prompt:
Chapter: Four-and-twenty hours before this time Sue had written the following
note to Jude:

   It is as I told you; and I am leaving to-morrow evening.
   Richard and I thought it could be done with less
   obtrusiveness after dark.  I feel rather frightened, and
   therefore ask you to be sure you are on the Melchester
   platform to meet me.  I arrive at a little to seven.  I
   know you will, of course, dear Jude; but I feel so timid
   that I can't help begging you to be punctual.  He has
   been so VERY kind to me through it all!

   Now to our meeting!

   S.

As she was carried by the omnibus farther and farther down from
the mountain town--the single passenger that evening--she regarded
the receding road with a sad face.  But no hesitation was apparent
therein.

The up-train by which she was departing stopped by signal only.  To
Sue it seemed strange that such a powerful organization as a railway
train should be brought to a stand-still on purpose for her--a
fugitive from her lawful home.

The twenty minutes' journey drew towards its close, and Sue began
gathering her things together to alight.  At the moment that the
train came to a stand-still by the Melchester platform a hand was
laid on the door and she beheld Jude.  He entered the compartment
promptly.  He had a black bag in his hand, and was dressed in
the dark suit he wore on Sundays and in the evening after work.
Altogether he looked a very handsome young fellow, his ardent
affection for her burning in his eyes.

"Oh Jude!"  She clasped his hand with both hers, and her tense state
caused her to simmer over in a little succession of dry sobs.  "I--I
am so glad!  I get out here?"

"No. I get in, dear one!  I've packed.  Besides this bag I've only a
big box which is labelled."

"But don't I get out?  Aren't we going to stay here?"

"We couldn't possibly, don't you see.  We are known here--I, at any
rate, am well known.  I've booked for Aldbrickham; and here's your
ticket for the same place, as you have only one to here."

"I thought we should have stayed here," she repeated.

"It wouldn't have done at all."

"Ah!  Perhaps not."

"There wasn't time for me to write and say the place I had decided
on.  Aldbrickham is a much bigger town--sixty or seventy thousand
inhabitants--and nobody knows anything about us there."

"And you have given up your cathedral work here?"

"Yes.  It was rather sudden--your message coming unexpectedly.
Strictly, I might have been made to finish out the week.  But I
pleaded urgency and I was let off.  I would have deserted any day at
your command, dear Sue.  I have deserted more than that for you!"

"I fear I am doing you a lot of harm.  Ruining your prospects of the
Church; ruining your progress in your trade; everything!"

"The Church is no more to me.  Let it lie!  _I_ am not to be one of

      The soldier-saints who, row on row,
   Burn upward each to his point of bliss,

if any such there be!  My point of bliss is not upward, but here."

"Oh I seem so bad--upsetting men's courses like this!" said she,
taking up in her voice the emotion that had begun in his.  But she
recovered her equanimity by the time they had travelled a dozen
miles.

"He has been so good in letting me go," she resumed.  "And here's a
note I found on my dressing-table, addressed to you."

"Yes.  He's not an unworthy fellow," said Jude, glancing at the note.
"And I am ashamed of myself for hating him because he married you."

"According to the rule of women's whims I suppose I ought to suddenly
love him, because he has let me go so generously and unexpectedly,"
she answered smiling.  "But I am so cold, or devoid of gratitude, or
so something, that even this generosity hasn't made me love him, or
repent, or want to stay with him as his wife; although I do feel I
like his large-mindedness, and respect him more than ever."

"It may not work so well for us as if he had been less kind, and you
had run away against his will," murmured Jude.

"That I NEVER would have done."

Jude's eyes rested musingly on her face.  Then he suddenly kissed
her; and was going to kiss her again.  "No--only once now--please,
Jude!"

"That's rather cruel," he answered; but acquiesced.  "Such a strange
thing has happened to me," Jude continued after a silence.  "Arabella
has actually written to ask me to get a divorce from her--in kindness
to her, she says.  She wants to honestly and legally marry that man
she has already married virtually; and begs me to enable her to do
it."

"What have you done?"

