by Thomas Hardy
Part Fifth
AT ALDBRICKHAM AND ELSEWHERE
"Thy aerial part, and all the fiery parts which are mingled in thee, though by nature they have an upward tendency, still in obedience to the disposition of the universe they are over-powered here in the compound mass the body."--M. ANTONINUS (Long).
I
How Gillingham's doubts were disposed of will most quickly appear bypassing over the series of dreary months and incidents that followedthe events of the last chapter, and coming on to a Sunday in theFebruary of the year following.
Sue and Jude were living in Aldbrickham, in precisely the samerelations that they had established between themselves when sheleft Shaston to join him the year before. The proceedings in thelaw-courts had reached their consciousness, but as a distant soundand an occasional missive which they hardly understood.
They had met, as usual, to breakfast together in the little housewith Jude's name on it, that he had taken at fifteen pounds a year,with three-pounds-ten extra for rates and taxes, and furnished withhis aunt's ancient and lumbering goods, which had cost him abouttheir full value to bring all the way from Marygreen. Sue kepthouse, and managed everything.
As he entered the room this morning Sue held up a letter she had justreceived.
"Well; and what is it about?" he said after kissing her.
"That the decree _nisi_ in the case of Phillotson _versus_ Phillotsonand Fawley, pronounced six months ago, has just been made absolute."
"Ah," said Jude, as he sat down.
The same concluding incident in Jude's suit against Arabella hadoccurred about a month or two earlier. Both cases had been tooinsignificant to be reported in the papers, further than by name ina long list of other undefended cases.
"Now then, Sue, at any rate, you can do what you like!" He looked athis sweetheart curiously.
"Are we--you and I--just as free now as if we had never married atall?"
"Just as free--except, I believe, that a clergyman may objectpersonally to remarry you, and hand the job on to somebody else."
"But I wonder--do you think it is really so with us? I know it isgenerally. But I have an uncomfortable feeling that my freedom hasbeen obtained under false pretences!"
"How?"
"Well--if the truth about us had been known, the decree wouldn't havebeen pronounced. It is only, is it, because we have made no defence,and have led them into a false supposition? Therefore is my freedomlawful, however proper it may be?"
"Well--why did you let it be under false pretences? You have onlyyourself to blame," he said mischievously.
"Jude--don't! You ought not to be touchy about that still. You musttake me as I am."
"Very well, darling: so I will. Perhaps you were right. As to yourquestion, we were not obliged to prove anything. That was theirbusiness. Anyhow we are living together."
"Yes. Though not in their sense."
"One thing is certain, that however the decree may be broughtabout, a marriage is dissolved when it is dissolved. There is thisadvantage in being poor obscure people like us--that these things aredone for us in a rough and ready fashion. It was the same with meand Arabella. I was afraid her criminal second marriage would havebeen discovered, and she punished; but nobody took any interest inher--nobody inquired, nobody suspected it. If we'd been patentednobilities we should have had infinite trouble, and days and weekswould have been spent in investigations."
By degrees Sue acquired her lover's cheerfulness at the sense offreedom, and proposed that they should take a walk in the fields,even if they had to put up with a cold dinner on account of it.Jude agreed, and Sue went up-stairs and prepared to start, puttingon a joyful coloured gown in observance of her liberty; seeing whichJude put on a lighter tie.
"Now we'll strut arm and arm," he said, "like any other engagedcouple. We've a legal right to."
They rambled out of the town, and along a path over the low-lyinglands that bordered it, though these were frosty now, and theextensive seed-fields were bare of colour and produce. The pair,however, were so absorbed in their own situation that theirsurroundings were little in their consciousness.
"Well, my dearest, the result of all this is that we can marry aftera decent interval."
"Yes; I suppose we can," said Sue, without enthusiasm.
"And aren't we going to?"
"I don't like to say no, dear Jude; but I feel just the same aboutit now as I have done all along. I have just the same dread lest aniron contract should extinguish your tenderness for me, and mine foryou, as it did between our unfortunate parents."
"Still, what can we do? I do love you, as you know, Sue."
"I know it abundantly. But I think I would much rather go on livingalways as lovers, as we are living now, and only meeting by day. Itis so much sweeter--for the woman at least, and when she is sure ofthe man. And henceforward we needn't be so particular as we havebeen about appearances."
