Jude agreed, and Sue went up-stairs and pre

e said, "like any other engaged

se were frosty now, and the extensive seed-fields were bare of colour and produce. The pair, however

of all this is that we can m

can," said Sue, w

n't we g

done all along. I have just the same dread lest an iron contract should extinguish y

do? I do love you,

iving now, and only meeting by day. It is so much sweeter-for the woman at least, and when she is

ng, I own," said he, with some gloom; "either owing to our own di

id of you, Jude, the moment you had contracted to cherish me under a Government stamp, and I was licensed to be loved on the

!" he expostulated; yet there was

ove. If the marriage ceremony consisted in an oath and signed contract between the parties to cease loving from that day forward, in consideration of personal possession being given, and to avoid each other's society as much as possible in public, ther

possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort. No doubt my father and mother, and your father and mother, saw it, if they at all resembled us in habits of observation. But then they went and married just the same, because they had ordin

you think. Fewer women like marriage than you suppose, only they enter into it for the dignity it is assumed to confer

women that they must never admit the full truth to a man. But the highest form of affection is based on full sincerity on both sides. Not being men, these women don't know that in looking back on those he has had tender relations with, a man's heart returns closest to her who was the soul of truth in her conduct. T

lty look; and she suddenly replied in a tragic voice: "

t you

ugh I suppose I am so bad and worthless tha

r. But as slippery as an eel when I

d don't want scolding as I do... But now that I have nobody but you, and nobody to defend me, it is very h

t is too wicked of you to be so pettish! Now we won't say any more about it, and go on just the same as we have done; and du

at the back of his little house, where in the intervals of domestic duties she marked out the letters full size for him, and blacked them in after he had cut them. It was a lower class of handicraft than were his former performances as a cathedral mason, and his only patrons were the poor people who lived in his own neighbourhood, and

ll not far off. When he entered, Sue, who had been keeping indoors during his absence, laid out supper for him. Contrary to custom sh

pressed, Su

"I have a message f

dy has

hands in her lap, and looked into the fire. "I don't know whether I did right or not!" she continued. "I sa

I suppose she wanted a head

a headstone; and I thought you couldn't see her

s she? Didn

me. But I know who she was-I

ld Arabella come for? What

erfectly certain it was-by the light in her eyes as

speech, though she may be getting so by this time under the duti

But yes!-

aiving that, as she is nothing to me, and virtuously ma

married? Have you

sked me to release her. She and the man both

her hand. "And I am so miserable! It seems such an ill omen, whatev

inful to talk to her now-for her as much as for me. H

went away ver

ed to go to bed. He had no sooner raked out the fire, fastened the doors, and got to the top of the

n!" Sue whispered

o you

d like that

he summons were to be responded to one of them would have to do it in person. "I'll op

reet of early retiring workpeople was empty from end to end save of one

here?" h

from the woman, in a voice whi

lied tha

Sue from the door

. "What do you want, A

mbly. "But I called earlier-I wanted particularly to see you to

uble, a

es

y seemed to be rising in Jude's breast at th

t another situation as barmaid soon. But it takes time, and I really am in great distress because of a sudden responsibilit

ainful tension, hearing ev

f money, Arabella?" he asked,

t's lodging I have obtained, but b

are you

't like to call out particulars of myself so loud. If you could come down and walk a little way with me towa

the matter, I suppose," said Jude in much perplexity. "As

from the doorway. "Oh, it is only to entrap you, I know it is, as she did before! Don't go,

e, Sue. God knows I love her little enough now, but I d

wife!" cried Sue d

t either, dear,

e! Please, please stay at home, Jude, and not go

o be, and I've waited with the patience of Job, and I don't see that I've got anything by my self-denial. I

rself, she also trotted down, sobbing articulately as she went. She listened. She knew exactly how far it was to the inn that Arabella had named as her lodging. It would occupy about seven minutes to get there at an ordinary walking pace; seven to come back again. If he did not retur

as if the whole time had nearly elapsed when

. "Oh, I knew I could trust yo

She has walked on, thinking I've been so hard-hearted as to refuse her requests

or a woman who has served you so badly!" sa

nce cared for her; and one can't

ou mustn't go out to find her! It isn't right! You can't join her, now sh

pull on his boots. "What those legal fellows have been playing at in London makes no difference in my real r

-you'll come straight back, after a few minutes, won't you, dear? She

dance on you so long for such poor returns! All that's best and noblest in me loves you, and your freedom from everything that's gross has elevated me, and enabled me to do what I should never have dreamt myself capable of, or any man, a year or two ago. It is all very well to preach about self-control, and the wickedness of coercing a woman.

to me, Jude; I know you

me for help. I must go out an

eemed to tear her heart. "I have nobody but you, Jude, and you are deserting me! I didn't

f you

dn't mean to! And I didn't want to marry again, either! ... But, yes-I agree, I agree! I d

d, sexless creature, am I, for keeping you at such a distance? I am sure

marriage to-morrow, or a

, Ju

unfair to her. She is not like you, my darling, and never was: it is only bare justice to say that. Don't cry any more. T

morning i

call about the banns at once, so as to get the first publishing done to-mo

ment was running on something else. A glow had passed

uble, and what she wished to tell you! Perhaps it was really something she was justified in telling you. That's some more of my badness, I suppose! Love has its o

on all right," sa

ets in the rain. Do you mind my putting on my waterproof and goin

how Arabella is able to shift for herself. Still

e mood; and this going to see all sorts of extraordinary persons whose relation to her was precisely of a kin

ded, "I'll be ready to go about

d returning his kisses in a way she had never done before. Times had decidedly cha

sted," he a

hat her predecessor in Jude's affections would recognize her, she sent up word that a friend from Spring Street had called, naming the place of Jude's residence. She was asked to step upstairs, and on being shown

forerunner now, with the daylight full upon her. She may have seemed handsome enough in profile under the lamps, but a frowsiness was apparent this morning; and the

y last night, that's all," she said gently. "I was afr

suppose you call yourself?" said Arabella, flinging her head back upon the pillows with a di

don't,"

f he's not really yours. Decency is d

," said Sue stiffly. "He is

n't yes

eate, and said,

ar, you've been quick about it, and I expect my visit last night

r hanging on the looking-glass, just as it had done in Jude's time; and wished she had not come. In t

she lay, and her ruf

as made me all along. See here! This is in answer to one from me." She held out the telegram for Sue to read, but Sue did not take it. "He asks me to come back. His little corner public in Lambeth would go to pieces without me, he says. But he isn't going

y day," returned Sue

ng what a man med do-you'll have the sticks o' furniture, and won't be looked upon as a thief. I shall marry my man over again, now he's willing, as there was a little flaw in the first ceremony. In my telegram last night which this is an answer to, I told him I had almost made it up with Jude; and that frightened him, I expect! Perhaps I should quite have done it if it hadn't been for you," she said laughing; "and

ural marriage a legal one," said Sue, with yet more dignity.

Arabella, eyeing her visitor with humorous critici

-I must go," s

six-foot sojer! ... Just a moment, dear," she continued, putting her hand on Sue's arm. "I really did want to consult Jude on a little matter of business, as I told him. I came about tha

I

rds their marriage. She clasped his arm, and they went along silently together, as tr

said at last. "I wish I hadn't! And ye

she wa

en summoned back, and would be enabled to retrieve her position. "I was referring to our old question. What Arabella has been saying to me has made me feel more than ever how h

do for me. I thought you might l

by your family and mine, dear, I think I may set staunchness. So I am not a bit frightened about losing you, now I really am yours and you really are mine. I

a mere Christian country. I almost expect you to say at these times that you have just been talking to some friend whom you met in the Via Sacra, about the latest news of Octavia or

Sue stood back, while her lover went up to the door.

oked

nute, woul

e back

imidly. "I had such a horrid dr

bella say to

e with you by law, we shall be so happy as we are now? The men and women of our family are very generous when everything depends upon their goodwill, but they always kick again

frighten me, too, with all this forebodi

And they turned from the clerk's door, Sue taking

p the bee f

dove's neck

fetter'd

to live on in a dreamy paradise. At the end of a fortnight or three weeks matters remai

Jude went up to Sue's room and told her, and as soon as she was dressed she hastened down. Sue opened the newspaper; Jude the letter. After glancing

!" sa

d advertisement was simply the announcement of a marriage at St. John's Church, Waterloo

d. However, she is provided for now in a way, I suppose, whatever her faults, poor thing. It is nicer that we are able t

y glanced at the announcement he said in a disturbed

e Horns,

, living with my father and mother. All that is easily provable. As I had separated from you before I thought such a thing was going to happen, and I was over there, and our quarrel had been sharp, I did not think it convenient to write about the birth. I was then looking out for a good situation, so my parents took the child, and he has been with them ever since. That was why I did not mention it when I met you in Christminster, nor at the law proceedings. He is now of an intelligent age, of course, and my mother and father have lately written to say that, as they have rather a hard struggle over there, and I am settled comfortably here, they don't see why they should be

la Car

smay. "What will you do,

Sue watched him anxiou

he's mine. I cannot think why she didn't tell me when I met her at Christminster, and came on here that evening with her! ... Ah-I do

e wanted by nobody!" Sue r

e beggarly question of parentage-what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, a

here! And if he isn't yours it makes it all the better. I do hope he isn't-though perhaps I ought

. Just think of his life in a Lambeth pothouse, and all its evil influences, with a parent who doesn't want him, and has, indeed, hardly seen him, and a stepfather who doesn't know him

h

, I am really entitled t

est I can to be a mother to him, and we can afford to keep

of a few week

l we have courage

ll. It remains with you entirely, de

the bo

tain

natural home for him,

aking no remark whatever on the surprising nature of Arabella's information, nor vouchsafing a single word of opinion

shine in the lamplight. In the band of his hat his half-ticket was stuck. His eyes remained mostly fixed on the back of the seat opposite, and never turned to the window even when a station was reached and called. On the other seat were two or three passengers, one of them a working woman who held a basket on her lap, in which was a tabby kitten. The woman opened

and say to the boy, "All right, my man. Your box is safe in the van." T

ground-swell from ancient years of night seemed now and then to lift the child in this his morning-life,

f its too circumscribed play-the boy remained just as before. He then seemed to be doubly awake, like an enslaved and dwarfed d

ching arrival, and had, as she truly said, visited Aldbrickham mainly to reveal the boy's existence and his near home-coming to Jude. This very day on which she had received her former husband's answer at some time in