"I have agreed.  I thought at first I couldn't do it without getting
her into trouble about that second marriage, and I don't want to
injure her in any way.  Perhaps she's no worse than I am, after all!
But nobody knows about it over here, and I find it will not be a
difficult proceeding at all.  If she wants to start afresh I have
only too obvious reasons for not hindering her."

"Then you'll be free?"

"Yes, I shall be free."

"Where are we booked for?" she asked, with the discontinuity that
marked her to-night.

"Aldbrickham, as I said."

"But it will be very late when we get there?"

"Yes.  I thought of that, and I wired for a room for us at the
Temperance Hotel there."

"One?"

"Yes--one."

She looked at him.  "Oh Jude!"  Sue bent her forehead against the
corner of the compartment.  "I thought you might do it; and that I
was deceiving you.  But I didn't mean that!"

In the pause which followed, Jude's eyes fixed themselves with
a stultified expression on the opposite seat.  "Well!" he
said...  "Well!"

He remained in silence; and seeing how discomfited he was she put her
face against his cheek, murmuring, "Don't be vexed, dear!"

"Oh--there's no harm done," he said.  "But--I understood it like
that...  Is this a sudden change of mind?"

"You have no right to ask me such a question; and I shan't answer!"
she said, smiling.

"My dear one, your happiness is more to me than anything--although we
seem to verge on quarrelling so often!--and your will is law to me.
I am something more than a mere--selfish fellow, I hope.  Have it as
you wish!"  On reflection his brow showed perplexity.  "But perhaps
it is that you don't love me--not that you have become conventional!
Much as, under your teaching, I hate convention, I hope it IS that,
not the other terrible alternative!"

Even at this obvious moment for candour Sue could not be quite candid
as to the state of that mystery, her heart.  "Put it down to my
timidity," she said with hurried evasiveness; "to a woman's natural
timidity when the crisis comes.  I may feel as well as you that I
have a perfect right to live with you as you thought--from this
moment.  I may hold the opinion that, in a proper state of society,
the father of a woman's child will be as much a private matter of
hers as the cut of her underlinen, on whom nobody will have any
right to question her.  But partly, perhaps, because it is by his
generosity that I am now free, I would rather not be other than a
little rigid.  If there had been a rope-ladder, and he had run after
us with pistols, it would have seemed different, and I may have acted
otherwise.  But don't press me and criticize me, Jude!  Assume that
I haven't the courage of my opinions.  I know I am a poor miserable
creature.  My nature is not so passionate as yours!"

He repeated simply!  "I thought--what I naturally thought.  But if we
are not lovers, we are not.  Phillotson thought so, I am sure.  See,
here is what he has written to me."  He opened the letter she had
brought, and read:

"I make only one condition--that you are tender and kind to her.  I
know you love her.  But even love may be cruel at times.  You are
made for each other: it is obvious, palpable, to any unbiased older
person.  You were all along 'the shadowy third' in my short life with
her.  I repeat, take care of Sue."

"He's a good fellow, isn't he!" she said with latent tears.  On
reconsideration she added, "He was very resigned to letting me
go--too resigned almost!  I never was so near being in love with him
as when he made such thoughtful arrangements for my being comfortable
on my journey, and offering to provide money.  Yet I was not.  If I
loved him ever so little as a wife, I'd go back to him even now."

"But you don't, do you?"

"It is true--oh so terribly true!--I don't."

"Nor me neither, I half-fear!" he said pettishly.  "Nor anybody
perhaps!  Sue, sometimes, when I am vexed with you, I think you are
incapable of real love."

"That's not good and loyal of you!" she said, and drawing away from
him as far as she could, looked severely out into the darkness.  She
added in hurt tones, without turning round: "My liking for you is
not as some women's perhaps.  But it is a delight in being with you,
of a supremely delicate kind, and I don't want to go further and risk
it by--an attempt to intensify it!  I quite realized that, as woman
with man, it was a risk to come.  But, as me with you, I resolved to
trust you to set my wishes above your gratification.  Don't discuss
it further, dear Jude!"

"Of course, if it would make you reproach yourself... but you do
like me very much, Sue?  Say you do!  Say that you do a quarter, a
tenth, as much as I do you, and I'll be content!"

