by Thomas Hardy
“She isn’t your wife any longer!” exclaimed Sue, passionately excited. “You mustn’t go out to find her! It isn’t right! You can’t join her, now she’s a stranger to you. How can you forget such a thing, my dear, dear one!”
“She seems much the same as ever—an erring, careless, unreflecting fellow-creature,” he said, continuing to pull on his boots. “What those legal fellows have been playing at in London makes no difference in my real relations to her. If she was my wife while she was away in Australia with another husband she’s my wife now.”
“But she wasn’t! That’s just what I hold! There’s the absurdity! ———Well—you’ll come straight back, after a few minutes, won’t you, dear? She is too low, too coarse for you to talk to long, Jude, and was always!”
“Perhaps I am coarse too, worse luck! I have the germs of every human infirmity in me, I verily believe—that was why I saw it was so preposterous of me to think of being a curate. I have cured myself of drunkenness I think; but I never know in what new form a suppressed vice will break out in me! I do love you, Sue, though I have danced attendance 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. But I should just like a few virtuous people who have condemned me in the past, about Arabella and other things, to have been in my tantalizing position with you through these late weeks!—they’d believe, I think, that I have exercised some little restraint in always giving in to your wishes—living here in one house, and not a soul between us.”
“Yes, you have been good to me, Jude; I know you have, my dear protector.”
“Well—Arabella has appealed to me for help. I must go out and speak to her, Sue, at least!”
“I can’t say any more!—O, if you must, you must!” she said, bursting out into sobs that seemed to tear her heart. “I have nobody but you, Jude, and you are deserting me! I didn’t know you were like this—I can’t bear it, I can’t! If she were yours it would be different!”
“Or if you were.”
“Very well then—if I must I must. Since you will have it so, I agree! I will be. Only I didn’t mean to! And I didn’t want to marry again, either ! ... But, yes—I agree, I agree! I do love you. I ought to have known that you would conquer in the long run, living like this!”
She ran across and flung her arms round his neck. “I am not a cold-natured, sexless creature, am I, for keeping you at such a distance? I am sure you don’t think so! Wait and see! I do belong to you, don’t I? I give in!”
“And I’ll arrange for our marriage to-morrow, or as soon as ever you wish.”
“Yes, Jude.”
“Then I’ll let her go,” said he, embracing Sue softly. “I do feel that it would be unfair to you to see her, and perhaps 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. There; and there; and there!” He kissed her on one side, and on the other, and in the middle, and rebolted the front door.
The next morning it was wet.
“Now, dear,” said Jude gaily at breakfast; “as this is Saturday I mean to call about the banns at once, so as to get the first publishing done to-morrow, or we shall lose a week. Banns will do? We shall save a pound or two.”
Sue absently agreed to banns. But her mind for the moment was running on something else. A glow had passed away from her, and depression sat upon her features.
“I feel I was wickedly selfish last night!” she murmured. “It was sheer unkindness in me—or worse—to treat Arabella as I did. I didn’t care about her being in trouble, 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 own dark morality when rivalry enters in—at least, mine has, if other people’s hasn’t.... I wonder how she got on? I hope she reached the inn all right, poor woman.”
“0 yes: she got on all right,” said Jude placidly.
“I hope she wasn’t shut out, and that she hadn’t to walk the streets in the rain. Do you mind my putting on my waterproof and going to see if she got in? I’ve been thinking of her all the morning.”
“Well—is it necessary? You haven’t the least idea how Arabella is able to shift for herself Still, darling, if you want to go and inquire you can.
There was no limit to the strange and unnecessary penances which Sue would meekly undertake when in a contrite mood; and this going to see all sorts of extraordinary persons whose relations to her was precisely of a kind that would have made other people shun them, was her instinct ever, so that the request did not surprise him.
“And when you come back,” he added, “I’ll be ready to go about the banns. You’ll come with me?”
Sue agreed, and went off under cloak and umbrella, letting Jude kiss her freely, and returning his kisses in a way she had never done before. Times had decidedly changed. “The little bird is caught at last!” she said, a sadness showing in her smile.
“No—only nested,” he assured her.1
She walked along the muddy street till she reached the public-house mentioned by Arabella, which was not so very far off. She was informed that Arabella had not yet left, and in doubt how to announce herself so that 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 into a room found that it was Arabella’s bedroom, and that the latter had not yet risen. She halted on the turn of her toe till Arabella cried from the bed, “Come in and shut the door,” which Sue accordingly did.