"You are very much what I expected you to be," had given him a good meal, a little money, and, late as it was

side his box. The collector took his ticket, and, with a meditative sense of the u

reet," said the lit

e; a'most out in the country; an

ot to g

ave a fly f

must

e and send for it. There's a 'bus goes ha

not af

ur friends com

y didn't know

your f

dn't wish

o take charge of this. No

followed or observed him. When he had walked some little distance he asked for the stree

boy's ideas of life were different from those of the local boys. Children begin with detail, and learn up to the general; they begin with the contiguous, and gradually comprehend the universal. The boy seemed to have begun with the generals of life, and n

ude's house. Jude had just retired to bed, and Sue was about to e

Father lives?"

ho

y, that's

and he hurried down as soon as he could,

o soon?" she ask

tenderness, and telling him he would have been met if they had known of his coming so soon, set him provisionally in a chair whilst he went to look for Sue, whose supersensitiv

ys is true-true!

ng in my life as it s

hat's what I can't bear! But I ought to-

, darling; I have an idea! We'll educate and train him with a view to the university. What I couldn't accomplish

the child with him. The boy looked at her as she had looked a

ok like your

fond of you, and you of h

t refrain from instantly doing likewise, being a harp which the least wind of emotio

o, my poor dear!" she said, bending he

ur neck?" asked Jude

box that's at

made him up a temporary bed, where he soon fel

efore he dropped off," murmured Jude. "Was

luck up courage, and get that ceremony over? It is no use struggling against the current, and I feel myself getting intertwined with my kind. Oh Jude, you'll love me d

berately made, though it was begun on the morning f

his quaint and weird face set, and his eyes resting

of Melpomene," said Sue. "What is

lways called me. It is a nickname;

e, Jude, that these preternaturally old boys almost alwa

ever

was t

ation, 'twould save the exp

, then?" said his father

his head. "Nev

quickly; "since she was

privately to Sue: "The day we are married.

than an ecclesiastical one, they decided to avoid a church this time. Both Sue and Jude together went to the office of the distri

d, and by which that very volatile essence, their love for each other, was supposed to be made permanent, her face seemed to grow painfully apprehensive. "Names and Surnames of the Parties"-(they were to be parties now, not lovers

g a more sordid business of it even than signing the contract in a vestry. There i

ot taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in

You really ought to have been a pars

urposed clinch to their union. She could not bear its aspect. Coming after her previous experience of matrimony, all the romance of their attachment seemed to be starved away by placing her presen

great-aunt's friend and nurse in her last illness. He hardly expected that she would come; but she did, bringing singular presents, in the form of apples, jam, brass snuffers, an ancient pewter dish, a warming-pan, and an enormous bag of

in fact only ten o'clock-she dressed herself again and came down, and they all sat by the fire t

und wedding for ye in all respects this time. Nobody can hope it more, knowing what I do of your families

athed u

ding guest. "But things happened to thwart 'em, and if everything wasn't vitty they were upset. No

that?" s

e-not far from the milestone between Marygreen and Alfredston, where the other road branches

well," murmured Jude. "But I never heard of this. W

t give it up. Her husband then came in the night with a cart, and broke into the house to steal the coffin away; but he was catched, and being obstinate, wouldn't tell what he broke in for.

of the earth: "If I was you, Mother, I wouldn't marry Father!" It

a tale," said

dow on the eve of the solemnization they rose

orporeally," she said, tremulously nestling up to him, with damp lashes. "It won't be ever like this any more, will it? I wish we hadn't begun the business. But I suppose w

eroboam," said the

the same words I vowed in to my other husband, and you to me in the same as you used to

ld feel quite joyful. But if you don't, you don't. It is no use pret

other morning-that's all," she

ce several persons were gathered, and our couple perceived that a marriage between a soldier and a young woman was just in progress. Sue, Jude, and the widow stood in the background while this was going on, Sue reading the notices of marriage on the wall. The room was a dreary place to two of their temperament, though to its usual frequ

done, and the twain and their friends straggled out, one of the witnesses saying casually to Jude and Sue in passing, as if he had known them before: "See the cou

sfaction of being on the brink of a gratified desire. They jocosely saluted the outgoing couple, and went forward in front of Jude and Sue, whose

he horrors: it seems so unnatural as the climax of our love! I wish it

aid Jude. "How troubl

rformed here n

ps not ne

now," he said. "We can be married in a church, if not with the same certificate with another he'l

had remained in the entry, to go home and await them; that they would call in any casual passers as witnesses, if necessary. When in the st

aking a mess of it, it strikes me. Still,

orrying you! You wanted it

about it. The place depressed me almost as much as it did you-it was ugly. A

face, leading her on to give herself to that gaol-bird, not for a few hours, as she would, but for a lifetime, as she must. And the other poor soul-to escape a nominal shame which was owing to the weakness of her character, degrading herself to the real s

Why-it is a wedding here too," he said. "

there was always a crowd of marriages. "Let us listen," she

as of ordinary prettiness and interest. They could see the flowers tremble in the bride's hand, even at that distance, and could hear her mechanical murmur of words whose meaning her bra

emnity as we have, or at least as I have, by experience, and to my own too squeamish feelings perhaps sometimes, it really does seem immoral in me to go and undertake the same thing again with open eyes. Coming in here and seeing this has fright

de said he also thought they were both too thin-skinned-that they ought never to have been born-

cold blood and sign that life-undertaking again? "It is awful if you think we have found ourse

ss that, though he thought they ought to be able to do it, he felt checked by the dread of incompetency just as she did-from their peculiari

are like us

; but in our case it may defeat its own ends because we are the queer sort of people we

to feel as we do. We are a little beforehand, that's all. In fifty, a hundred, years the descendants of the

own selves hideo

afraid to re

though I have felt it myself about

d on, till Sue sa

ur reasons are, we come to the same conclusion: that for us particular two, an irrevocable oath is risky. Then,

very much w

procession entering the vestry; and then they came outside the building. By the door they waited till two or three car

sadly like the garland which decked t

protesting against the conditions they protest against the man, the other victim; just as a woman in a crowd wi

rcion." The bride and bridegroom had by this time driven off, and the two moved away w

t them. "Well," cried their guest when they entered, "I said to myself when I ze

hinted that

is by you two! 'Tis time I got back again to Marygreen-sakes if tidden-if this is what the new notions be leading us to! Nobody thought o' being afeard o' matr

e on right, and it will be better that he should not be surprised and puzzled. Of course it i

y-between their times of sadness-was indubitable. And when the unexpected apparition of Jude's child in the house had shown itself to be no such disturbing event

hought for the future, particularly as he seemed at present to be singularly deficient in all the usual

, and the important military station of Quartershot. The great western highway from London passes through it, near a point where the road branches into two, merely to unite again some twenty miles further westward. Out of this bifurcation and reunion there used to arise among wheeled travellers, before railway days, endless questions of choice b

uresque medi?val ruins beside the railway; the modern chapels, modern tombs, and modern shrubs

ow, whose vast encampment spreads over the open outskirts of the town like the tents of an investing army. Rows of marquees, huts, booths, pavilions, arcades, porticoes-every kind of structure short of a permanent one-cover the green field for the space of a square half-mile, and the crowds of arrivals walk through the town in

have preceded it, comes from London: the other by a cross-line from Aldbrickham; and from the London train alights a couple; a short, rather bloated man, with a globular stomach and small legs, resembling

. It isn't so very far to the show-yard. Let us walk down the street into the place. Perhaps I can pick up a cheap bit of furniture or old chi

down from the tavern in that "excellent, densely populated, gin-drinking neighbourhood," which they had occupied ever since the advertisement in those wo

, if I see any worth h

young couple leading a child, who had come out from the second platform, into which the

ive!" sai

hat?" sai

t couple is? Don't yo

N

photos I hav

t Faw

of co

Jude whatever it might have been when Arabella was new to him, had plainly flagged since her charms and her

h it was easy to do without notice in such a stream of pedestrians. Her answers to Cartlett's remarks

nother and of their child, see

with a curious, sudden covetousness. "They haven

s conjecture, she was not disposed on second thoughts to be more candid than necessary. Mr. Cartlett had

not. She looks

ly married, and have the child

htfully unreserved intercourse in their pilgrimages which they so much enjoyed. But they soon ceased to consider him an observer, and went along with that tender attention to each other which the shyest can scarcely disguise, and which these, among entire strangers as they imagined, took less trouble to disguise than they might have done at home. Sue, in her new summer clothes, flexible and light as a bird, her little thumb stuck up by the stem of her white cotton sunshade, wen

the publican's wife could see that the two ahead began to take trouble with the youngster, pointing out and explaining the many ob

I fancy they are not married, or they wouldn't

you said he d

g it off once or twice... As far as they themselves are concerned they are the o

e in their behaviour. I should never have noti

' or married pair's conduct was undoubtedly that of the general crowd, whose atten

t care for him quite so much as he does for her. She's not a particular warm-hearted creature to my thinking, though she cares for him pretty middling much-as much as s

of ours to follow these two. If we have come to see the

ay at that refreshment tent over there, and go about indepen

s were being exhibited, and Arabella in the direction taken by Jude and Sue. Before, however, she had reg

re," she said, as soon as she was composed. "I am soon going to be married, but my intended couldn't come u

ung woman, or wife, or whatev

limpse of un

ere somewhere. Yes-there t

oung woman-wife did you s

n't k

retty, i

at. Not much to depend on, though; a

p, too! You ought to ha'

but I ought,

Arabella! Always wanting

or that body with him-she don't know what love is-at le

ear, you don't know

ay?- Why, if all Wessex isn't here, I verily believe! There's Dr. Vilbert. Haven't seen him for years, and he's not looking a day older t

ox-warranted efficacious by the Government stamp. Now let me advise you to purchase t

om his waistcoat pocket, and Arabel

d for, "you have the advantage of me, Mrs.- Surely not Mr

Mrs. Car

pil of mine, you know. I taught him the dead languag

The lawyers untied us. There he is, look, alive and lusty;