"I've let you kiss me, and that tells enough."

"Just once or so!"

"Well--don't be a greedy boy."

He leant back, and did not look at her for a long time.  That
episode in her past history of which she had told him--of the poor
Christminster graduate whom she had handled thus, returned to Jude's
mind; and he saw himself as a possible second in such a torturing
destiny.

"This is a queer elopement!" he murmured.  "Perhaps you are making
a cat's paw of me with Phillotson all this time.  Upon my word it
almost seems so--to see you sitting up there so prim!"

"Now you mustn't be angry--I won't let you!" she coaxed, turning and
moving nearer to him.  "You did kiss me just now, you know; and I
didn't dislike you to, I own it, Jude.  Only I don't want to let you
do it again, just yet--considering how we are circumstanced, don't
you see!"

He could never resist her when she pleaded (as she well knew). And
they sat side by side with joined hands, till she aroused herself at
some thought.

"I can't possibly go to that Temperance Inn, after your telegraphing
that message!"

"Why not?"

"You can see well enough!"

"Very well; there'll be some other one open, no doubt.  I have
sometimes thought, since your marrying Phillotson because of a stupid
scandal, that under the affectation of independent views you are as
enslaved to the social code as any woman I know!"

"Not mentally.  But I haven't the courage of my views, as I said
before.  I didn't marry him altogether because of the scandal.
But sometimes a woman's LOVE OF BEING LOVED gets the better of her
conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a
man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love
him at all.  Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in,
and she does what she can to repair the wrong."

"You simply mean that you flirted outrageously with him, poor old
chap, and then repented, and to make reparation, married him, though
you tortured yourself to death by doing it."

"Well--if you will put it brutally!--it was a little like that--that
and the scandal together--and your concealing from me what you ought
to have told me before!"

He could see that she was distressed and tearful at his criticisms,
and soothed her, saying: "There, dear; don't mind!  Crucify me, if
you will!  You know you are all the world to me, whatever you do!"

"I am very bad and unprincipled--I know you think that!" she said,
trying to blink away her tears.

"I think and know you are my dear Sue, from whom neither length nor
breadth, nor things present nor things to come, can divide me!"

Though so sophisticated in many things, she was such a child in others
that this satisfied her, and they reached the end of their journey
on the best of terms.  It was about ten o'clock when they arrived at
Aldbrickham, the county town of North Wessex.  As she would not go
to the Temperance Hotel because of the form of his telegram, Jude
inquired for another; and a youth who volunteered to find one wheeled
their luggage to the George farther on, which proved to be the inn at
which Jude had stayed with Arabella on that one occasion of their
meeting after their division for years.

Owing, however, to their now entering it by another door, and to his
preoccupation, he did not at first recognize the place.  When they
had engaged their respective rooms they went down to a late supper.
During Jude's temporary absence the waiting-maid spoke to Sue.

"I think, ma'am, I remember your relation, or friend, or whatever he
is, coming here once before--late, just like this, with his wife--a
lady, at any rate, that wasn't you by no manner of means--jest as med
be with you now."

"Oh do you?" said Sue, with a certain sickness of heart.  "Though I
think you must be mistaken!  How long ago was it?"

"About a month or two.  A handsome, full-figured woman.  They had
this room."

When Jude came back and sat down to supper Sue seemed moping and
miserable.  "Jude," she said to him plaintively, at their parting
that night upon the landing, "it is not so nice and pleasant as it
used to be with us!  I don't like it here--I can't bear the place!
And I don't like you so well as I did!"

"How fidgeted you seem, dear!  Why do you change like this?"

"Because it was cruel to bring me here!"

"Why?"

"You were lately here with Arabella.  There, now I have said it!"

"Dear me, why--" said Jude looking round him.  "Yes--it is the same!
I really didn't know it, Sue.  Well--it is not cruel, since we have
come as we have--two relations staying together."

"How long ago was it you were here?  Tell me, tell me!"

"The day before I met you in Christminster, when we went back to
Marygreen together.  I told you I had met her."

"Yes, you said you had met her, but you didn't tell me all.  Your
story was that you had met as estranged people, who were not husband
and wife at all in Heaven's sight--not that you had made it up with
her."

