by Thomas Hardy
“No, I am not.”
“What have I done, then? I am sure I thought we two — ” The tremolo in her voice caused her to break off.
“Sue, I sometimes think you are a flirt,” said he abruptly.
There was a momentary pause, till she suddenly jumped up; and to his surprise he saw by the kettle-flame that her face was flushed.
“I can’t talk to you any longer, Jude!” she said, the tragic contralto note having come back as of old. “It is getting too dark to stay together like this, after playing morbid Good Friday tunes that make one feel what one shouldn’t! … We mustn’t sit and talk in this way any more. Yes — you must go away, for you mistake me! I am 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 loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can’t give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop’s licence to receive it. But you are so straightforward, Jude, that you can’t understand me! … Now you must go. I am sorry my husband is not at home.”
“Are you?”
“I perceive I have said that in mere convention! Honestly I don’t think I am sorry. It does not matter, either way, sad to say!”
As they had overdone the grasp of hands some time sooner, she touched his fingers but lightly when he went out now. He had hardly gone from the door when, with a dissatisfied look, she jumped on a form and opened the iron casement of a window beneath which he was passing in the path without. “When do you leave here to catch your train, Jude?” she asked.
He looked up in some surprise. “The coach that runs to meet it goes in three-quarters of an hour or so.”
“What will you do with yourself for the time?”
“Oh — wander about, I suppose. Perhaps I shall go and sit in the old church.”
“It does seem hard of me to pack you off so! You have thought enough of churches, Heaven knows, without going into one in the dark. Stay there.”
“Where?”
“Where you are. I can talk to you better like this than when you were inside… It was so kind and tender of you to give up half 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 you are St. Stephen, who, while they were stoning him, could see Heaven opened. Oh, my poor friend and comrade, you’ll suffer yet!”
Now that the high window-sill was between them, so that he could not get at her, she seemed not to mind indulging in a frankness she had feared at close quarters.
“I have been thinking,” she continued, still in the tone of one brimful of feeling, “that the social moulds civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes 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 a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies… Now you mustn’t wait longer, or you will lose the coach. Come and see me again. You must come to the house then.”
“Yes!” said Jude. “When shall it be?”
“To-morrow week. Good-bye — good-bye!” She stretched out her hand and stroked his forehead pitifully — just once. Jude said good-bye, and went away into the darkness.
Passing along Bimport Street he thought he heard the wheels of the coach departing, and, truly enough, when he reached the Duke’s Arms in the Market Place the coach had gone. It was impossible for him to get to the station on foot in time for this train, and he settled himself perforce to wait for the next — the last to Melchester that night.
He wandered about awhile, obtained something to eat; and then, having another half-hour on his hands, his feet involuntarily took him through the venerable graveyard of Trinity Church, with its avenues of limes, in the direction of the schools again. They were entirely in darkness. She had said she lived over the way at Old-Grove Place, a house which he soon discovered from her description of its antiquity.
A glimmering candlelight shone from a front window, the shutters being yet unclosed. He could see the interior clearly — the floor sinking a couple of steps below the road without, which had become raised during the centuries since the 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 moulded beams only a little way above her head. The mantelpiece was of the same heavy description, carved with Jacobean pilasters and scroll-work. The centuries did, indeed, ponderously overhang a young wife who passed her time here.
She had opened a rosewood work-box, and was looking at a photograph. Having contemplated it a little while she pressed it against her bosom, and put it again in its place.
Then becoming aware that she had not obscured the windows she came forward to do so, candle in hand. It was too dark for her to see Jude without, but he could see her face distinctly, and there was an unmistakable tearfulness about the dark, long-lashed eyes.
She closed the shutters, and Jude turned away to pursue his solitary journey home. “Whose photograph was she looking at?” he said. He had once given her his; but she had others, he knew. Yet it was his, surely?
He knew he should go to see her again, according to her invitation. Those earnest men he read of, the saints, whom Sue, with gentle irreverence, called his demi-gods, would have shunned such encounters if they doubted their own strength. But he could not. He might fast and pray during the whole interval, but the human was more powerful in him than the Divine.
CHAPTER II
However, if God disposed not, woman did. The next morning but one brought him this note from her:
Don’t come next week. On your own account don’t! We were too free, under the influence of that morbid hymn and the twilight. Think no more than you can help of
Susanna Florence Mary.