Fond of her

they are

convenience to their

doubt, when he divorced her... Sh

del at one end of the building, which they regarded with considerable attention for a long while before they went on. Arabella and her friend

like Jude-always thinking of colleges and Chris

ze her; but they were too deeply absorbed in their own lives, as translated into emotion by the military band, to perceive her under her beaded veil. She walked round the outside of the listening throng, passing behind the lovers, whose movements had an u

d to herself morosely, as she rejoined her compani

ed to Vilbert on Arabella's hanker

regular pharmacop?ia, but I am sometimes asked for such a thing." He produced a small phial of clear liquid. "A love-philtre,

e of?" asked Ar

erwise pigeons'-is one of the ingredients. It took near

u get pige

all points of the compass-east, west, north, and south-and thus I secure as many as I require. You use the liquid by contriving that the desired man shall take abou

phial in her capacious bosom. Saying presently that she was due at an appointment with her husband, she sauntered away towards the refreshment bar, Jude,

se with no very amiable sentiments. She found him seated on a stool by the b

t come fifty miles from your own bar to stick in another? Come, take me round the show, as other men do

eet here; and what

hining on her. And they left the tent together, this pot-bellied man and florid woman,

tinted roses at which she gazed; for the gay sights, the air, the music, and the excitement of a day's outing with Jude had quickened her blood and made her eyes sparkle with vivacity. She adored r

the dears!" she had said. "But I suppose it is

layfully gave her a little push, so

n on us, and I shall say i

, and smiled in a way tha

" he mu

no

the great Wessex Agricultural

ause I am improving my mind, of course, by seeing all these steam-ploughs,

turned to Greek joyousness, and have blinded ourselves to sickness and sorrow, and have forgotten what twenty-five centuries have taught the race since their time, as one of your Christminster luminaries says.

her," he said. "But please don't mind!-I can't help it. I should like the flowers

lly did not understand, and probably could not have been made to understand, Sue and Jude's private minds, emotions, positions, and fears. The curious facts of a child coming to them unexpectedly, who called Jude "Father,"

ome home from school in the evening, and repeat inquiries and remarks that had been made to him

. When they came back they let it be understood indirectly, and with total indifference and weariness of mien, that they were legally married at last. Sue, who h

f the mystery of their lives; and they found that they made not such advances with their neighbours a

they came to execute their errands, in these days no longer took the trouble to render her that homag

as if that visit had brought some evil influence to bear on them. And their temperaments were precisely of a kind to suffer from this atmosphe

t he would have to return to journey-work again, a course all the more unfortunate just now, in that he had no

hold on here no longer. The life suits us, certainly; but if we could get away to a place where we are unknown, we should be

t a picture of herself as an o

me and the boy! You don't want it yourself, and the expense is unnecessary. But whatever we do, wherever we go, you won't take him away from me, Jude dear? I coul

ice lodgings, wherever we go. I shall be moving a

- Well, now I can't be useful in the lettering

ly. "I don't want you to do that. I wish you wouldn't, Su

r, and Jude answered it. Sue

nt me to know if you'll undertake the relettering of the ten commandments

and said he co

lergyman is a very old-fashioned chap, and he has refused to let

rself, who was sentimentally oppose

ey want doing up with the rest of the wall there, since he won't have them carte

heerfully. "One more job yet, at any rate, and you can help in it-at least you can t

the chief ornament of the chancel end, in the fine dry style of the last century. And as their framework was constructed of ornamental plaster they could not be taken down for repair. A portion, crumbled by damp, re

ters of the first Table while he set about mending a portion of the second. She was quite pleased at her powers; she had acquired them in the days she painted illumined texts for the church-fi

up to see what was being done, seemed surprised to discover that a young woman was assisting. They passed on into an aisle, at which time the door again opened, and another figure entered-a s

and there shuffled in with a businesslike air the white-aproned woman who cleaned the church. Sue recognized her as one who had friends in Spring Street, whom she visited. The church-cleaner looked at Sue, gaped, and lifted her hands; she had evidently recognized Jude's companion as the latter

ng, talking in undertones: and one said-Sue co

say No," was the rep

to be, or somebody'

arried a very few we

Tables! I wonder Biles and Willis could

g wrong, and then the other, who had been talking to the old w

by the churchwarden breaking into an anecdote, in a voice that everybody in

he country at that date, neither among pa'sons, clerks, nor people, and to keep the men up to their work the vicar had to let 'em have plenty of drink during the afternoon. As evening drawed on they sent for some more themselves; rum, by all account. It got later and later, and they got more and more fuddled, till at last they went a-putting their rum-bottle and rummers upon the communion table, and drawed up a trestle or two, and sate round comfortable and poured out again right hearty bumpers. No sooner had they tossed off their glasses than, so the story goes, they fell down senseless, one and all. How long they bode so they didn't know, but when they came to themselves there was a terrible thunder-storm a-raging, and they seemed to s

everally left the church, even the old woman at last. Sue and Jude, who had not stopped working, sent back the ch

ade!" he said. "I

they may have chosen to live their own way! It is really these opinions t

own! It was only

aid I have done you mischief, Jude

us view of their position. However, in a few minutes Sue seemed to see that th

n to be here painting the Ten Commandments! You a reprobate, and I-in my condition... O dear!" ... An

gaily. "Now we are right ag

p the brush and righted herself. "But do you see they don't th

o or not," said Jude. "I shan't ta

g eaten it, were about to set to work anew when a man entered the church, and Jude r

o the matter-as of course I didn't know what was going on-but I am afraid I must ask you and her to leave off, an

ontractor paid him, and left. Jude picked up his too

do this!" said she, dropping to her tragic note.

be helped, dear; and of course I wouldn't wish to injure Willis's trade-connection by staying." They sat down passiv

arrival there; its members being young men of all creeds and denominations, including Churchmen, Congregationalists, Baptists, Unitarians, Positivists, and others-Agnostics had scarcely been heard of at this time-their one common wish to enlarge their minds forming a sufficiently close

ing on himself had been either discussed or mooted. Some ordinary business was transacted, and it was disclosed that the number of subscriptions had shown a sudden falling off for that quarter. One member-a really well-meaning and upright man-began speaking in enigmas about certain possible causes: that it behoved them to look well i

hat could Jude do with his great-aunt's heavy old furniture, if he left the town to travel he knew not whither? This, and the

desert her poor Jude in such gloomy circumstances, for he was compelled to stay awhile, she acted on the suggestion of the auctioneer's man, and ensconced herself in an upper room, which could be emptied of its effe

o quaint and ancient a make as to acquire an adventitious value as art. Their door was tried once or twice, an

ls' paradise of supposed unrecognition they had been living in of late. Sue silently took her companion's hand, and with eyes on each other they heard these passing remarks-the quaint and mysterious personality of Father Time being a subjec

," he sighed heavily. "I am

tion is,

ondon. There one can

I know it well. We sho

hy

you t

Arabella

the chie

e to lessen it by explaining, for one thing, all about the boy's history. To cut him off from his past I have deter

istminster Cathedral-almost the first place in which we looked in each other's faces. Under the picturesqueness of those Norman details

ou have said before. But one can work, and despise wha

up wistfully. "I am as disqualified for teaching as you are for ecclesiastical art. You must fall back up

ing. I grew up in the baking business with aunt, you know.

rkets and fairs, where people are gloriously indiff

er: "Now this antique oak settle-a unique example of old

s," said Jude. "I wish we could

the conversation they had heard they were shy of going out while the purchasers were in their line of retreat. However, the

ns, all alive and plump-a nice pie fo

sadness was caused than by parting from all the furniture. Sue tried to think away her tears as she heard the trifling sum that her dears were deemed to be worth advanced by sma

aid it was time to go and see if the lodgings were re

in a hamper by the door. An emotion at sight of them, assisted by the growing dusk of evening, caused her to act on impulse, and first looking around her quickly, she pulled out the peg

boy making it comfortable for her. "Do the buyers pay be

I thin

h a wicked thing!" And she ex

m, if he doesn't catch them," said Jude. "

! Oh why should Nature's

her?" asked th

id Sue ve

things," said Jude. "As soon as the sale-acc

to?" asked Tim

. We mustn't go to Alfredston, or to Melchester, or to Shasto

t we go the

e wronged no man, corrupted no man, defrauded no man!' Though

I

y and Sue walked no more

steps of such an obscure pair might have discovered without great trouble that they had taken advantage of his adap

osing by preference places remote from his old haunts and Sue's. He lab

terbridge, sometimes as far down as Exonbury, sometimes at Stoke-Barehills. Later still he was at Kennetbridge, a thriving town not more than a dozen miles south of Marygreen, this being his nearest approach to the village where he w

nception, remained with him in cold blood, less from any fear of renewed censure than from an ultra-conscientiousness which would not allow him to seek a living out of those who would disapprove of his ways; also, too, from a sense of inconsiste

lla's recognition of Sue and himself at the agricultural sho

ut midday. At this hour a light trap, among other vehicles, was driven into the town by the north road, and up to the door of a temperance inn. There alighted two women, one the driver, an ordinary coun

se and cart had been taken by a man who came forward: "and then I'll come back, and meet you

uld sooner have put up at the Chequers or The Jac

eeds reprovingly. "This is the proper place. Very well: we'll meet in half an

re to. You

ries she came to a hoarding, within which were excavations denoting the foundations of a building; and on the boards without one or two large posters announcing

ntion was arrested by a little stall of cakes and ginger-breads, standing between the more pretentious erections of trestles and canvas. It was covered with

is wife Sue-if she is so!" She drew nearer to the s

recognized Arabella t

then perceiving Arabella's garb her voice grew sym

kind husband to me. But whatever profit there is in public-house keeping goes to them that brew the

bit, till I found you wasn't," replied Father Time, who h

ever mind. I

the station platform with this tray-the

'll never be a beauty, will he, poor cha

ut his parentage-that's all. Jude is goi

me to be doing thi

upation-a fancy of ours whi

e living wit

es

rri

cour

child

wo

r coming so

direct questioning, and her ten

what is there to cry about? Som

such a terribly tragic thing to bring beings into the world-

such a thing as this? Jude used to be a proud sort of chap-

ll early in the year while putting up some stonework of a music-hall, at Quartershot, which he had to do in the rain, the work having to be executed by a fi

of a serious way of thinking since my loss

occurred to him to try his hand at these, which he can make without coming

nd pinnacles! And upon my word they are very nice." She had he

r Colleges. Traceried windows, and cloisters, yo

" laughed Arabella. "Just like Jude. A ruling pass

oked her distress at h

Come now; you do, though

f believing in. He still thinks it a great centre of high and fearless thought, instead of what it

han of what she was saying. "How odd to hear a woman selling cakes t

head. "They

the divorce,

o wish it. We gave up all ambition, and were nev

are you

t care

n Kenne

Arabella that her ra

again," continued Arabe

k. "You needn't throw th

er I should sin to speak so profane-though I should think you must have enough of your own! He's in very good hands, that

h I had been a

nd went into it for shelter from a shower of rain. I felt a need of some sort of support under my loss, and, as 'twas righter than gin, I took to going there regular, and found it a great comfort. But I've left London now, you know, and at present I am living at

ished Sue good-

I

he opening saw a crowd of persons in broadcloth, with hymn-books in their hands, standing round the excavations for the new chapel-walls. Arabella Cartlett and her weeds stood

arted on their return journey across the high and open country which stretches between Kennetbridge and Alfred

r Cartlett, or of anything but spreading the Gospel by means of this new tabernacle they've begun this afternoon

ho

ll, and though I sung the hymns wi' all my strength, I have not been able

by the London preacher to-day, and try to g

heart will ramble off

t I do dream sometimes o' nights quite against my wishes, you'd say I had my strug

about it?" urged

and's hair, and have it made into a mourning

good... After all that's said about the comforts

that another good thing for it, when it afflicts volupshious widows, is to go to

as you what I should d

f the highway and the cross-lane leading to that village, whose church-tower could be seen athwart the hollow. When they got yet farther on, and were passing the lonel