"We didn't make it up," he said sadly.  "I can't explain, Sue."

"You've been false to me; you, my last hope!  And I shall never
forget it, never!"

"But by your own wish, dear Sue, we are only to be friends, not
lovers!  It is so very inconsistent of you to--"

"Friends can be jealous!"

"I don't see that.  You concede nothing to me and I have to concede
everything to you.  After all, you were on good terms with your
husband at that time."

"No, I wasn't, Jude.  Oh how can you think so!  And you have taken me
in, even if you didn't intend to."  She was so mortified that he was
obliged to take her into her room and close the door lest the people
should hear.  "Was it this room?  Yes it was--I see by your look it
was!  I won't have it for mine!  Oh it was treacherous of you to have
her again!  _I_ jumped out of the window!"

"But Sue, she was, after all, my legal wife, if not--"

Slipping down on her knees Sue buried her face in the bed and wept.

"I never knew such an unreasonable--such a dog-in-the-manger
feeling," said Jude.  "I am not to approach you, nor anybody else!"

"Oh don't you UNDERSTAND my feeling?  Why don't you?  Why are you so
gross?  _I_ jumped out of the window!"

"Jumped out of window?"

"I can't explain!"

It was true that he did not understand her feelings very well.  But
he did a little; and began to love her none the less.

"I--I thought you cared for nobody--desired nobody in the world but
me at that time--and ever since!" continued Sue.

"It is true.  I did not, and don't now!" said Jude, as distressed as
she.

"But you must have thought much of her!  Or--"

"No--I need not--you don't understand me either--women never do!  Why
should you get into such a tantrum about nothing?"

Looking up from the quilt she pouted provokingly: "If it hadn't been
for that, perhaps I would have gone on to the Temperance Hotel, after
all, as you proposed; for I was beginning to think I did belong to
you!"

"Oh, it is of no consequence!" said Jude distantly.

"I thought, of course, that she had never been really your wife since
she left you of her own accord years and years ago!  My sense of it
was, that a parting such as yours from her, and mine from him, ended
the marriage."

"I can't say more without speaking against her, and I don't want
to do that," said he.  "Yet I must tell you one thing, which would
settle the matter in any case.  She has married another man--really
married him!  I knew nothing about it till after the visit we made
here."

"Married another? ...  It is a crime--as the world treats it, but
does not believe."

"There--now you are yourself again.  Yes, it is a crime--as you don't
hold, but would fearfully concede.  But I shall never inform against
her!  And it is evidently a prick of conscience in her that has led
her to urge me to get a divorce, that she may remarry this man
legally.  So you perceive I shall not be likely to see her again."

"And you didn't really know anything of this when you saw her?" said
Sue more gently, as she rose.

"I did not.  Considering all things, I don't think you ought to be
angry, darling!"

"I am not.  But I shan't go to the Temperance Hotel!"

He laughed.  "Never mind!" he said.  "So that I am near you, I am
comparatively happy.  It is more than this earthly wretch called Me
deserves--you spirit, you disembodied creature, you dear, sweet,
tantalizing phantom--hardly flesh at all; so that when I put my arms
round you I almost expect them to pass through you as through air!
Forgive me for being gross, as you call it!  Remember that our
calling cousins when really strangers was a snare.  The enmity of our
parents gave a piquancy to you in my eyes that was intenser even than
the novelty of ordinary new acquaintance."

"Say those pretty lines, then, from Shelley's 'Epipsychidion' as if
they meant me!" she solicited, slanting up closer to him as they
stood.  "Don't you know them?"

"I know hardly any poetry," he replied mournfully.

"Don't you?  These are some of them:

   There was a Being whom my spirit oft
   Met on its visioned wanderings far aloft.

       *     *     *     *     *

   A seraph of Heaven, too gentle to be human,
   Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman...

Oh it is too flattering, so I won't go on!  But say it's me!  Say
it's me!"

"It is you, dear; exactly like you!"

"Now I forgive you!  And you shall kiss me just once there--not very
long."  She put the tip of her finger gingerly to her cheek; and he
did as commanded.  "You do care for me very much, don't you, in spite
of my not--you know?"