"Our experiences of matrimony with others have not been encouraging,I own," said he, with some gloom; "either owing to our owndissatisfied, unpractical natures, or by our misfortune. But wetwo--"
"Should be two dissatisfied ones linked together, which would betwice as bad as before... I think I should begin to be afraid ofyou, Jude, the moment you had contracted to cherish me under aGovernment stamp, and I was licensed to be loved on the premises byyou--Ugh, how horrible and sordid! Although, as you are, free, Itrust you more than any other man in the world."
"No, no--don't say I should change!" he expostulated; yet there wasmisgiving in his own voice also.
"Apart from ourselves, and our unhappy peculiarities, it is foreignto a man's nature to go on loving a person when he is told thathe must and shall be that person's lover. There would be a muchlikelier chance of his doing it if he were told not to love. If themarriage ceremony consisted in an oath and signed contract betweenthe parties to cease loving from that day forward, in considerationof personal possession being given, and to avoid each other's societyas much as possible in public, there would be more loving couplesthan there are now. Fancy the secret meetings between the perjuringhusband and wife, the denials of having seen each other, theclambering in at bedroom windows, and the hiding in closets! There'dbe little cooling then."
"Yes; but admitting this, or something like it, to be true, you arenot the only one in the world to see it, dear little Sue. People goon marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although manyof them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying amonth's pleasure with a life's discomfort. No doubt my father andmother, and your father and mother, saw it, if they at all resembledus in habits of observation. But then they went and married just thesame, because they had ordinary passions. But you, Sue, are such aphantasmal, bodiless creature, one who--if you'll allow me to sayit--has so little animal passion in you, that you can act upon reasonin the matter, when we poor unfortunate wretches of grosser substancecan't."
"Well," she sighed, "you've owned that it would probably end inmisery for us. And I am not so exceptional a woman as you think.Fewer women like marriage than you suppose, only they enter into itfor the dignity it is assumed to confer, and the social advantagesit gains them sometimes--a dignity and an advantage that I am quitewilling to do without."
Jude fell back upon his old complaint--that, intimate as they were,he had never once had from her an honest, candid declaration that sheloved or could love him. "I really fear sometimes that you cannot,"he said, with a dubiousness approaching anger. "And you are soreticent. I know that women are taught by other women that theymust never admit the full truth to a man. But the highest form ofaffection is based on full sincerity on both sides. Not being men,these women don't know that in looking back on those he has hadtender relations with, a man's heart returns closest to her whowas the soul of truth in her conduct. The better class of man,even if caught by airy affectations of dodging and parrying, is notretained by them. A Nemesis attends the woman who plays the g
ame ofelusiveness too often, in the utter contempt for her that, sooneror later, her old admirers feel; under which they allow her to gounlamented to her grave."
Sue, who was regarding the distance, had acquired a guilty look; andshe suddenly replied in a tragic voice: "I don't think I like youto-day so well as I did, Jude!"
"Don't you? Why?"
"Oh, well--you are not nice--too sermony. Though I suppose I am sobad and worthless that I deserve the utmost rigour of lecturing!"
"No, you are not bad. You are a dear. But as slippery as an eelwhen I want to get a confession from you."
"Oh yes, I am bad, and obstinate, and all sorts! It is no use yourpretending I am not! People who are good don't want scolding as Ido... But now that I have nobody but you, and nobody to defend me,it is very hard that I mustn't have my own way in deciding how I'lllive with you, and whether I'll be married or no!"
"Sue, my own comrade and sweetheart, I don't want to force you eitherto marry or to do the other thing--of course I don't! It is toowicked of you to be so pettish! Now we won't say any more about it,and go on just the same as we have done; and during the rest of ourwalk we'll talk of the meadows only, and the floods, and the prospectof the farmers this coming year."
After this the subject of marriage was not mentioned by them forseveral days, though living as they were with only a landing betweenthem it was constantly in their minds. Sue was assisting Jude verymaterially now: he had latterly occupied himself on his own accountin working and lettering headstones, which he kept in a little yardat the back of his little house, where in the intervals of domesticduties she marked out the letters full size for him, and blacked themin after he had cut them. It was a lower class of handicraft thanwere his former performances as a cathedral mason, and his onlypatrons were the poor people who lived in his own neighbourhood,and knew what a cheap man this "Jude Fawley: Monumental Mason"(as he called himself on his front door) was to employ for thesimple memorials they required for their dead. But he seemed moreindependent than before, and it was the only arrangement under whichSue, who particularly wished to be no burden on him, could render anyassistance.