"What right has she to him, I should like

usband only six weeks

feelings! I won't be a creeping

e at the fair, and of which she had given away several. As she spoke she flung the whole remainder of the

and don't let us talk about un no more. We won't come out this road again, as it

his hand he carried a basket; and there was a touch of slovenliness in his attire, together with that indefinable something in his whole appearance which suggested one who was his own housekeeper, purveyor, confidant, and

, till at length she spoke. "If I don't

in turn. "Yes; my name is Phillotson," h

scholars. I used to walk up there from Cresscombe every day, because we had only a mistress down

l the name. And I should hardly recognize in your present

However, I am staying down here with some friends

N

night scholar-for some little time, I think? And

out of his stiffness. "You Fawley's wife? To

u did yours-perhaps

dee

or I soon married again, and all went pretty straight till

convinced I did only what was right, and just, and moral. I have suffered for my act an

and good income thro

. I have recently come back

e school there agai

all its humiliations. But it is a refuge. I like the seclusion of the place, and the vicar having known me before my so-called eccentric conduct towards my wife had ruined my reputation as a schoolmaster, he accepted my services when all other school

d mind is a continual feas

doing well

husband is ill, and she anxious. You made a fool of a mistake about her, I tell 'ee again, a

ow

as inn

hey did not even

obtained you your freedom, at the time you obtained it. I saw her ju

nd appeared to be much stressed and worried by th

e end! However, I think she's fond of her man still-whatever he med be of her. You were too quick about her. I shouldn't have let her go! I should have kept her chained on-her spirit for kicking would

ment, ma'am, I

ing on a bit. 'Then shall the man be guiltless; but the woman shall bear her iniquity.' Damn ro

Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and so

orget to try it n

madam. I have never kn

outskirts approached a mill, to which Phillotson said his errand led him; whereu

at success. When all her "Christminster" cakes had been disposed of she took upon her arm the empty basket, and the cloth which had covered the standing she had hired, and giving the other thin

ildren, and said,

lly. "Before you are upstairs again your hu

cking, and were at once in the general living-room. Here they greeted Jude, who was sitting in an arm-chair, the increased delicacy of his normally

l?" he said, a gleam of int

esults, and then hesitated. At last, when they were left alone, she inform

d. "What-is she liv

fredston,"

"I thought I had better tell you?"

ut down here! It is only a little over a dozen miles acr

has taken to chapel-going," Su

I feel much better to-day, and shall be well enough to leave in a week or two. Then Mrs

go to?" Sue asked, a tr

reat deal of Christminster lately, and, if she didn't mind, he would like to go back there. Why should they care if they were known? It was oversensitive of them to mind so much. They could go on se

minster?" she said pensively. "Christmi

r false quantities and mispronunciations, when it should say, I see you want help, my poor friend! ... Nevertheless, it is the centre of the universe to me, because of my early dream: and nothing can alter it. Perhaps it wi

eks they had arrived in the city of many memories; were actually treading it

t S

STMINST

and all the places of her joy she fil

who decline,

death in the d

Brow

lcoming young girls who bore a remarkable family likeness to their welc

y-it is Remembrance Day!-Jude-how sl

told Arabella's boy to keep close to them, Sue attending to their

ress you!" she said, looking

ss; and we have a good deal to do before we sha

he same direction. Reaching the Fourways they were about to turn off to where accommodation was likely to be found when, looking at the cl

a house over our hea

ng thoughtfully and silently beside them. Crowds of pretty sisters in airy costumes, and meekly ignorant parents who had known no college in their youth, were under convoy in th

esson on presumption is awaiting me to-day!-Humiliation Day for me! ... If you, my d

moods. "It would have been better if we had gone at once about our own affairs, dear

r; we will see i

sight the circular theatre with that well-known lantern above it, which stood in his mind as the sad symbol of his abandoned hopes, for it was from that outlook that he h

of expectant people. A passage was kept clear through their midst by two barriers of timber, ext

ungest child in his arms, while Sue and the others kept immediately behind him. The crowd filled in at their back, and fell to talking, joking, and laughing as carriage after carr

It do seem like the Judg

learned Docto

n their heads and shoulders, and the delay

now," said Jude, wit

nt by the Latin inscription in its midst. Jude, who stood near the inquirer, explained it, and finding that the people all round him were listening with interest,

should know more about the buildings of their town than they themselves did; till one of them said: "Why, I know that man; he used to work here years ago-Jude Fawley, that's his name! Don't you mind he us

llege masonries; Tinker Taylor was seen to be standing near. Having his attention called the l

nod

e done any great things fo

nted to t

n a new voice, and Jude recognized its owner to

general conversation arose between him and the crowd of idlers, during which Tinker Taylor asked Jude

?" threw in Joe. "Yer powers was

them any more!

rmured little Time mournfully, as he sto

d to shrink from open declarations of what he had no great reason to be ashamed of; and

and re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays-I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes

an without advantages; who should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a really good chance of being one of his country's worthies. You may ridicule me-I am quite willing that you should-I am a fit subject, no d

d worn-out, it is

al; but though she stood clo

e a moral story," continued Jude, beginning to grow bitter, though he had opened serenely enough. "I was, perhaps, a

's state of mind. "You weren't that. You struggled nobly to acquire

e by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best. There, gentlemen, since you wanted to know how I was getting on, I have told you. Much good may it do you! I cannot

r," said t

hat takes the services when our head reverends want a holiday, wouldn't ha' discoursed such doctrine for less than a guinea do

, robed and panting, a cab whose horse failed to stop at the exact point required for setting down the

s in the most religious and educational city in th

er tongue quiet, my man, while the procession passes." The rain came on more heavily, and all who had umbrellas opened them. Jud

aven't any lodgings yet, remember, and all our things are at the statio

w. Just a moment, a

rocession of heads of houses and new Doctors emerged, their red and black gowned forms p

wing informants, and when they reached the

the straw that was laid to drown the discordant noise of wheels, where the quaint and frost-eaten stone busts encircling the building looked with pa

y. "Listen-I may catch a few words of the Latin

each piece of oratory, Jude's standing in the wet did not bring much Latin

ou to wait in the rain all this time-to gratify my infatuation! I'll never care any more about the infernal cursed

ongst the people

did

ly living not so very far away. He had the same hankering for the university that you had, in a milder form.

r mind is free from worri

I felt a curious dread of him; an awe, or terror, of conventions I don't believe in

ue. Oh-I forgot, darling!

the back of a college, but having no communication with it. The little houses were darkened to gloom by the high collegiate buildings, within which life was so far removed from that of the people in the lane as

ude suddenly, inste

ha

hurch can that be? Th

had begun to sound out

e landlady tartly. "Did

s," said Jude, c

figure a moment. "We haven't any t

distressed. "Now, Jude," said Sue,

only Sue, but the boy and the small children, said civilly, "I am sorry

n instinct that trouble loomed. The boy sighed. "I don't lik

ude; "which perhaps yo

not!" the

round me... Leaving Kennetbridge for this place is like co

notice it no

rom delaying their search till so late. They came to terms with her, though her price was rather high for their pockets. But they could not afford to be critical till Jude had time to get a more permanent abode; and in this house Sue took possession of a back room o

nces of the family she had taken in. Sue had not the art of prevarication, and, after admitting severa

ally a marr

f a second irrevocable union, and lest the conditions of the contract should kill their love, yet wishing to be together, they had literally not found the courage to r

as broken by the noise of someone entering the house, and then the voices of a man and woman in conversation in the passa

idn't I say I wouldn't have children? The hall and stairs fresh painted, to be kicked about by them! You mu

husband insisted on his point; for presently a

ll. My husband objects; and therefore I must ask you to go. I don't mind your staying over to-night

e as requested. When the landlady had gone Sue looked out of the window again. Finding that the rain had ceased she proposed to the boy that, after putting the lit

her notice to quit while he was perhaps worried in obtaining a lodging for himself. In the company of the boy she wandered into this street and into that; but though she tried a dozen different houses she fared far

rn, ought I?" said th

least she had temporary shelter. In her absence Jude had left his address; but knowing ho

of gloom, bigotry, and decay into the little room she occupied, shutting out the moonlight by night and the sun by day. The outlines of Rubric College also were discernible beyond the other, and the tower of a third farther off still. She thought of the strange operation of a simple-minded m

had made a deep impression on the boy-a brooding undemonstrative horror seemed to have

spondently. "I am afraid th

here had been room for him! Then it

woul

do an

uble, adversity

to give us childre

rtl

be out o' the world t

d almost

en, too, isn't it, that yo

object to chil

e so much trouble, wh

it is a la

n't ask to

inde

t have had me unless you liked. I oughtn't to have come to 'ee-that's the real trut

n't help i

ted they should be killed directly, before their souls c

ubtfully pondering how to tre

permitted, she would be honest and candid with one w

ther in our family soon,"

ow

ing to be an

, Mother, you've never a-sent for another

ay!" murmured Sue, her eyes g

s, when you needn't have done it till we was better off, and Father well! To bring us all into more trouble! No room for us, and Father a-forced to go