"Yes, sweet!" he said with a sigh; and bade her good-night.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Jude meets Sue at Melchester and they go on to Aldbrickham. He tells her Arabella has written to ask him to divorce her so she can remarry her Australian husband; Jude is therefore free. When he tells Sue he has reserved a room for them at a hotel, she protests she can't be intimate with him yet and tries to defend herself by saying she hasn't the courage of her convictions. Angry, Jude says she is incapable of "real love," but she replies that she has trusted Jude "to set wishes above gratification." When Jude says that in spite of her views she is as conventional as anyone, she mentions again a woman's love of being loved and the way this can lead her into unfortunate situations. Needing to find a different hotel, Jude unwittingly takes her to the inn where he spent the night with Arabella, and Sue finds this out from a maid. Though Sue was then supposedly happy with Phillotson and Jude legally married to Arabella, Sue is angry, and Jude complains that she expects too much of him. She is pacified only when she learns that at the time he didn't know Arabella was married to another man. She asks him to repeat some lines from Shelley to flatter her, but when he can't recall them she does so herself.


prompt:
Chapter: In returning to his native town of Shaston as schoolmaster Phillotson
had won the interest and awakened the memories of the inhabitants,
who, though they did not honour him for his miscellaneous acquirements
as he would have been honoured elsewhere, retained for him a sincere
regard.  When, shortly after his arrival, he brought home a pretty
wife--awkwardly pretty for him, if he did not take care, they
said--they were glad to have her settle among them.

For some time after her flight from that home Sue's absence did not
excite comment.  Her place as monitor in the school was taken by
another young woman within a few days of her vacating it, which
substitution also passed without remark, Sue's services having been
of a provisional nature only.  When, however, a month had passed, and
Phillotson casually admitted to an acquaintance that he did not know
where his wife was staying, curiosity began to be aroused; till,
jumping to conclusions, people ventured to affirm that Sue had played
him false and run away from him.  The schoolmaster's growing languor
and listlessness over his work gave countenance to the idea.

Though Phillotson had held his tongue as long as he could, except to
his friend Gillingham, his honesty and directness would not allow him
to do so when misapprehensions as to Sue's conduct spread abroad.
On a Monday morning the chairman of the school committee called, and
after attending to the business of the school drew Phillotson aside
out of earshot of the children.

"You'll excuse my asking, Phillotson, since everybody is talking of
it: is this true as to your domestic affairs--that your wife's going
away was on no visit, but a secret elopement with a lover?  If so, I
condole with you."

"Don't," said Phillotson.  "There was no secret about it."

"She has gone to visit friends?"

"No."

"Then what has happened?"

"She has gone away under circumstances that usually call for
condolence with the husband.  But I gave my consent."

The chairman looked as if he had not apprehended the remark.

"What I say is quite true," Phillotson continued testily.  "She asked
leave to go away with her lover, and I let her.  Why shouldn't I?  A
woman of full age, it was a question of her own conscience--not for
me.  I was not her gaoler.  I can't explain any further.  I don't
wish to be questioned."

The children observed that much seriousness marked the faces of
the two men, and went home and told their parents that something
new had happened about Mrs. Phillotson.  Then Phillotson's little
maidservant, who was a schoolgirl just out of her standards, said
that Mr. Phillotson had helped in his wife's packing, had offered
her what money she required, and had written a friendly letter to
her young man, telling him to take care of her.  The chairman of
committee thought the matter over, and talked to the other managers
of the school, till a request came to Phillotson to meet them
privately.  The meeting lasted a long time, and at the end the
school-master came home, looking as usual pale and worn.  Gillingham
was sitting in his house awaiting him.

"Well; it is as you said," observed Phillotson, flinging himself
down wearily in a chair.  "They have requested me to send in my
resignation on account of my scandalous conduct in giving my tortured
wife her liberty--or, as they call it, condoning her adultery.  But I
shan't resign!"

"I think I would."

"I won't. It is no business of theirs.  It doesn't affect me in my
public capacity at all.  They may expel me if they like."

