Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy [top 100 novels of all time TXT] 📗

her little white hand, played the thoughtful nurse for half-an-hour, and went away.”

“Well⁠—I’m hanged! A little hussy!”

“What do you say?”

“O⁠—nothing!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what a tantalizing, capricious little woman! If she were not your wife⁠—”

“She is not; she’s another man’s except in name and law. And I have been thinking⁠—it was suggested to me by a conversation I had with her⁠—that, in kindness to her, I ought to dissolve the legal tie altogether; which, singularly enough, I think I can do, now she has been back, and refused my request to stay after I said I had forgiven her. I believe that fact would afford me opportunity of doing it, though I did not see it at the moment. What’s the use of keeping her chained on to me if she doesn’t belong to me? I know⁠—I feel absolutely certain⁠—that she would welcome my taking such a step as the greatest charity to her. For though as a fellow-creature she sympathizes with, and pities me, and even weeps for me, as a husband she cannot endure me⁠—she loathes me⁠—there’s no use in mincing words⁠—she loathes me, and my only manly, and dignified, and merciful course is to complete what I have begun.⁠ ⁠… And for worldly reasons, too, it will be better for her to be independent. I have hopelessly ruined my prospects because of my decision as to what was best for us, though she does not know it; I see only dire poverty ahead from my feet to the grave; for I can be accepted as teacher no more. I shall probably have enough to do to make both ends meet during the remainder of my life, now my occupation’s gone; and I shall be better able to bear it alone. I may as well tell you that what has suggested my letting her go is some news she brought me⁠—the news that Fawley is doing the same.”

“O⁠—he had a spouse, too? A queer couple, these lovers!”

“Well⁠—I don’t want your opinion on that. What I was going to say is that my liberating her can do her no possible harm, and will open up a chance of happiness for her which she has never dreamt of hitherto. For then they’ll be able to marry, as they ought to have done at first.”

Gillingham did not hurry to reply. “I may disagree with your motive,” he said gently, for he respected views he could not share. “But I think you are right in your determination⁠—if you can carry it out. I doubt, however, if you can.”

Part V 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 overpowered here in the compound mass the body.”

—⁠M. Antoninus (Long) I

How Gillingham’s doubts were disposed of will most quickly appear by passing over the series of dreary months and incidents that followed the events of the last chapter, and coming on to a Sunday in the February of the year following.

Sue and Jude were living in Aldbrickham, in precisely the same relations that they had established between themselves when she left Shaston to join him the year before. The proceedings in the Law-Courts had reached their consciousness but as a distant sound, and an occasional missive which they hardly understood.

They had met, as usual, to breakfast together in the little house with 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 with his aunt’s ancient and lumbering goods, which had cost him about their full value to bring all the way from Marygreen. Sue kept house, and managed everything.

As he entered the room this morning Sue held up a letter she had just received.

“Well; and what is it about?” he said after kissing her.

“That the decree nisi in the case of Phillotson versus Phillotson and 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 had occurred about a month or two earlier. Both cases had been too insignificant to be reported in the papers, further than by name in a long list of other undefended cases.

“Now then, Sue, at any rate, you can do what you like!” He looked at his sweetheart curiously.

“Are we⁠—you and I⁠—just as free now as if we had never married at all?”

“Just as free⁠—except, I believe, that a clergyman may object personally 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 is generally. But I have an uncomfortable feeling that my freedom has been obtained under false pretences!”

“How?”

“Well⁠—if the truth about us had been known, the decree wouldn’t have been pronounced. It is only, is it, because we have made no defence, and have led them into a false supposition? Therefore is my freedom lawful, however proper it may be?”

“Well⁠—why did you let it be under false pretences? You have only yourself to blame,” he said mischievously.

“Jude⁠—don’t! You ought not to be touchy about that still. You must take me as I am.”

“Very well, darling: so I will. Perhaps you were right. As to your question, we were not obliged to prove anything. That was their business. Anyhow we are living together.”

“Yes. Though not in their sense.”

“One thing is certain, that however the decree may be brought about, a marriage is dissolved when it is dissolved. There is this advantage in being poor obscure people like us⁠—that these things are done for us in a rough and ready fashion. It was the same with me and Arabella. I was afraid her criminal second marriage would have been discovered, and she punished; but nobody took any interest in her⁠—nobody inquired, nobody suspected it. If we’d been patented nobilities