by Thomas Hardy
“But my dear, dear!—whatever ...”
“It is adulterous! It signifies what I don’t feel—I bought it long ago—to please Jude. It must be destroyed!”
Mrs. Edlin lifted her hands, and Sue excitedly continued to tear the linen into strips, laying the pieces in the fire.
“You med ha’ give it to me!” said the widow. “It do make my heart ache to see such pretty open-work as that a-burned by the flames—not that ornamental night-railseu can be much use to a’ ould ’ooman like I. My days for such be all past and gone!”
“It is an accursed thing—it reminds me of what I want to forget!” Sue repeated. “It is only fit for the fire.”
“Lord, you be too strict! What do ye use such words for, and condemn to hell your dear little innocent children that’s lost to ’ee! Upon my life I don’t call that religion!”
Sue flung her face upon the bed, sobbing. “0, don‘t, don’t! That kills me!” She remained shaken with her grief, and slipped down upon her knees.
“I’ll tell ’ee what—you ought not to marry this man again!” said Mrs. Edlin indignantly. “You are in love wi’ t’ other still!”
“Yes I must—I am his already!”
“Pshoo! You be t’ other man’s. If you didn’t like to commit yourselves to the binding vow again, just at first, ’twas all the more credit to your consciences, considering your reasons, and you med ha’ lived on, and made it all right at last. After all, it concerned nobody but your own two selves.”
“Richard says he’ll have me back, and I’m bound to go! If he had refused, it might not have been so much my duty to—give up Jude. But—” She remained with her face in the bedclothes, and Mrs. Edlin left the room.
Phillotson in the interval had gone back to his friend Gillingham, who still sat over the supper-table. They soon rose, and walked out on the green to smoke awhile. A light was burning in Sue’s room, a shadow moving now and then across the blind.
Gillingham had evidently been impressed with the indefinable charm of Sue, and after a silence he said, “Well: you’ve all but got her again at last. She can’t very well go a second time. The pear has dropped into your hand.”
“Yes! ... I suppose I am right in taking her at her word. I confess there seems a touch of selfishness in it. Apart from 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 and orthodox laity, who have never forgiven me for letting her go. So I may get back in some degree into my old track.”
“Well—if you’ve got any sound reason for marrying her again, do it now in God’s name! I was always against your opening the cage-door and letting the bird go in such an obviously suicidal way. You might have been a school inspector by this time, or a reverend, if you hadn’t been so weak about her.”
“I did myself irreparable damage—I know it.”
“Once you’ve got her housed again, stick to her.”
Phillotson was more evasive to-night. He did not care to admit clearly that his taking Sue to him again had at bottom nothing to do with repentance 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. I know woman better now. Whatever justice there was in releasing her, there was little logic, for one holding my views on other subjects.”
Gillingham looked at him, and wondered whether it would ever happen that the reactionary spirit induced by the world’s sneers and his own physical wishes would make Phillotson more orthodoxly cruel to her than he had erstwhile been informally and perversely kind.
“I perceive it won’t do to give way to impulse,” Phillotson resumed, feeling more and more every minute the necessity of acting up 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 their influence, that they tempt you to misplaced kindness. However, I know myself better now. A little judicious severity, perhaps....”
“Yes; but you must tighten the reins by degrees only. Don’t be too strenuous at first. She’ll come to any terms in time.”
The caution was unnecessary, though Phillotson did not say so. “I remember what my vicar at Shaston said, when I left after the row that was made about my agreeing to her elopement. ‘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 she’ll come, and be firm in the future.’ But I was so headstrong at that time that I paid no heed. And that after the divorce she should have thought of doing so I did not dream.”
The gate of Mrs. Edlin’s cottage clicked, and somebody began crossing in the direction of the school. Phillotson said “Good-night.”
“O, is that Mr. Phillotson,” said Mrs. Edlin. “I was going over to see ’ee. I’ve been upstairs with her, helping her to unpack her things; and upon my word, sir, I don’t think this ought to be!”
“What—the wedding?”
“Yes. She’s forcing herself to it, poor dear little thing; and you’ve no notion what she’s suffering. I was never much 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. Of course everybody will say it was very good and forgiving of ’ee to take her to ’ee again. But for my part I don’t.”
“It’s her wish, and I am willing,” said Phillotson with grave reserve, opposition making him illogically tenacious now. “A great piece of laxity will be rectified.”
“I don’t believe it. She’s his wife if anybody’s. She’s had three children by him, and he loves her dearly; and it’s 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 her friend the obstinate creature won’t allow to come near her. What first put her into this mood o’ mind, I wonder!”
“I can’t tell. Not I certainly. It is all voluntary on her part. Now that’s all I have to say.” Phillotson spoke stiffly. “You’ve turned round, Mrs. Edlin. It is unseemly of you!”