"If you make a fuss it will get into the papers, and you'll never get
appointed to another school.  You see, they have to consider what
you did as done by a teacher of youth--and its effects as such upon
the morals of the town; and, to ordinary opinion, your position is
indefensible.  You must let me say that."

To this good advice, however, Phillotson would not listen.

"I don't care," he said.  "I don't go unless I am turned out.  And
for this reason; that by resigning I acknowledge I have acted wrongly
by her; when I am more and more convinced every day that in the sight
of Heaven and by all natural, straightforward humanity, I have acted
rightly."

Gillingham saw that his rather headstrong friend would not be able to
maintain such a position as this; but he said nothing further, and
in due time--indeed, in a quarter of an hour--the formal letter of
dismissal arrived, the managers having remained behind to write it
after Phillotson's withdrawal.  The latter replied that he should not
accept dismissal; and called a public meeting, which he attended,
although he looked so weak and ill that his friend implored him to
stay at home.  When he stood up to give his reasons for contesting
the decision of the managers he advanced them firmly, as he had
done to his friend, and contended, moreover, that the matter was a
domestic theory which did not concern them.  This they over-ruled,
insisting that the private eccentricities of a teacher came quite
within their sphere of control, as it touched the morals of those he
taught.  Phillotson replied that he did not see how an act of natural
charity could injure morals.

All the respectable inhabitants and well-to-do fellow-natives of
the town were against Phillotson to a man.  But, somewhat to his
surprise, some dozen or more champions rose up in his defence as from
the ground.

It has been stated that Shaston was the anchorage of a curious and
interesting group of itinerants, who frequented the numerous fairs
and markets held up and down Wessex during the summer and autumn
months.  Although Phillotson had never spoken to one of these
gentlemen they now nobly led the forlorn hope in his defence.
The body included two cheap Jacks, a shooting-gallery proprietor
and the ladies who loaded the guns, a pair of boxing-masters, a
steam-roundabout manager, two travelling broom-makers, who called
themselves widows, a gingerbread-stall keeper, a swing-boat owner,
and a "test-your-strength" man.

This generous phalanx of supporters, and a few others of independent
judgment, whose own domestic experiences had been not without
vicissitude, came up and warmly shook hands with Phillotson; after
which they expressed their thoughts so strongly to the meeting that
issue was joined, the result being a general scuffle, wherein a black
board was split, three panes of the school windows were broken,
an inkbottle was spilled over a town-councillor's shirt front,
a churchwarden was dealt such a topper with the map of Palestine
that his head went right through Samaria, and many black eyes and
bleeding noses were given, one of which, to everybody's horror, was
the venerable incumbent's, owing to the zeal of an emancipated
chimney-sweep, who took the side of Phillotson's party.  When
Phillotson saw the blood running down the rector's face he deplored
almost in groans the untoward and degrading circumstances, regretted
that he had not resigned when called upon, and went home so ill that
next morning he could not leave his bed.

The farcical yet melancholy event was the beginning of a serious
illness for him; and he lay in his lonely bed in the pathetic state
of mind of a middle-aged man who perceives at length that his
life, intellectual and domestic, is tending to failure and gloom.
Gillingham came to see him in the evenings, and on one occasion
mentioned Sue's name.

"She doesn't care anything about me!" said Phillotson.  "Why should
she?"

"She doesn't know you are ill."

"So much the better for both of us."

"Where are her lover and she living?"

"At Melchester--I suppose; at least he was living there some time
ago."

When Gillingham reached home he sat and reflected, and at last wrote
an anonymous line to Sue, on the bare chance of its reaching her,
the letter being enclosed in an envelope addressed to Jude at the
diocesan capital.  Arriving at that place it was forwarded to
Marygreen in North Wessex, and thence to Aldbrickham by the only
person who knew his present address--the widow who had nursed his
aunt.

Three days later, in the evening, when the sun was going down in
splendour over the lowlands of Blackmoor, and making the Shaston
windows like tongues of fire to the eyes of the rustics in that vale,
the sick man fancied that he heard somebody come to the house, and a
few minutes after there was a tap at the bedroom door.  Phillotson
did not speak; the door was hesitatingly opened, and there
entered--Sue.

