Jude the Obscure Read online

  XI

  Next morning, which was Sunday, she resumed operations about teno'clock; and the renewed work recalled the conversation which hadaccompanied it the night before, and put her back into the sameintractable temper.

  "That's the story about me in Marygreen, is it--that I entrapped 'ee?Much of a catch you were, Lord send!" As she warmed she saw some ofJude's dear ancient classics on a table where they ought not to havebeen laid. "I won't have them books here in the way!" she criedpetulantly; and seizing them one by one she began throwing them uponthe floor.

  "Leave my books alone!" he said. "You might have thrown themaside if you had liked, but as to soiling them like that, it isdisgusting!" In the operation of making lard Arabella's hands hadbecome smeared with the hot grease, and her fingers consequentlyleft very perceptible imprints on the book-covers. She continueddeliberately to toss the books severally upon the floor, till Jude,incensed beyond bearing, caught her by the arms to make her leaveoff. Somehow, in going so, he loosened the fastening of her hair,and it rolled about her ears.

  "Let me go!" she said.

  "Promise to leave the books alone."

  She hesitated. "Let me go!" she repeated.

  "Promise!"

  After a pause: "I do."

  Jude relinquished his hold, and she crossed the room to the door,out of which she went with a set face, and into the highway. Hereshe began to saunter up and down, perversely pulling her hair into aworse disorder than he had caused, and unfastening several buttons ofher gown. It was a fine Sunday morning, dry, clear and frosty, andthe bells of Alfredston Church could be heard on the breeze from thenorth. People were going along the road, dressed in their holidayclothes; they were mainly lovers--such pairs as Jude and Arabellahad been when they sported along the same track some months earlier.These pedestrians turned to stare at the extraordinary spectacle shenow presented, bonnetless, her dishevelled hair blowing in the wind,her bodice apart, her sleeves rolled above her elbows for her work,and her hands reeking with melted fat. One of the passers said inmock terror: "Good Lord deliver us!"

  "See how he's served me!" she cried. "Making me work Sunday morningswhen I ought to be going to my church, and tearing my hair off myhead, and my gown off my back!"

  Jude was exasperated, and went out to drag her in by main force.Then he suddenly lost his heat. Illuminated with the sense that allwas over between them, and that it mattered not what she did, or he,her husband stood still, regarding her. Their lives were ruined, hethought; ruined by the fundamental error of their matrimonial union:that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feelingwhich had no necessary connection with affinities that alone rendera lifelong comradeship tolerable.

  "Going to ill-use me on principle, as your father ill-used yourmother, and your father's sister ill-used her husband?" she asked."All you be a queer lot as husbands and wives!"

  Jude fixed an arrested, surprised look on her. But she said no more,and continued her saunter till she was tired. He left the spot, and,after wandering vaguely a little while, walked in the direction ofMarygreen. Here he called upon his great-aunt, whose infirmitiesdaily increased.

  "Aunt--did my father ill-use my mother, and my aunt her husband?"said Jude abruptly, sitting down by the fire.

  She raised her ancient eyes under the rim of the by-gone bonnet thatshe always wore. "Who's been telling you that?" she said.

  "I have heard it spoken of, and want to know all."

  "You med so well, I s'pose; though your wife--I reckon 'twasshe--must have been a fool to open up that! There isn't much to knowafter all. Your father and mother couldn't get on together, and theyparted. It was coming home from Alfredston market, when you were ababy--on the hill by the Brown House barn--that they had their lastdifference, and took leave of one another for the last time. Yourmother soon afterwards died--she drowned herself, in short, and yourfather went away with you to South Wessex, and never came here anymore."

  Jude recalled his father's silence about North Wessex and Jude'smother, never speaking of either till his dying day.

  "It was the same with your father's sister. Her husband offendedher, and she so disliked living with him afterwards that she wentaway to London with her little maid. The Fawleys were not made forwedlock: it never seemed to sit well upon us. There's sommat in ourblood that won't take kindly to the notion of being bound to do whatwe do readily enough if not bound. That's why you ought to havehearkened to me, and not ha' married."

  "Where did Father and Mother part--by the Brown House, did you say?"

  "A little further on--where the road to Fenworth branches off, andthe handpost stands. A gibbet once stood there not onconnected withour history. But let that be."

  In the dusk of that evening Jude walked away from his old aunt's asif to go home. But as soon as he reached the open down he struck outupon it till he came to a large round pond. The frost continued,though it was not particularly sharp, and the larger stars overheadcame out slow and flickering. Jude put one foot on the edge of theice, and then the other: it cracked under his weight; but this didnot deter him. He ploughed his way inward to the centre, the icemaking sharp noises as he went. When just about the middle he lookedaround him and gave a jump. The cracking repeated itself; but he didnot go down. He jumped again, but the cracking had ceased. Judewent back to the edge, and stepped upon the ground.

  It was curious, he thought. What was he reserved for? He supposedhe was not a sufficiently dignified person for suicide. Peacefuldeath abhorred him as a subject, and would not take him.

  What could he do of a lower kind than self-extermination; what wasthere less noble, more in keeping with his present degraded position?He could get drunk. Of course that was it; he had forgotten.Drinking was the regular, stereotyped resource of the despairingworthless. He began to see now why some men boozed at inns. Hestruck down the hill northwards and came to an obscure public-house.On entering and sitting down the sight of the picture of Samson andDelilah on the wall caused him to recognize the place as that hehad visited with Arabella on that first Sunday evening of theircourtship. He called for liquor and drank briskly for an hour ormore.