Arabella lay facing the window, and did not at once turn her head: and Sue was wicked enough, despite her penitence, to wish for a moment that Jude could behold her 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 sight of her own fresh charms in the looking-glass made Sue’s manner bright, till she reflected what a meanly sexual emotion this was in her, and hated herself for it.
“I’ve just looked in to see if you got back comfortably last night, that’s all,” she said gently. “I was afraid afterwards that you might have met with any mishap?”
“O—how stupid this is! I thought my visitor was—your friend—your husband—Mrs. Fawley, as I suppose you call yourself?” said Arabella, flinging her head back upon the pillows with a disappointed toss, and ceasing to retain the dimple she had just taken the trouble to produce.
“Indeed I don’t,” said Sue.
“O, I thought you might have, even if he’s not really yours. Decency is decency, any hour of the twenty-four.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Sue stiffly. “He is mine, if you come to that!”
“He wasn’t yesterday.”
Sue coloured roseate, and said “How do you know?”
“From your manner when you talked to me at the door. Well, my dear, you’ve been quick about it, and I expect my visit last night helped it on—ha-ha! But I don’t want to get him away from you.”
Sue looked out at the rain, and at the dirty toilet-cover, and at the detached tail of Arabella’s hair hanging on the looking-glass, just as it had done in Jude’s time; and wished she had not come. In the pause there was a knock at the door, and the chambermaid brought in a telegram for “Mrs. Cartlett.”
Arabella opened it as she lay, and her ruffled look disappeared.
“I am much obliged to you for your anxiety about me,” she said blandly when the maid had gone; “but it is not necessary you should feel it. My man finds he can’t do without me after all, and agrees to stand by the promise to marry again over here that he has 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 to knock me about when he has had a drop, any more after we are spliced by English law than before ! ... As for you, I should coax Jude to take me before the parson straight off, and have done with it, if I were in your place. I say it as a friend, my dear.”
“He’s waiting to, any day,” returned Sue, with frigid pride.
“Then let him, in Heaven’s name. Life with a man is more business-like after it, and money matters work better. And then, you see, if you have rows, and he turns you out of doors, you can get the law to protect you, which you can’t otherwise, unless he half runs you through with a knife, or cracks your noddle with a poker. And if he bolts away from you—I say it friendly, as woman to woman, for there’s never any knowing 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 then how different our histories might have been from today ! Never such a tender fool as Jude is if a woman seems in trouble, and coaxes him a bit! Just as he used to be about birds and things. However, as it happens, it is just as well as if I had made it up, and I forgive you. And, as I say, I’d advise you to get the business legally done as soon as possible. You’ll find it an awful bother later on if you don’t.”
“I have told you he is asking me to marry him—to make our natural marriage a legal one,” said Sue, with yet more dignity. “It was quite by my wish that he didn’t the moment I was free.”
“Ah, yes—you are a oneyerde too, like myself,” said Arabella, eyeing her visitor with humorous criticism. “Bolted from your first, didn’t you, like me?”
“Good morning!—I must go,” said Sue hastily.
“And I, too, must up and off!” replied the other, springing out of bed so suddenly that the soft parts of her person shook. Sue jumped aside in trepidation. “Lord, I am only a woman—not a 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 that more than anything else. Would he run up to speak to me at the station as I am going? You think not. Well, I’ll write to him about it. I didn’t want to write it, but never mind—I will.”
V.-III.
WHEN SUE REACHED HOME Jude was awaiting her at the door to take the initial step towards their marriage. She clasped his arm, and they went along silently together, as true comrades ofttimes do. He saw that she was preoccupied, and forbore to question her.
“O Jude—I’ve been talking to her,” she said at last. “I wish I hadn’t! And yet it is best to be reminded of things.”
“I hope she was civil.”
“Yes. I—I can’t help liking her—just a little bit. She’s not an ungenerous nature; and I am so glad her difficulties have all suddenly ended.” She explained how Arabella had been 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 hopelessly vulgar an institution legal marriage is—a sort of trap to catch a man—I can’t bear to think of it. I wish I hadn’t promised to let you put up the banns this morning!”
“0, don’t mind me. Any time will do for me. I thought you might like to get it over quickly, now.”