I can't explain-I will when you are older. It does seem-as if I had done it on purpose, now we a

that, unless you agreed! I won't forgive you, ever, ever! I'll n

n which a bed had been spread on the floor. There she heard hi

she cried, rather peremp

he inn which Jude had informed her to be his quarters, to tell him what had happened before he went out. She aro

r all night, he said. Somehow, now it was morning, the request to leave the lodgings did not seem such a depressing incident as it had seemed the night before, nor did even her failure to

re time to look round. There are plenty of lodgings in the suburbs-in my old quarter of Beersheba. Have breakfast with me now you are here, my bir

that all was quiet in the children's room, and called to the landlady in timorous tones to please bring up the tea-kettle and something for their breakfast. This was perfunctorily done, and producing a co

d it back-was open, and that Sue had sunk to the floor just within it. Hastening forward to pick her up he turned his eyes to the little bed spread on the boards; no children were there. He looked in bewilderment round the room. At the back of the door were fixed two hooks for hanging garments, and from these the forms of t

e children on the bed; but the feel of their bodies in the momentary handling seemed to say that they were dead. He caught up Sue, who w

e children were past saving, for though their bodies were still barely cold it was conjectured that they had been hanging more than an hour. The probability held by the parents later on, when they were able to reason on the case, was that the elder boy, on waking, looked into the outer room for Sue,

se we are

throwing her into a convulsive agony which knew no abatement. They carried her away against her wish to a room on the lower floor; and the

e any hope, her presence might do harm, and the reminder that it was necessary to take care of herself lest she should endanger a coming life. Her inquiries were incessant, an

t generation-the outcome of new views of life. They seem to see all its terrors before they are old enough to have staying power to resist the

stimulated Sue to efforts of sympathy which in some degree distracted her from her p

d the first union of Jude, and all the accidents, mistakes, fears, errors of the last. He was their nodal point, their focus, their expression in a

the coroner's inquest, a subdued, large, low voice spread int

Sue, her spasmodic

ctising I suppose. It's the anthem from the sevent

They had done no harm! Why should t

oken at last by two persons in

oaned Sue. "'We are made a spectacle unt

two clergymen of different views, arguing about the eastward pos

. "There is something external to us which says, 'You shan't!' First it said, 'You

by saying, "That's bi

it's

me of his death, she would not now have removed, though Jude would fain have got them out of her sight. But whenever he touched them

hy don't you speak to me, Jude?" she cried out, after one of these. "Don't

m," he said, putting h

erfect union-our two-in-onene

by death-t

k to people of mature age. I said the world was against us, that it was better to be out of life than in it at this price;

you do

r with a false delicacy I told him too obscurely.-Why was I half-wiser than my fellow-women? And not entirely wiser! Why didn't I tell h

y of cases; only in our peculiar case it chanced to w

went about loving each other too much-indulging ourselves to utter selfishness with each other! We said-do you remember?-that we would make a virtue of joy. I said it was Nature's intention, Nature's law and raison d'être that we shoul

perhaps, that they should be gone.-Yes-I see it is! Better that

hat the elders should rejoice wh

ed to be out of life, or he wouldn't have done it. It was not unreasonable for him to die: it was p

a string. "I am a pitiable creature," she said, "good neither for earth nor heaven any more! I am dr

"Things are as they are, and will b

Who said that?"

gamemnon. It has been in my mind

I, for I did get you! To think you should know that by y

diversions her grief

he would follow the two little ones to the grave, but at the last moment she gave way, and the coffins were quietly carried out of the house while she was lying down. Jude got into the vehicle, and it drove away, much to the relief of the landlord, who now had only Sue and her luggage remaining on his hands, which he hoped to be also clear of later on in th

all. Her hat and jacket, too, were missing: she had gone out. Jude hurried off to the public house where he was sleeping. She had not been there. Then bethinking himself of possibilities he went along the road to the cemetery, which he entered, and crossed to where the interments had recently taken place. The idlers who had followed to the spot by reason of the tragedy were all gone now

ce more. Oh Jude-please Jude-I want to see them! I didn't know you would let them be taken away while I was asleep! You said perhaps

ght to be took home, by the look o' her. She is hardly responsible, poor thing, seemingly. Can't dig 'em up again now, m

It would not take long! And I should be so glad, Jude! I will be so good, and not disobey you ever any more, Jude,

d do no good, and might make her still worse; and he saw that it was imperative to get her home at once. So he coaxed her, and

owly, Jude in black crape, she in brown and red clothing. They were to have gone to a new lodging that afternoon, but Jude saw that

the intelligence was brought to him that a child had been

I

btained work at his old trade. They were in other lodgings now, in the dir

wonderfully excellent to the half-aroused intelligence, but hopelessly absurd at the full waking; that the First Cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage; that at the framing of the terrestrial conditions there seemed never to have been contemplated such

ower above us has been vented upon us, His poor creatures, and we must

an and senseless circ

hatever our foe may be, I am cowed into submission. I have no more fighting strength left; no more enterprise. I am

l the

ory and relations are not absolutely known... Possibly, if they knew our marriage had

hat. However, I think that we ought to make it

ink we

tain

it! I have not been conscious of it, or of any wrongdoing towards you, whom I love more than myself. Yet I am one of those men! I wonder if any other of them are the same purblind, si

reproach yourself with being what you a

e Phillotson; and without me perhaps you

entered into a legal contract is the saving feature in our union. We have t

me surprise, and grew conscious that sh

ave had dreadful fears, a dreadful sense of my own insol

ho

hard

d, deare

in! Only the thou

ancy, without reason or meani

ghed u

most directly he arrived, the summer weather suiting his fragile constitution; and outwardly his days went on with that monotonous uniformity which is in itself so grateful after vicissitude. People seemed to have forgotten that he had ever

in opposite directions since the tragedy: events which had enlarged his own views of life, laws, customs, and dogmas, had not operated in the same manner on Sue's. She was no lo

er late. She was not at home, but she soon ret

ng of, little woman?

in our courses, you and I. Our life has been a vain attempt at self-delight. But self-abne

red. "What has

triven to do what has pleased me. I well deserved the scourging I have got! I wish somethin

ten said, you are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness. Why do you talk in such a changed way? We have not been selfish, except when no one coul

nd a chastened mind; and

eler, and you deserved more admiration than I gave. I

my history. Self-renunciation-that's everything! I cannot humiliate myself too much. I

nfant. "It is bereavement that has brought you to this! Such remorse is not for

she murmured, when she had rema

y n

indul

here anything better on earth tha

e sort of love; and yo

when do you wish our marria

ked up uneasily. "N

ing. Several minutes elapsed, and he thought she had fallen asleep; but he spoke s

ht, Sue," he said. "I mean not only mentally, but about your clothes, als

s inc

cen

ice at St. Silas', and I

t. Si

o there s

. You g

ork, and I think and think of-of my-" She stopped till she could control the

it. Only it is odd, for you. They little

you mea

eptic, to

n my trouble! Yet I know you didn't m

ut I am muc

will you? I have thought of it a good deal since my babies died.

.. But y

point of

ce has proved how we misjudged ourselves, and overrated our infirmities; and if you are beginning to respect rites and ceremonies, as you seem to

t think

through the ceremony? Would

n then that I was. I shoul

me of all that's

I am Ri

that absurd fan

I feel more and more convinced as time go

s-how we are ch

Perhap

hen a knock came to the front door of the carpenter's house where they were lodging, and in a few moments ther

Fawley

nically replied in the affirmati

nst the light; but no characteristic that enabled them to estimate her general aspect and air. Yet something seemed to denot

edy, of which Jude had felt it to be his duty to inform he

read all about it in the papers, and I felt I wasn't wanted... No-I couldn't come to the funeral," repeated Arabella, who, seeming utterly unable to reach the ide

a headstone," sa

, and naturally

so. We a

mine I didn't feel so m

cour

m the dark corn

Cartlett. "Perhaps 'twouldn't have happened then! But

is wife," c

s of her words st

I'm sure," said Arabel

ing that she was struck by Sue's avowal, recovered herself, and went on to talk with placid bluntness about "her" boy, for whom, though in his lifetime she had shown no care at all, she now exhibited a

?" resumed Arabella in another

orm you," sai

t she? She on

iticize wha

han call, after our mutual affliction. I am sleeping at the place where I used to be barmaid

Australia?" said Jude

ll it-in the hot weather, and Father and two of the young ones have just got back. He

nd limited her stay to a number of minutes that should accord with the highest respectability. When she had

zzled, and became quite alarmed at her absence, for the hour was growing late. The carpenter calle

time o' night?" said

eeps the key, and she has

she been going

few weeks,

door was certainly unfastened; he lifted the latch without noise, and pushing to the door behind him, stood absolutely still inside. The prevalent silence seemed to contain a faint sound, explicable as a breathing, or a

in the air by invisible wires; it was set with large jewels, which faintly glimmered in some weak ray caught from outside, as the cross swayed to and fro in a silent and scarcely perceptible mo

he wh

losed itself; she ha

aid almost sharply. "You shouldn't come! I w

of hers towards him. "Why do I come? Who has a right to come, I should like to know, if I have not! I, who love

I am a wretch-broken by my distractions! I couldn't bear it when Arabella came-I felt so utterl

are noth

e to show me this! Arabella's child killing mine was a judgement-the right slaying the wrong.

rs. "It is monstrous and unnatural for you to

n't know m

which has caused this deterioration in you. That a woman-poet, a woman-seer, a woman whose soul shone like a diamond-whom all the wise of the world would have been

nd unkind to me, and do

dened-and you, too, are unhinged just now." He put his arm round her and

mploring voice. "I love you as much as ever! Only-I ou

n't o

wife! I belong to him-I sacramentally joined

r two people were in this world? Nature

e for me there, and ratified etern

f me what little affection and reverence I had left in me for the Church as an old acquaintance... What I can't understand in you is your extraordinary blindness now to your old logic. Is it peculiar to you, or is it common to woman? Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fr

f man observing people listening to music. You say 'What

old husks of prejudices, and taught me to do it; and now you go back u

can't help being as I am, I am convinced I am right-tha

k, feeling a slight renewal of elasticity now that he was in the open street; "can this be the girl who brought the pagan deities into this most Christi

bear it! I was in error-I cannot reason with you. I was wrong-proud in my own co

, before she could hinder him. They went on till they came to a little coffee-hous

sh? But do you? Let me go to

tairs and struck a light. Turning she found that Jude had followed her, and was stand