  Staggering homeward late that night, with all his sense ofdepression gone, and his head fairly clear still, he began to laughboisterously, and to wonder how Arabella would receive him in hisnew aspect. The house was in darkness when he entered, and inhis stumbling state it was some time before he could get a light.Then he found that, though the marks of pig-dressing, of fats andscallops, were visible, the materials themselves had been taken away.A line written by his wife on the inside of an old envelope waspinned to the cotton blower of the fireplace:

  "_Have gone to my friends. Shall not return._"

  All the next day he remained at home, and sent off the carcase of thepig to Alfredston. He then cleaned up the premises, locked the door,put the key in a place she would know if she came back, and returnedto his masonry at Alfredston.

  At night when he again plodded home he found she had not visited thehouse. The next day went in the same way, and the next. Then therecame a letter from her.

  That she had gone tired of him she frankly admitted. He was sucha slow old coach, and she did not care for the sort of life heled. There was no prospect of his ever bettering himself or her.She further went on to say that her parents had, as he knew, forsome time considered the question of emigrating to Australia, thepig-jobbing business being a poor one nowadays. They had at lastdecided to go, and she proposed to go with them, if he had noobjection. A woman of her sort would have more chance over therethan in this stupid country.

  Jude replied that he had not the least objection to her going. Hethought it a wise course, since she wished to go, and one that mightbe to the advantage of both. He enclosed in the packet containingthe letter the money that had been realized by the sale of the pig,with all he had besides, which was not much.

  From that day he heard no more of her except indirectly, though her
father and his household did not immediately leave, but waited tillhis goods and other effects had been sold off. When Jude learntthat there was to be an auction at the house of the Donns he packedhis own household goods into a waggon, and sent them to her at theaforesaid homestead, that she might sell them with the rest, or asmany of them as she should choose.

  He then went into lodgings at Alfredston, and saw in a shopwindow thelittle handbill announcing the sale of his father-in-law's furniture.He noted its date, which came and passed without Jude's going nearthe place, or perceiving that the traffic out of Alfredston bythe southern road was materially increased by the auction. A fewdays later he entered a dingy broker's shop in the main streetof the town, and amid a heterogeneous collection of saucepans, aclothes-horse, rolling-pin, brass candlestick, swing looking-glass,and other things at the back of the shop, evidently just brought infrom a sale, he perceived a framed photograph, which turned out to behis own portrait.

  It was one which he had had specially taken and framed by a local manin bird's-eye maple, as a present for Arabella, and had duly givenher on their wedding-day. On the back was still to be read, "_Judeto Arabella_," with the date. She must have thrown it in with therest of her property at the auction.

  "Oh," said the broker, seeing him look at this and the other articlesin the heap, and not perceiving that the portrait was of himself,"It is a small lot of stuff that was knocked down to me at a cottagesale out on the road to Marygreen. The frame is a very useful one,if you take out the likeness. You shall have it for a shilling."

  The utter death of every tender sentiment in his wife, as broughthome to him by this mute and undesigned evidence of her sale ofhis portrait and gift, was the conclusive little stroke requiredto demolish all sentiment in him. He paid the shilling, took thephotograph away with him, and burnt it, frame and all, when hereached his lodging.

  Two or three days later he heard that Arabella and her parents haddeparted. He had sent a message offering to see her for a formalleave-taking, but she had said that it would be better otherwise,since she was bent on going, which perhaps was true. On the eveningfollowing their emigration, when his day's work was done, he came outof doors after supper, and strolled in the starlight along the toofamiliar road towards the upland whereon had been experienced thechief emotions of his life. It seemed to be his own again.

  He could not realize himself. On the old track he seemed to be aboy still, hardly a day older than when he had stood dreaming at thetop of that hill, inwardly fired for the first time with ardours forChristminster and scholarship. "Yet I am a man," he said. "I havea wife. More, I have arrived at the still riper stage of havingdisagreed with her, disliked her, had a scuffle with her, and partedfrom her."

  He remembered then that he was standing not far from the spot atwhich the parting between his father and his mother was said to haveoccurred.

  A little further on was the summit whence Christminster, or what hehad taken for that city, had seemed to be visible. A milestone, nowas always, stood at the roadside hard by. Jude drew near it, andfelt rather than read the mileage to the city. He remembered thatonce on his way home he had proudly cut with his keen new chisel aninscription on the back of that milestone, embodying his aspirations.It had been done in the first week of his apprenticeship, beforehe had been diverted from his purposes by an unsuitable woman. Hewondered if the inscription were legible still, and going to the backof the milestone brushed away the nettles. By the light of a matchhe could still discern what he had cut so enthusiastically so longago:

  THITHER J. F. [with a pointing finger]

  The sight of it, unimpaired, within its screen of grass and nettles,lit in his soul a spark of the old fire. Surely his plan shouldbe to move onward through good and ill--to avoid morbid sorroweven though he did see uglinesses in the world? _Bene agere etloetari_--to do good cheerfully--which he had heard to be thephilosophy of one Spinoza, might be his own even now.

  He might battle with his evil star, and follow out his originalintention.

  By moving to a spot a little way off he uncovered the horizon in anorth-easterly direction. There actually rose the faint halo, asmall dim nebulousness, hardly recognizable save by the eye of faith.It was enough for him. He would go to Christminster as soon as theterm of his apprenticeship expired.

  He returned to his lodgings in a better mood, and said his prayers.