The disappointment was keen. He knew her mood, the look of her face, when she subscribed herself at length thus. But whatever her mood he could not say she was wrong in her view. He replied:
I acquiesce. You are right. It is a lesson in renunciation which I suppose I ought to learn at this season.
Jude.
He despatched the note on Easter Eve, and there seemed a finality in their decisions. But other forces and laws than theirs were in operation. On Easter Monday morning he received a message from the Widow Edlin, whom he had directed to telegraph if anything serious happened:
Your aunt is sinking. Come at once.
He threw down his tools and went. Three and a half hours later he was crossing the downs about Marygreen, and presently plunged into the concave 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 approach from a gate across the path, moved uneasily, and prepared to speak. “I can see in his face that she is dead,” said Jude. “Poor Aunt Drusilla!”
It was as he had supposed, and Mrs. Edlin had sent out the man to break the news to him.
“She wouldn’t have knowed ‘ee. She lay like a doll wi’ glass eyes; so it didn’t matter that you wasn’t here,” said he.
Jude went on to the house, and in the afternoon, when everything was done, and the layers-out had finished their beer, and gone, he sat down alone in the silent place. It was absolutely necessary to communicate with Sue, though two or three days earlier they had agreed to mutual severance. He wrote in the briefest terms:
Aunt Drusilla is dead, having been taken almost suddenly. The funeral is on Friday afternoon.
He remained in and about Marygreen through the intervening days, went out on Friday morning to see th
at the grave was finished, and wondered if Sue would come. She had not written, and that seemed to signify rather 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 he stood and looked over the vast prospect northwards, and over the nearer landscape in which Alfredston stood. Two miles behind it a jet of white steam was travelling from the left to the right of the picture.
There was a long time to wait, even now, till he would know if she had arrived. He did wait, however, and at last a small hired vehicle pulled up at the bottom of the hill, and a person alighted, the conveyance going back, 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. Two-thirds of the way up her head suddenly took a solicitous poise, and he knew that she had at that moment recognized him. Her face soon began a pensive smile, which lasted till, having descended a little way, he met her.
“I thought,” she began with nervous quickness, “that it would be so sad to let you attend the funeral alone! And so — at the last moment — I came.”
“Dear faithful Sue!” murmured Jude.
With the elusiveness of her curious double nature, however, Sue did not stand still for any further greeting, though it wanted some time to the burial. A pathos so unusually compounded as that which attached to this hour was unlikely to repeat itself for years, if ever, and Jude would have paused, and meditated, and conversed. But Sue either saw it not at all, or, seeing it more than he, would not allow herself to feel it.
The sad and simple ceremony was soon over, their progress to the church being almost at a trot, the bustling undertaker having a more important funeral an hour later, three miles off. Drusilla was put into the new ground, quite away from her ancestors. Sue and Jude had gone side by side to the grave, and now sat down to tea in the familiar house; their lives united at least in this last attention to the dead.
“She was opposed to marriage, from first to last, you say?” murmured Sue.
“Yes. Particularly for members of our family.”
Her eyes met his, and remained on him awhile.
“We are rather a sad family, don’t you think, Jude?”
“She said we made bad husbands and wives. Certainly we make unhappy ones. At all events, I do, for one!”
Sue was silent. “Is it wrong, Jude,” she said with a tentative tremor, “for a husband or wife to tell a third person that they are unhappy in their marriage? If a marriage ceremony is a 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 children, making it necessary that the male parent should be known — which it seems to be — why surely a person may say, even proclaim upon the housetops, that it hurts and grieves him or her?”
“I have said so, anyhow, to you.”
Presently she went on: “Are there many couples, do you think, where one dislikes the other for no definite fault?”
“Yes, I suppose. If either cares for another person, for instance.”
“But even apart from that? Wouldn’t the woman, for example, be very bad-natured if she didn’t like to live with her husband; merely” — her voice undulated, and he guessed things — ”merely because she had a personal feeling against it — a physical objection — a fastidiousness, or whatever it may be called — although she might respect and be grateful to him? I am merely putting a case. Ought she to try to overcome her pruderies?”
Jude threw a troubled look at her. He said, looking away: “It would be just one of those cases in which my experiences go contrary to my dogmas. Speaking as an order-loving man — which I hope I am, though I fear I am not — I should say, yes. Speaking from experience and unbiased nature, I should say, no. … Sue, I believe you are not happy!”
“Of course I am!” she contradicted. “How can a woman be unhappy who has only been married eight weeks to a man she chose freely?”
