Jude the Obscure

e met the itinerant Vilbert. She, like all the cottagers thereabout, knew the quack well, and she began telling him of her experiences. Arabella had been gloomy, but before he left her she h

se make-shifts were temporary; she had gained a husband; that was the thing-- a husband with a lot of earning power in him for buying her frocks and hats when he should begin to get frightened a bit, and stick to his trade, and throw aside those stupid books for practical undertakings.So to the cottage he took her on the evening of the marriage, giving up his old room at his aunt's--where so much of the hard labour at Greek and Latin had been carried on.A little chill overspread him at her first unrobing. A long tail of hair, which Arabella wore twisted up in an enormous knob at the back of her head, was deliberately unfastened, stroked out, and hung upon the looking-glass which he had bought her."What--it wasn't your own?" he said, with a sudden distaste for her."Oh no--it never is nowadays with the better class.""Nonsense! Perhaps not in towns. But in the country it is supposed to be different. Besides, you've enough of your own, surely?""Yes, enough as country notions go. But in town the men expect more, and when I was barmaid at Aldbrickham----""Barmaid at Aldbrickham?""Well, not exactly barmaid--I used to draw the drink at a public-house there--just for a little time; that was all. Some people put me up to getting this, and I bought it just for a fancy. The more you have the better in Aldbrickham, which is a finer town than all your Christminsters. Every lady of position wears false hair--the barber's assistant told me so."Jude thought with a feeling of sickness that though this might be true to some extent, for all that he knew, many unsophisticated girls would and did go to towns and remain there for years without losing their simplicity of life and embellishments. Others, alas, had an instinct towards artificiality in their very blood, and became adepts in counterfeiting at the first glimpse of it. However, perhaps there was no great sin in a woman adding to her hair, and he resolved to think no more of it.A new-made wife can usually manage to excite interest for a few weeks, even though the prospects of the house-hold ways and means are cloudy. There is a certain piquancy about her 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. Jude Fawley was walking in the streets of Alfredston one market-day with this quality in her carriage when she met Anny her former friend, whom she had not seen since the wedding.As usual they laughed before talking; the world seemed funny to them without saying it."So it turned out a good plan, you see!" remarked the girl to the wife. "I knew it would with such as him. He's a dear good fellow, and you ought to be proud of un.""I am," said Mrs. Fawley quietly."And when do you expect?""Ssh! Not at all.""What!""I was mistaken.""Oh, Arabella, Arabella; you be a deep one! Mistaken! well, that's clever-- it's a real stroke of genius! It is a thing I never thought o', wi' all my experience! I never thought beyond bringing about the real thing-- not that one could sham it!""Don't you be too quick to cry sham! 'Twasn't sham. I didn't know.""My word--won't he be in a taking! He'll give it to 'ee o' Saturday nights! Whatever it was, he'll say it was a trick-- a double one, by the Lord!""I'll own to the first, but not to the second.... Pooh-- he won't care! He'll be glad I was wrong in what I said. He'll shake down, bless 'ee--men always do. What can 'em do otherwise? Married is married."Nevertheless it was with a little uneasiness that Arabella approached the time when in the natural course of things she would have to reveal that the alarm she had raised had been without foundation. 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 fr