Don't we l

u would do a

ldn't conscientiously marry at first in the old-fashioned way, we ought to have parted. Perhaps the worl

er deliberately meant to do as I did. I slipped int

hrough love-y

t stop there, and go on alw

e couldn't live fo

n this superior to an average man-that she never instigates, only

have said before! ... Well, as you will! ..

t what it has to l

r were to blame it

la. I had thought I ought in charity to let you approach me-that it was damnably selfish to torture you as I did my other friend. But I shouldn't have given

rue one. You have never loved me as I love you-never-never! Yours is not a passionate heart-you

unbridled passion-the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man-was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then-I don't know how it was-I couldn't bear to

to your cruelty

her I flounder, t

ness for womankind and my impulse to strong liquor. Don't abandon me to them, Sue, to save your own soul only! They have been kept entirely at a distance since you became my guardian-angel! Since I have had you I have been able to go into any

you must not, Jude! You won't! I

d knows, about you at that time; and now I suffer again. But perhaps not

e d

thless and contemptible. And

r two. "She is-I fear! ...

more? As it has been so many

ur hands, Jude-don't tempt me b

rst time. My God, how selfish I was! Perhaps-perhaps I spoilt one of the highest and purest loves that

e of the pair of pillows there

er of conscience with me, and not of dislike to you!" she brokenly murmured. "Dislike to you! Bu

he said, and

me!" said she, starti

d-bye, good-bye!" And then gently pressing him away she got free, trying to mitigate the sadness by saying: "We'll be dear friend

elf to speak, but turned

face, was now regarding as her insepar

ter watching the procession to the theatre. But he had said nothing of it at the moment to his companion Gillingham, who, be

llingham, as they went home. "The u

ly. "Of somebody I saw to-day."

w her

aid no

er. But, as you did see her, you should ha

e good reason for supposing that she was innocent when I divo

o set you right since

neer. I ought to have

own the long hill which he had known before Jude knew it, though his history had not beaten so intensely upon its incline. Arrived in the town he bought his usual weekly local paper; and when he had

, for he could not understand the age of the elder child being what it was stated

said: and thought and thought of Sue,

t again-the precise time being just after her return from Christminster, where she had stayed much longer than she had at first intended, keeping an inte

out this way, Mrs.

things of my life that are interesting to my feelings are mixed up with this road. And they have

bear their terr

. I only heard of it as a certainty just before I left; though I had thou

Why, I should have thought '

m hurry up, and get the thing done legally, she's took in a queer religious way, just as I was in my affliction at losing Cartlett, only hers is of a more 'steric

... Separate

he eldest b

-yo

to have been in her place. I can't say. However, as for me, I am soon off from here. I've got Father to look after now, and

cended the hill a few steps he stop

r was, thei

lla g

u. Good a

dimple-making all along the road from where the pollard willo

charity, Christian or heathen, than Phillotson had done in letting Sue go. He had been knocked about from pillar to post at the hands of the virtuous almost beyond endurance; he had been nearly starved, and was now dependent entirely upon the very small stipend from the school of this village (where the parson had got ill-spoken of for befriending him)

m to give Sue her liberty now enabled him to regard her as none the worse for her life with Jude. He wished for her still, in his curious way, if

made. By getting Sue back and remarrying her on the respectable plea of having entertained erroneous views of her, and gained his divorce wron

gone it were best to let her be, and considered that if she were anybody's wife she was the wife of the man to whom she had borne three children and owed such tragical adventure

cted by Christminster sentiment and teaching. I can see her views on the indissolubility of marriage well

d had three children by him, my feeling is (though I can advance no logical or moral defence of it, on the old lines) that it

o his friend, there had not been much reason for writing to t

t having come to his knowledge that her views had considerably changed, he felt compelled to say that his own, too, were largely modified by events subsequent to their parting. He would not conceal from her that passionate love had little to do wi

unity in an old civilization like ours. It was necessary to act under an acquired and cultivated sense of the same,

e should come to him

one; and having rewritten the letter he dispatched it

suburb of Christminster, towards the quarter in which Jude Fawley had taken up his l

d by a species of divination he jump

her not come in. I want to-to talk with

came. Jude put on his hat. "It is dreary for you to be out,

shall not k

cluster of nerves that all initiatory power seemed to have left her, and they procee

now slow, "so that you may not hear of it by chance. I am going

ck? How c

to satisfy the world, which does not see things as they are.

ith an anguish that

ding to come back legally married, to save appearances. I loved you, and you loved me; and we closed with each other

"But I am going to marry him again, as it would be called by you. Strictly sp

how if you and I had married legall

ain worth' (I suppose), therefore I concede a repetition of the ceremony... Don't crush all the life out of me by satire and argument, I implore you! I was strongest once, I know, and

ce keen vision was dimmed. "All wrong, all wrong!" he said huskily. "Error-perversity! It drives me out of my senses. Do you c

t, in deepest remorse! But I shall tr

emed to be the one thing on earth on which she was firm, and that her firmnes

s; "that you might not consider yourself slighted by hearing of it at second hand. I have even owned the extreme

ve you

to me-if you would. Bu

coming to fetch you-to marry you from

, just as I went away from him. We are to be

more than once for pity of her. "I never knew such a woman for doing impulsive penances, as you, Sue! No soo

ou to go to the cemetery with me. Let our farewell be there-beside th

d to them on application. Sue had been there often, and she knew

hould like to p

be

if you have failed, is to your credit rather than to your blame. Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do

d on it we'll part friends. Its verses will stand fast w

od-bye, Jude; my fellow-si

mistaken wif

still hung over all things. Sue's slim shape was

which she would be likely to pass. He went in an opposite one, to a dreary, strange, flat sce

me-gone!" he mu

eam-tram and was conveyed into the town. It had been her request to Phillotson that he should no

her to Marygreen set her down at the end of the lane, half a mile from the village, by her desire, and preceded her to the schoolhouse with such portion of her luggage as she had brought. On

under the trees to the pretty new school on the other side, and lifted the latch of the dwell

ale and shaken, and sinking into a chair.

rling Susanna,"

it had been spoken advisedly without f

in-begotten. They were sacrificed to teach me how to live! Their death was the first sta

and tone that he did more than he had m

way, her flesh quivering u

sire was renascent in him. "You

I was chilly!" she said, with a hurried smile of appreh

. I have told him all, and he highly approves-he says it will bring our lives to a triumphant and satisfactory issue.

ll him, tell him at once! My strength is t

eight to-morrow, before anybody is about-if that's not too soon for you? My friend Gillingham is here to help

were in, or any detail of her environment. But on moving across the parlour to put down her muff she uttered a li

said Phi

t her eye had caught a document which lay there. "Oh-only a-funny surpris

lotson. "The licence

hought likely to interest him, except herself, though that interested him most of all. She obediently ate some supper, and p

rters, and helped her to unpack. Among other thing

't mean it to be. Here is a different one." She handed a new

Mrs. Edlin. "That one is no better

t to be. Give

h all her might, the tears resounding

r, dear!-wh

I don't feel-I bought it long ago-t

citedly continued to tear the linen int

h pretty open-work as that a-burned by the flames-not that ornamental night-rails

me of what I want to forget!" Sue re

and condemn to hell your dear little innocent children th

on't, don't! That kills me!" She remained shaken

this man again!" said Mrs. Edlin indignan

t-I am his

st at first, 'twas all the more credit to your consciences, considering your reasons, and you med h

ed, it might not have been so much my duty to-give up Jude. But-" She

ver the supper-table. They soon rose, and walked out on the green to smoke awhile.

and after a silence he said, "Well: you've all but got her again at last.

rom her being what she is, of course, a luxury for a fogey like me, it will set me right in the eyes of the clergy an

against your opening the cage-door and letting the bird go in such an obviously suicidal way. You m

irreparable da

her housed agai

pentance of letting her go, but was, primarily, a human instinct flying in the face of custom and profession. He said, "Yes-I shall do that

y spirit induced by the world's sneers and his own physical wishes would make Phillotso

to his position. "I flew in the face of the Church's teaching; but I did it without malice prepense. Women are so strange in thei

degrees only. Don't be too strenuous at

ement. 'The only thing you can do to retrieve your position and hers is to admit your error in not restraining her with a wise and strong hand, and to get her back again if sh

nd somebody began crossing in the direction

to see 'ee. I've been upstairs with her, helping her to unpack he

the we

ch for religion nor against it, but it can't be right to let her do this, and you ought to persuade her out of it. O

h grave reserve, opposition making him illogically ten

a wicked shame to egg her on to this, poor little quivering thing! She's got nobody on her side. The one man who'd be

part. Now that's all I have to say." Phillotson spoke stiff

at what I had to say; but I don't

r for that. But I must be allowed to know what's best for mysel

o feel afeard to move in it at all. In my time we took it more careless; and I don't know that we was any the worse for it! When I and my poo

hillotson spoke moodily. "I don't know whether

hy

t her instincts-merely from this new sense of duty

u ought not to back out o

s true. But I had a qualm when she gave

ke her. It has always been on my conscience that I didn't urge more objections to your letting her

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.

k. 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 na

nd. But he checked his impulse to kiss her, remembering her

house, Widow Edlin continuing steadfast

re for any length of time since the old church was pul

d solemn in the fog. The vicar had already crossed to the building,

yours, Richard?" gas

; above all thin

me he felt he was not quite following out the hu

ce was resolemnized forthwith. In the nave of the edifice were two or three villagers, and when the clergy

h jined

. When the books were signed the vicar congratulated the husband and wife on having performed a noble, and righteous, and mutually fo

left early. He, too, congratulated the couple. "Now," he said in parting from Phillotson, who walked out a little way, "

ng some housewifery as if she lived there. But she seemed timid

ore than I did before," he said gravely. "It is for our good socially to do this

s of St. Silas' where he had formerly lived, which saddened him to sickness. The rain was coming

en 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 workho

Arabella, the evening being that of the d

ut I am only in lodgin

u turn m

h to get food and lo

I cannot endure going to a public house to lodge; an

t to be reminded of those things; and if

Arabella. She bent her head again

extra room to my own-not much more than a closet-where I k

d be a pal

no bedst

made on the floor. It wou

called the man who let the lodgings, and said this was an acqu

merly?" spoke up Arabella. "My father has insulted me th

t still, if you are a friend of Mr. Fawley's we'll do what

rrangement was ultimately come to under which a bed was to be thrown down in Jude's lumber-room, to make it comfortable for Ar

is to be done Arabella said: "

you mean; but

She had just heard that the wedding was to be ye

wish to t

u don't. Only it show

! She's a fool! And she's

ld position, by everybody's account, so Anny says. All his

e me, Ar

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 afford

, she meekly asked him if she might come in to breakfast with him, as she had

ike," he said

suddenly observed: "You seem all in

ll in a

ne, but I could find out all about the wedding-i

could

ft there. And I could see Anny, who'll be sure to have

t his discretion, and won in the struggle. "You can ask about it if you like," he said.