“‘Chose freely!’“
“Why do you repeat it? … But I have to go back by the six o’clock train. You will be staying on here, I suppose?”
“For a few days to wind up Aunt’s affairs. This house is gone now. Shall I go to the train with you?”
A little laugh of objection came from Sue. “I think not. You may come part of the way.”
“But stop — you can’t go to-night! That train won’t take you to Shaston. You must stay and go back to-morrow. Mrs. Edlin has plenty of room, if you don’t like to stay here?”
“Very well,” she said dubiously. “I didn’t tell him I would come for certain.”
Jude went to the widow’s house adjoining, to let her know; and returning in a few minutes sat down again.
“It is horrible how we are circumstanced, Sue — horrible!” he said abruptly, with his eyes bent to the floor.
“No! Why?”
“I can’t tell you all my part of the gloom. Your part is that you ought not to have married him. I saw it before you had done it, but I thought I mustn’t interfere. I was wrong. I ought to have!”
“But what makes you assume all this, dear?”
“Because — I can see you through your feathers, my poor little bird!”
Her hand lay on the table, and Jude put his upon it. Sue drew hers away.
“That’s absurd, Sue,” cried he, “after what we’ve been talking about! I am more strict and formal than you, if it comes to that; and that you should object to such an innocent action shows that you are ridiculously inconsistent!”
“Perhaps it was too prudish,” she said repentantly. “Only I have fancied it was a sort of trick of ours — too frequent perhaps. There, you may hold it as much as you like. Is that good of me?”
“Yes; very.”
“But I must tell him.”
“Who?”
“Richard.”
“Oh — of course, if you think it necessary. But as it means nothing it may be bothering him needlessly.”
“Well — are you sure you mean it only as my cousin?”
“Absolutely sure. I have no feelings of love left in me.”
“That’s news. How has it come to be?”
“I’ve seen Arabella.”
She winced at the hit; then said curiously, “When did you see her?”
“When I was at Christminster.”
“So she’s come back; and you never told me! I suppose you will live with her now?”
“Of course — just as you live with your husband.”
She looked at the window pots with the geraniums and cactuses, withered for want of attention, and through them at the outer distance, till her eyes began to grow moist. “What is it?” said Jude, in a softened tone.
“Why should you be so glad to go back to her if — if what you used to say to me is still true — I mean if it were true then! Of course it is not now! How could your heart go back to Arabella so soon?”
“A special Providence, I suppose, helped it on its way.”
“Ah — it isn’t true!” she said with gentle resentment. “You are teasing me — that’s all — because you think I am not happy!”
“I don’t know. I don’t wish to know.”
“If I were unhappy it would be my fault, my wickedness; not that I should have a right to dislike him! He is considerate to me in everything; and he is very interesting, from the amount of general knowledge he has acquired by reading everything that comes in his way. … Do you think, Jude, that a man ought to marry a woman his own age, or one younger than himself — eighteen years — as I am than he?”
“It depends upon what they feel for each other.”
He gave her no opportunity of self-satisfaction, and she had to go on unaided, which she did in a vanquished tone, verging on tears:
“I — I think I must be equally
honest with you as you have been with me. Perhaps you have seen what it is I want to say? — that though I like Mr. Phillotson as a friend, I don’t like 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 for me for ever, I suppose!” She bent down her face upon her hands as they lay upon the cloth, and silently sobbed in little jerks that made the fragile three-legged table quiver.
“I have only been married a month or two!” she went on, still remaining bent upon the table, and sobbing into her hands. “And it is said that what a woman 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 saying that the amputation of a limb is no affliction, since a person gets comfortably accustomed to the use of a wooden leg or arm in the course of time!”
Jude could hardly speak, but he said, “I thought there was something wrong, Sue! Oh, I thought there was!”
“But it is not as you think! — there is nothing wrong except my own wickedness, I suppose you’d call it — a repugnance on my part, for a reason I cannot disclose, and what would not be admitted as one by the world in general! … What tortures me so much is the necessity of being 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 justification for feeling as I do! But he does nothing, except that he has grown a little cold since he has found out how I feel. That’s why he didn’t come to the funeral… Oh, I am very miserable — I don’t know what to do! … Don’t come near me, Jude, because you mustn’t. Don’t — don’t!”
But he had jumped up and put his face against hers — or rather against her ear, her face being inaccessible.