“Indeed, I don’t feel any more anxious now than I did before. Perhaps with any other man I might be a little anxious; but among the very few virtues possessed 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. In fact, I am easier in my mind than I was, for my conscience is clear about Richard, who now has a right to his freedom. I felt we were deceiving him before.”
“Sue, you seem when you are like this to be one of the women of some grand old civilization, whom I used to read about in my bygone, wasted, classical days, rather than a denizen of 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 Livia, or have been listening to Aspasia’s eloquence, or have been watching Praxiteles chiselling away at his latest Venus, while Phyrne made complaint that she was tired of posing.”1
They had now reached the house of the parish-clerk. Sue stood back, while her lover went up to the door. His hand was raised to knock when she said: “Jude!”
He looked round.
“Wait a minute, would you mind?”
He came back to her.
“Just let us think,” she said timidly. “I had such a horrid dream one night! ... And Arabella———”
“What did Arabella say to you?” he asked.
“O, she said that when people were tied up you could get the law of a man better if he beat you—and how when couples quarrelled.... Jude, do you think that when you must have me 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 good-will, but they always kick against compulsion. Don’t you dread the attitude that insensibly arises out of legal obligation? Don’t you think it is destructive to a passion whose essence is its gratuitous-ness ?”
“Upon my word, love, you are beginning to frighten me, too, with all this foreboding! Well, let’s go back and think it over.”
Her face brightened. “Yes—so we will!” said she. And they turned from the clerk’s door, Sue taking his arm and murmuring as they walked on homeward:“Can you keep the bee from ranging,
Or the ring-dove’s neck from changing?
No! Nor fetter’d love ...”df
They thought it over, or postponed thinking. Certainly they postponed action, and seemed to live in a dreamy paradise. At the end of a fortnight or three weeks matters remained unadvanced, and no banns were announced to the ears of any Aldbrickham congregation.
Whilst they were postponing and postponing thus a letter and a newspaper arrived before breakfast one morning from Arabella. Seeing the handwriting 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 at the paper she held across the first page to him with her finger on a paragraph; but he was so absorbed in his letter that he did not turn awhile.
“Look!” said she.
He looked and read. The paper was one that circulated in South London only, and the marked advertisement was simply the announcement of a marriage at St. John’s Church, Waterloo Road, under the names, “CARTLETT-DONN”; the united pair being Arabella and the innkeeper.
“Well, it is satisfactory,” said Sue complacently. “Though, after this, it seems rather low to do likewise, and I am glad—However, she is provided for now in a way, I suppose, whatever her faults, poor thing. It is nicer that we are able to think that, than to be uneasy about her. I ought, too, to write to Richard and ask him how he is getting on, perhaps?”
But Jude’s attention was still absorbed. Having merely glanced at the announcement he said in a disturbed voice: “Listen to this letter. What shall I say or do?”
‘THE THREE HORNS, LAMBETH.
‘Dear Jude (I won’t be so distant as to call you Mr. Fawley) ,—I send to-day a newspaper, from which useful document you will learn that I was married over again to Cartlett last Tuesday. So that business is settled right and tight at last. But what I write about more particular is that private affair I wanted to speak to you on when I came down to Aldbrickham. I couldn’t very well tell it to your lady friend, and should much have liked to let you know it by word of mouth, as I could have explained better than by letter. The fact is, Ju
de, that, though I have never informed you before, there was a boy born of our marriage, eight months after I left you, when I was at Sydney, 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 encumbered with the child any longer, his parents being alive. I would have him with me here in a moment, but he is not old enough to be of any use in the bar, nor will be for years and years, and naturally Cartlett might think him in the way. They have, however, packed him off to me in charge of some friends who happened to be coming home, and I must ask you to take him when he arrives, for I don’t know what to do with him. He is lawfully yours, that I solemnly swear. If anybody says he isn’t, call them brimstone liars, for my sake. Whatever I may have done before or afterwards, I was honest to you from the time we were married till I went away, and I remain, yours, &c.,
ARABELLA CARTLETT.’”
Sue’s look was one of dismay. “What will you do, dear?” she asked faintly.
Jude did not reply, and Sue watched him anxiously, with heavy breaths.
“It hits me hard!” said he in an under-voice. “It may be true! I can’t make it out. Certainly, if his birth was exactly when she says, 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 remember now that she said something about having a thing on her mind that she would like me to know, if ever we lived together again.