“Well. I knowed you’d be affronted at what I had to say; but I don’t mind that. The truth’s the truth.”
“I’m not affronted, Mrs. Edlin. You’ve been too kind a neighbour for that. But I must be allowed to know what’s best for myself and Susanna. I suppose you won’t go to church with us, then?”
“No. Be hanged if I can.... I don’t know what the times be coming to! Matrimony have growed to be that serious in these days that one really do 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 poor man were jined in it we kept up the junketingev all the week, and drunk the parish dry, and had to borrow half-acrown to begin housekeeping!”
When Mrs. Edlin had gone back to her cottage Phillotson spoke moodily. “I don’t know whether I ought to do it—at any rate quite so rapidly.”
“Why?”
“If she is really compelling herself to this against her instincts—merely from this new sense of duty or religion—I ought perhaps to let her wait a bit.”
“Now you’ve got so far you ought not to back out of it. That’s my opinion.”
“I can’t very well put it off now; that’s true. But I had a qualm when she gave that little cry at sight of the license.”
“Now, never you have qualms, old boy. I mean to give her away to-morrow morning, and you mean to take her. It has always been on my conscience that I didn’t urge more objections to your letting her go, and now we’ve got to this stage I shan’t be content if I don’t help you to set the matter right.”
Phillotson nodded, and seeing how staunch his friend was, became more frank. “No doubt when it gets known what I’ve done I shall be thought a soft fool by many. 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. The fact of her having lived with Fawley goes for nothing. At the time she left me for him she thought she was quite within
her right. Now she thinks otherwise.”
The next morning came, and the self-sacrifice of the woman on the altar of what she was pleased to call her principles was acquiesced in by these two friends, each from his own point of view. Phillotson went across to the Widow Edlin’s to fetch Sue a few minutes after eight o’clock. The fog of the previous day or two on the lowlands 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 name connoted as she did in that pallid morning light. Chastened, world-weary, remorseful, the strain on her nerves had preyed upon her flesh and bones, and she appeared smaller in outline than she had formerly done, though Sue had not been a large woman in her days of rudest health.
“Prompt,” said the schoolmaster, magnanimously taking her hand. But he checked his impulse to kiss her, remembering her start of yesterday, which unpleasantly lingered in his mind.
Gillingham joined them, and they left the house, Widow Edlin continuing steadfast in her refusal to assist in the ceremony.
“Where is the church?” said Sue. She had not lived there for any length of time since the old church was pulled down, and in her preoccupation forgot the new one.
“Up here,” said Phillotson; and presently the tower loomed large and solemn in the fog. The vicar had already crossed to the building, and when they entered he said pleasantly: “We almost want candles.”
“You do—wish me to be yours, Richard?” gasped Sue in a whisper.
“Certainly, dear: above all things in the world.”
Sue said no more; and for the second or third time he felt he was not quite following out the humane instinct which had induced him to let her go.
There they stood, five altogether: the parson, the clerk, the couple and Gillingham; and the holy ordinance was re-solemnized forthwith. In the nave of the edifice were two or three villagers, and when the clergyman came to the words, “What God hath joined,” a woman’s voice from among these was heard to utter audibly:
“God hath jined indeed!”
It was like a re-enactment by the ghosts of their former selves of the similar scene which had taken place at Melchester years before. When the books were signed the vicar congratulated the husband and wife on having performed a noble, and righteous, and mutually forgiving act. “All’s well that ends well,” he said smiling. “May you long be happy together, after thus having been ‘saved as by fire.’ ”
They came down the nearly empty building, and crossed to the schoolhouse. Gillingham wanted to get home that night, and left early. He, too, congratulated the couple. “Now,” he said in parting from Phillotson, who walked out a little way, “I shall be able to tell people in your native place a good round tale; and they’ll all say ‘Well done,’ depend on it.”
When the schoolmaster got back Sue was making a pretence of doing some housewifery as if she lived there. But she seemed timid at his approach, and compunction wrought on him at sight of it.
“Of course, my dear, I shan’t expect to intrude upon your personal privacy any more than I did before,” he said gravely. “It is for our good socially to do this, and that’s its justification, if it was not my reason.”
Sue brightened a little.
VI.-VI.
THE PLACE WAS THE door of Jude’s lodging in the outskirts of Christminster—far from the precincts of St. Silas’ where he had formerly lived, which saddened him to sickness. The rain was coming down. A woman in shabby black stood on the doorstep talking to Jude, who held the door in his hand.
“I am lonely, destitute, and houseless—that’s what I am! Father has turned me out of doors after borrowing every penny I’d got, to put it into his business, and then 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 workhouse, or to something worse. Only just now two undergraduates winked at me as I came along. ’Tis hard for a woman to keep virtuous where there’s so many young men!”
The woman in the rain who spoke thus was Arabella, the evening being that of the day after Sue’s re-marriage with Phillotson.