me there and back, or I should have gone be

e as to Sue's welfare, and the possible marriage, moved him to dispatch for i

o'clock train. When she had gone he said: "Why should I have charged her t

to get the news she might bring, and know the worst. Arabella had made dimples most successfully all the way home, a

are ma

ned. She observed, however, the ha

da, her relation out at Marygreen,

wanted to marry him agai

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 f

any cant!" e

Arabella. "I feel ex

l I wanted to know. Many thanks for your information. I am not

ther, 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

f-past nine Arabella herself went out, first proceeding to an outlying district near th

for I have something to tell you. I think I shall get married and settled aga

ing to get the

afraid, and I must get him home. All I want you to do to-night is not to

t tired of giving yourse

the door. Tha

avern 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

bella? ... I'm trying to forget her: that's all! But I can't; and I am going h

" Arabella held up her finger to the barmaid. "You shall have a liqueur-that's better fit for a man of educati

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 fo

of being, as it were, personally conducted through the varieties of spirituous delectation by one who knew the landmarks well. Arabella kept very considerably in the rear of Jud

ppens to me," a thing he did continually, she replied, "But I do very much!" The closing hour came, and they

ndlord will say to my bringing you home in this state. I expect w

know-I do

est do. Come round to my father's-I made it up with him a bit to-day. I can let you

lied Jude. "What the dev

round his waist, and his, at last, round hers; though with no amatory in

nded of it-by our passing by here-old Fuller in his Holy State says, that at the burning of Ridley, Doctor Smith-preached sermon, and took as

ou, deary, even though it hasn't mu

derstand such things! And I was her seducer-poor little girl! And she's gone-and I don't care abou

elings too, like her; and I feel I belong to you in Heaven's eye, and to

, and she softly unfastened the doo

o the cottage at Cresscombe, such a long time before. Nor were perhap

hen she had fastened up the door. "But never

rk as pitch,

t's it. Just sit down here, and I'll pull

ho

'd make a r

spered, "take hold of me-never mind your

tupefied Jude. "I haven't been inside it for years till now

y to spy out how ill you are. Now-third stair,

I

put her head into the little pork-shop in front, and told Mr. Donn it was ready. Donn, endeavouring to look like a mast

e inwards and half a pig from Lumsdon, and to call elsewhere. If you live here y

She looked deedily into his fa

hat's

band-a

N

de. He's come

inal one? Well

did like him,

there?" said Donn, humour-str

ather. What we've to do is to keep h

was t

rri

ld husband again, and so much new blood in the world! He's no cat

a man to want his old wife back-well, perhaps it is funny, rather!" And Arabella was s

e hardly seemed to know where he was. And no wonder, considering how he mixed his drink last night. We must keep him jolly and cheerful here for a day

f the previous evening lessened the fragility of his ordinary appearance, and his long lashes, dark brows, and curly back hair and beard against the white pillow completed the physiognomy of one whom Arabella, as a woman of rank pa

dear?" said she. "

ve me shelter... I am stranded-ill-de

r and me, and you can rest till you are thoroughly well.

hey are thinking

ps you had better let me pay up,

enough money in

ng eye-balls, Jude seemed to doze again. Arabella took his purse, softly left the room, and pu

the lodging for her short sojourn there. Jude was in such physical pain from his unfortunate break-down of the previous night, and in such mental pain from the loss of Sue and from having yielded in his half-somnolent stat

the honourable thing by me in this world, and I shall be left in the lurch. He must be kept cheerful. He has a little money in the savings bank, and he has given me his purse to pay for anything necessary. Well, that will be the licence;

who'll afford victuals and drink... Well ye

nsiderably confused in his mind by what had been supplied to him by Arabella during the interval-to keep him, jolly,

lleges, nor their works, nor their ways. Jude was asked if he could suggest any guest in addition to those named by Arabella and her father, and in a saturnine humour of perfect recklessness mentioned Uncle Joe, and Stagg, and the decayed auctioneer,

lor glanced into the back room, and saw the guests sitting round, card-playing, and drinking, and otherwise enjoying themselves at Donn's expense. He went home to bed, and on his way out next morning wondered how the party went off. He thought it hardly worth while to call at the shop for his provisi

ure!" he said

y as he had left them eleven hours earlier; the gas was burning and the cu

be ashamed of ourselves, oughtn't we? But it is a sort of housewarming, yo

shall lose a quarter, but never mind," he said. "Well, really, I could hardly believe my ey

Pour out fo

eing round his waist. Jude, like the rest of the company, bo

n look as much like a maiden blush as possible. "Jude and I have decided to make up matters between us by tying the knot again, as we find

g whatever. The entrance of Taylor infused fresh spirit into the company, and the

parson do

ns of decency for doing it as early and quiet as possible; on account of it being our seco

" said her father, gettin

e said to Jude. "Come

by her special knowledge of that line of business as almost to hav

promised to marry me several times as we've sa

edly. "There's only one woman-but I w

ng here together these three or four days, quite on the understanding that you were going to marry her. Of course I

ry the W–––– of Babylon rather than do anything dishonourable! No reflection on yo

our debts to friends who

more than a dead man-marry her I will, so help me God! I have never behaved dishonourably to a woman o

against Jude's. "Come up and wash your face, and just put

ame down looking tidy and calm. Arabella, too, had hastil

to get the breakfast while we are gone; and when we come back we'll all ha

ssembled guests yawned themselves wider awake, and discussed the situation with

uriosity for a couple to marry over again! If they couldn't get on the fir

hink he'l

n his honour by th

ht off like this. He's go

you. Didn't you hear he

light. To be sure, halfpence that have been in circulation can't be expected to look like new ones from the mint. But for a woman that's been knocking about

liquor. The curtains were undrawn, and the expression of the house made to look like morning. Some of the guests, however, fell asleep in their chairs. One

coming! I think

, he turned rusty at the last minute. They are walkin

ering the house. First into the room came Arabella boisterously;

me?" said Tinker Tayl

ou have both done the right and proper thing. And for your past errors as a wife, and his as a husband, I think you ought now to be forgiven by the world, as you have forgiven each other,' says he. Yes; he was a very nice, gentlemanly man. 'The Church don't recognize divorce in her dogma, strictly speaking,' he says: 'and bear in mind the words of the service in your goings out and

ave a woman's honour," mutte

y, come along and h

re whisky," sai

eft. The tea will take the muddle out of ou

ought to marry you again, and I have st

I

a short time in her father's house after their remarriage, were in lo

vent, but his health had been indifferent, and it was now precarious. H

hat 'twill come to! I shall have to make black-pot and sausages, and hawk 'em about the street, all to support an invalid husband I'd no

e pig you and I killed during our first marriage. I feel now that the greatest mercy that

ll, especially as he had seen Arabella kiss Jude one evening when she had taken a little cordial; and he was about to give them notice to quit, till by chance overhearing her one nigh

rabella, with considerable hesitation, to execute a com

ite to

do you want me to

ome to see me, because I'm ill, and

sult a lawful wife by

her. I could find a dozen ways of sending a letter to her without your knowledge. But I wish to be quite above-board with you, and with her husban

marriage whatever, or

in the world who comes to see me for half an hour-here with one foot in the grave! ..

ld thin

t that his physical weakness h

re for? She don't want to see 'ee. She'

t, do

re fool I! Have that stru

air, and before Arabella knew where she was he had her on her b

here and now! I've everything to gain by it-my own death not being

nt me to do?" g

ever to sp

well.

rnfully as he loosened her. "Bu

l the pig, but yo

-I couldn't kill you-even

er's eye as he sank back ghastly pale. "I'll send for her," Arabella murmure

unable to resist the offer even now, provoked as he had been;

he inquired if

you were ill, and asking her to come to-morro

ish Hope, that lives on a drop and a crumb, made him restless with expectation. He kn

mind that Arabella had never posted hers, although she had written it. There was something in her manner which told it. His physical weakness was such that he shed tears at the disappointment when she was no

d resolve grew up in him, which gave him, if not strength, stability and calm. One midda

itting, meditated. "Now where the

spouts it seemed impossible to believe that any sick man would have ventured out to almost certain death. Yet a conviction possessed Arabella

been seen walking along the five-mile road to Marygreen. On his face showed the determined purpose that alone sustained him, but to which has weakness afforded a sorry foundation. By the up-hill walk he was quite blown, but he pressed on; and at half-past three o'clock stood by the familiar w

evidently allowed out before hours for some reason

rs. Phillotson if she will be kind enough

Everything was new, except a few pieces of carving preserved from the wrecked old fabric, now fixed against the n

nted no more than an added drip to the rainfa

terical catch in her breath ended in a succession of the

ess intrusive than to enter your house. And I shall never come again. Don't then

ars flowing as she allowed him to come closer. "But why did you come, a

right

er been other than yours, Jude-in a proper sense. And therefore you d

ural, than another in my life, it is this meretricious contract with Arabella which has been call

m you-I can't bear much! But

how you did it-how yo

d and struggled, and fasted, and prayed. I have nearly brought

hat a woman in your state of feeling is quite beyond all appeals to her brains. Or is it that you are humbugging yourself, as so many women do abo

w can you b

human intellect that it has ever been my lot to behold! Whe

me, Jude! Go away from m

f I had the strength to come, which I shall not have

n't scorn me! Kiss me, oh kiss me lots of times, and say I am not a coward and a contemptible humbug-I can't bear it!" She rushed up to him and, with her mouth

ow

nly. It hasn't been more than that

s. "If misery can know happiness, I have a moment's happiness now! Now, in the

.. But I mustn't do this! I mu

t d

e so dear!-and

ore, in memory of our dead li

o on with this!" she gasped presently. "But there, there, darling; I give you

e drunk to do it. You were the same. I was gin-drunk; you were creed-drunk. Either form of intoxi

is too merciless! ... But I've got over myself now. Don'

ut. As he passed the end of the church she heard his coughs mingling with the rain on the windows, and in a last instinct of human affection, even now unsubdued by

which he had scared rooks as a boy. He turned and looked back, once, at the building which st

nd here the spring frost lingers last unthawed. Here in the teeth of the north-east wind and rain Jude now pursued his way, wet through, the necessary slowness of his walk from lack of his former strength being insufficent to maintain his heat. He came to the milestone, and, raining

o his bones being too much for him to endure fasting. To get home he had to travel by a steam tram-car, and

od Arabella. She lo

to see her?