“I am sorry for you, but I am only in lodgings,” said Jude coldly.
“Then you turn me away?”
“I’ll give you enough to get food and lodging for a few days.”
“O, but can’t you have the kindness to take me in? I cannot endure going to a public-house to lodge; and I am so lonely. Please, Jude, for old times’ sake!”
“No, no,” said Jude hastily. “I don’t want to be reminded of those things; and if you talk about them I shall not help you.”
“Then I suppose I must go!” said Arabella. She bent her head against the doorpost and began sobbing.
“The house is full,” said Jude. “And I have only a little extra room to my own—not much more than a closet—where I keep my tools, and templates, and the few books I have left!”
“That would be a palace for me!”
“There is no bedstead in it.”
“A bit of a bed could be made on the floor. It would be good enough for me.”
Unable to be harsh with her, and not knowing what to do, Jude called the man who let the lodgings, and said this was an acquaintance of his in great distress for want of temporary shelter.
“You may remember me as barmaid at the Lamb and the Flag formerly ?” spoke up Arabella. “My father has insulted me this afternoon, and I’ve left him, though without a penny!”
The householder said he could not recall her features. “But still, if you are a friend of Mr. Fawley’s we’ll do what we can for a day or two—if he’ll make himself answerable?”
“Yes, yes,” said Jude. “She has really taken me quite unawares; but I should wish to help her out of her difficulty.” And an arrangement was ultimately come to under which a bed was to be thrown down in Jude’s lumber-room, to make it comfortable for Arabella till she could get out of the strait she was in—not by her own fault, as she declared—and return to her father’s again.
While they were waiting for this to be done Arabella said: “You know the news, I suppose?”
“I guess what you mean; but I know nothing.”
“I had a letter from Anny at Alfredston to-day. She had just heard that the wedding was to be yesterday: but she didn’t know if it had come off.”
“I don’t wish to talk of it.”
“No, no: of course you don’t. Only it shows what kind of woman———”
“Don’t speak of her I say! She’s a fool!—And she’s an angel, too, poor dear!”
“If it’s done, he’ll have a chance of getting back to his old position, by everybody’s account, so Anny says. All his well-wishers will be pleased, including the bishop himself.”
“Do spare me, Arabella.”
Arabella was duly installed in the little attic, and at first she did not come near Jude at all. She went to and fro about her own business, which, when they met for a 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 affording the most likely opening in the liquor trade, she shook her head. “No—the temptations are too many,” she said. “Any humble tavern in the country before that for me.”
On the Sunday morning following, when he breakfasted later than on other days, she meekly asked him if she might come in to breakfast with him, as she had broken her teapot, and could not replace it immediately, the shops being shut.
“Yes, if you like,” he said indifferently.
While they sat without speaking she suddenly observed: “You seem all in a brood, old man. I’m sorry for you.”
“I am all in a brood.”
“It is about her, I know. It’s no business of mine, but I could find out all about the wedding—if it really did take place—if you wanted to know.”
“How could you?”
“I wanted to go to Alfredston to get a few things I left there. And I could see Anny, who’ll be sure to have heard all about it, as she has friends at Marygreen.”
Jude could not bear to acquiesce in this proposal; but his suspense pitted itself against his discretion, and won in the struggle. “You can ask about it if you like,” he said. “I’ve not heard a sound from there. It must have been very private, if—they have married.”
“I am afraid I haven’t enough cash to take me there and back, or I should have gone before. I must wait till I have earned some.”
“O—I can pay the journey for you,” he said impatiently. And thus his suspense as to Sue’s welfare, and the possible marriage, moved him to despatch for intelligence the last emissary he would have thought of choosing deliberately.
Arabella went, Jude requesting her to be home not later than by the seven o’clock train. When she had gone he said: “Why should I have charged her to be back by a particular time! She’s nothing to me:—nor the other neither!”
But having finished work he could not help going to the station to meet Arabella, dragged thither by feverish haste to get the news she might bring, and know the worst. Arabella had made dimples most successfully all the way home, and when she stepped out of the railway carriage she smiled. He merely said “Well?” with the very reverse of a smile.
“They are married.”
“Yes—of course they are!” he returned. She observed, however, the hard strain upon his lip as he spoke.
“Anny says she has heard from Belinda, her relation out at Marygreen, that it was very sad, and curious!”
“How do you mean sad? She wanted to marry him again, didn’t she?—and he her!”
“Yes—that was it. She wanted to in one sense, but not in the other. Mrs. Edlin was much upset by it all, and spoke out her mind at Phillotson. But Sue was that excited about it that she burnt 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 felt he was her only husband, and that she belonged to nobody else in the sight of God A’mighty while he lived. Perhaps another woman feels the same about herself, too!” Arabella sighed again.