literally tottering w

u'd best marc

d he was compelled to lean against the

his, young man," said she. "I

o. I meant to

commit

tain

t! Kill yoursel

m not so weak in another way as you think. I made up my mind that a man confined to his room by inflammation of the lungs, a fellow who had only two wishes left in the world, to see a particular woman, and then to die, could ne

ty! Won't you have so

you. Let's

e silent colleges, an

e you lo

irits of the dead again, on this my last w

rious chap

elieve in half of them. The theologians, the apologists, and their kin the metaphysicians, the high-handed

. At moments he stood still by an archway, like one watching a figure walk out; then he would look at a window like on

m laughin

ho

archways, and windows. They used to look friendly in the old days, partic

living nor dead hereabouts except a damn p

ed to walk here, and the great

o hear about 'e

that lane-Wycliffe-Harvey-Hooker-Arnold-

care about folk dead and gone? Upon my soul you are mor

ont. "This is old Rubric. And that Sarcophagus; and up that lane Crozier and Tudor: and all down there is Cardinal with its lon

, and I'll

h-claws were grabbing me through and through. As Antigone said, I am neither a dweller among men no

after all. You are tou

nd Arabella were walking the streets of Christminster homeward, the Widow Edlin crossed the green, and opened the ba

she was not a good housewife, though she tried

t yourself for, when I've come o'

ne myself. I have scrubbed the stairs since eight o'clock. I must pr

aps be a parson, in time, and you'll keep two s

s. Edlin. This pretty body of mine

me more in mind of a sperrit. But there seems s

is. He's gone

what i

te it... Well-I will tell you this-Jude has been here this afternoo

idow. "I told 'e

ouble him about it, as I never mean to see Jude any more. But I am going to make my c

being otherwise, and it has gone o

ht not to exact from him. It ought not to have been accepted by me. To revers

like in him?" asked

e mournful thing is, that nobody would admit it as a re

r tell Jude

ev

th devils used to take husbands' forms o' nights, and get poor women into all sorts of trouble. But I don't know why that should come into

o treating him more courteously-and it

force your nature. No woma

I will drink my

on her bonnet and shawl to leave, Sue

lored, her eyes enlarged, and with a

s bedtime

om that was. It is quite ready. Please stay,

. Nothing will happen to my four o

e doors, and they ascen

id Sue. "I'll go into my ol

door knelt down by the bed for a minute or two. She then arose, and taking her night-gown from the pillow undressed and came out to Mrs. Edlin

sank down outside it. Getting up again she half opened the door, and s

ot reply. Sue seemed relieved, and hurried back to Mrs.

"I be old and slow, and it takes me a long w

him! And per

t, c

hen-I should be free, and I could go to

But the rain and the wind is so loud that yo

, good-night again! I am sorry I called y

n she was alone. "I must do it-I must! I must drink to

Is that you

es

ait a moment." He pulled on some articles

ou should come near me. I have never reversed that treatment till now-

do this? I don't wish you to come a

dmitted! I have been in error-even to-day. I have exceeded my rights. I did n

ow

didn't know he

el

m, and let h

e old

we were going to kiss

many

d to look back on it, and the least I can

, after what I've done!

the scene remained untold. She went on: "I am never going to see him any more. He spoke of some things of the past, and it overcame me. He

in Phillotson's tone now which seemed to show that his three months of remarriage with Sue

s,

swear it on th

wil

ought out a little brown Testam

sw

y go

om I belong, and whom I wish to honou

eans. Having you back in the house was

hought-I

ith a lover hanging about, a half-marriage should be comp

wish! ..

you say 'O

n't k

ouched before him in her night-clothes. "Well, I thought it might end like this," he said presen

d her to lift her u

ng for the first time sternly. "You s

d-I-I-was n

to come

es

ar in mind wh

t is my

he doorway, and lifting her bodily, kissed her. A quick look of aver

to bed when she said to herself: "Ah-perhaps I'd better go and

Poor soul! Weddings be funerals 'a b'lieve nowadays. Fifty-five years ag

d worked at his trade for several weeks. Af

not likely to do much work for a long while, and was cross enough at the turn affairs had taken since her remarriage to hi

arded her abuse in a humorous light. Sometimes his mood was more earnes

s, and I think that began the mischief inside. But I felt I could do one thing if I had the opportunity. I could accumulate ideas, and impart them to others. I wonder if the founders had such as I in their minds-a fellow good for nothing else but that particular thing? ... I hear that

ot over all that craze about books by this time. And so you would, if you'd h

iloquizing thus he called

ignantly. "Calling a respectable married woman by the name of

had to fear from Sue's rivalry, she had a fit of generosity. "I suppose you want to see

ish to see

t's a c

me-that I'm ill, or anything. She

ections were centred had reached absolute indifference by this time, went out, leaving the old woman alone with Jude. He impulsively

s different now. She's begun it qui

begin?" he a

a punishment to her poor self. He

and she veered round to darkness. Strange difference of sex, that time and circumstance, which enlarge the views of most men, narrow the views of women almost invariably. And now the ultimate horror has come-her giving herself like this to what she loathes, in her enslavement to forms! She, so sensitive, so shrinking, that the very wind seemed to blow on her with a touch of deference... As for S

r boy. I could hear

to use terribly profane language about social conventions, which started a fit of coughing. Presen

The lanky form was that of Physician Vil

t at present?" as

I let out some gossip by accident-the more to my blame. But there-you must

and see him. Mrs

present, but she'

ught to bay by events that he vented his opinion of Vilbert in the physician's face, and so forcibly, and with such striking epithets, that Vilbert soon scurried downstairs again. At th

passage," she said. "There's nob

bottle and a gla

ssed laughter. "What is this, my d

he said: "I poured your own love-philtre into it, that yo

pared for the consequences." Putting his arm r

red, laughing good-humour

ny day. And if my poor fellow upstairs do go off-as I suppose he will soon-it's well to keep chances open. And I

ask the reader's attention are concerned with the scene in a

she performed by heating an umbrella-stay in the flame of a candle she had lighted, and using it upon the flowing lock. When she had finished this, practised a dimpl

t down and waited, as if expecting some

ave been, could be seen here. Bells began to ring, and the notes came into the room through the open window, and travel

as hung up by way of timepiece, rose impatiently. Still he slept, and coming to a resolution she slipped from the room, closed the door noiselessly,

e, where men were putting up awnings round the quadrangle for a ball in the hall that evening. People who had come up from the country for the day were picnicking on the grass, and Arabella walked along the gravel paths and under the aged limes. But finding this

windows, over the housetops, and into the still air of the lanes. They reached so far as to the

murmured, his eyes still clos

l, and he coughed to exhaustion again-saying sti

ntly he gasped again: "Throat-water-Sue-

an notes, faint as a bee's

g, shouts and hurrahs came from som

games," he murmured. "And

organ notes. Jude's face changed more: he whis

rn, and the night in which it was sa

urr

above, neither let the light shine upon it. Lo, let th

urr

hen I came out of the belly? ... For now should I have lain stil

urr

The small and the great are there; and the servant is free from his master. Wher

ll here also. A carpenter nodded to her, one who had formerly been a fellow-workman of Jude's. A corridor was in course of erection from the entrance to the hall staircase, of gay red and buff bunting. Waggon-loads of boxes containing bright plants in full

e at hand was sounding

und my waist," she said to one of the men. "But Lord, I must

's fellow stoneworkers. "We are just going down to the river," said the former, "to

icely, thank you

self half an hour's relaxation, Mrs. Fawley,

. "I've never seen the boat-rac

e al

"Wait a minute, then. I'll just run up and see how he is now

ng, in fact, gone in a body to the river where the procession of boats was to pa

e said impatiently. "He wants to see

by his cough. He had slipped down, and lay flat. A second glance caused her to start, and she went to the bed. His face was quite white, and gradually becoming rigid.

reached her ears; and in a provoked tone she exclaimed, "To think he should die just now! Why did he die just now!"

fter all. Come along; we must be quick to get a good place... Well, how i

sound. He won't wake ye

nce they passed by a narrow slit down to the riverside path-now dusty, hot, and thronged. Almost as soon as they had arrived the gran

e come," said Arabella. "And-it ca

boat club denoted the centre of interest, beneath which a band in red uniform gave out the notes she had already heard in the death-chamber. Collegians of all sorts, in canoes

know!" he said with a leer. "S

talk of lo

t is a gene

unobserved in the crowd. An arch expression overspread Arabella's face at the feel

would have laughed heartily at the horse-play that succeeded, if the imprint on her mind's e

there were shouts: the race was lost and won, the pink and blue and yellow l

I think I must get back to my poor man. Father is

s your

... Dear, dear,

mass-Arabella and Vilbert with the rest; and here they remained motionless, Arabella exclaiming, "Dear, dear!" more and more impat

sed close against her by the throng, had no need of personal effort f

into the street Arabella hastened on, forbidding the physician to accompany her further that day. She did not go straight

poor soul," she said. "Ca

ing their way through the stream of fashionable people pouring out

l, too," said Arabella. "It is just round

overed with a sheet, and straight as an arrow. Through the partly opened

beside Jude's open coffin in the same little bedroom. On one side was Arabella, on the other the

iful he is

ndsome corpse,"

ut noontide the clear air was motionless and quiet without. From

?" murmured

the Duke of Hamptonshire and a lot more illustrious gents of that sor

ong-lunged! Not lik

the old, superseded, Delphin editions of Virgil and Horace, and the dog-eared Greek Testament on the neighbouring shelf, and the few other volumes of the sort that he had not parted with, roughened with stone-dust whe

Jude to Mrs. Edlin. "D'ye thi

. She swore not

she lo

er than when you saw her last. Quite a staid, worn wo

her, he would hardly have car

e ever ask you to send for her, since

ed to send, and he said I was no

forgiv

as I

believed she's found forgiveness som

she's hoarse, but it won't be true!" said Arabella. "She's never found pea

tno

tno

am Ba

et

tno

ay

et