She was in light spring clothing, and her advent seemed ghostly--like
the flitting in of a moth.  He turned his eyes upon her, and flushed;
but appeared to check his primary impulse to speak.

"I have no business here," she said, bending her frightened face to
him.  "But I heard you were ill--very ill; and--and as I know that
you recognize other feelings between man and woman than physical
love, I have come."

"I am not very ill, my dear friend.  Only unwell."

"I didn't know that; and I am afraid that only a severe illness would
have justified my coming!"

"Yes... yes.  And I almost wish you had not come!  It is a little
too soon--that's all I mean.  Still, let us make the best of it.  You
haven't heard about the school, I suppose?"

"No--what about it?"

"Only that I am going away from here to another place.  The managers
and I don't agree, and we are going to part--that's all."

Sue did not for a moment, either now or later, suspect what troubles
had resulted to him from letting her go; it never once seemed to
cross her mind, and she had received no news whatever from Shaston.
They talked on slight and ephemeral subjects, and when his tea was
brought up he told the amazed little servant that a cup was to be set
for Sue.  That young person was much more interested in their history
than they supposed, and as she descended the stairs she lifted her
eyes and hands in grotesque amazement.  While they sipped Sue went
to the window and thoughtfully said, "It is such a beautiful sunset,
Richard."

"They are mostly beautiful from here, owing to the rays crossing the
mist of the vale.  But I lose them all, as they don't shine into this
gloomy corner where I lie."

"Wouldn't you like to see this particular one?  It is like heaven
opened."

"Ah yes!  But I can't."

"I'll help you to."

"No--the bedstead can't be shifted."

"But see how I mean."

She went to where a swing-glass stood, and taking it in her hands
carried it to a spot by the window where it could catch the sunshine,
moving the glass till the beams were reflected into Phillotson's
face.

"There--you can see the great red sun now!" she said.  "And I am
sure it will cheer you--I do so hope it will!"  She spoke with a
childlike, repentant kindness, as if she could not do too much for
him.

Phillotson smiled sadly.  "You are an odd creature!" he murmured as
the sun glowed in his eyes.  "The idea of your coming to see me after
what has passed!"

"Don't let us go back upon that!" she said quickly.  "I have to catch
the omnibus for the train, as Jude doesn't know I have come; he was
out when I started; so I must return home almost directly.  Richard,
I am so very glad you are better.  You don't hate me, do you?  You
have been such a kind friend to me!"

"I am glad to know you think so," said Phillotson huskily.  "No.
I don't hate you!"

It grew dusk quickly in the gloomy room during their intermittent
chat, and when candles were brought and it was time to leave she put
her hand in his or rather allowed it to flit through his; for she was
significantly light in touch.  She had nearly closed the door when he
said, "Sue!"  He had noticed that, in turning away from him, tears
were on her face and a quiver in her lip.

It was bad policy to recall her--he knew it while he pursued it.
But he could not help it.  She came back.

"Sue," he murmured, "do you wish to make it up, and stay?  I'll
forgive you and condone everything!"

"Oh you can't, you can't!" she said hastily.  "You can't condone it
now!"

"HE is your husband now, in effect, you mean, of course?"

"You may assume it.  He is obtaining a divorce from his wife
Arabella."

"His wife!  It is altogether news to me that he has a wife."

"It was a bad marriage."

"Like yours."

"Like mine.  He is not doing it so much on his own account as on
hers.  She wrote and told him it would be a kindness to her, since
then she could marry and live respectably.  And Jude has agreed."

"A wife...  A kindness to her.  Ah, yes; a kindness to her to release
her altogether...  But I don't like the sound of it.  I can forgive,
Sue."

"No, no!  You can't have me back now I have been so wicked--as to do
what I have done!"

There had arisen in Sue's face that incipient fright which showed
itself whenever he changed from friend to husband, and which made her
adopt any line of defence against marital feeling in him.  "I MUST go
now.  I'll come again--may I?"

"I don't ask you to go, even now.  I ask you to stay."

"I thank you, Richard; but I must.  As you are not so ill as I
thought, I CANNOT stay!"

"She's his--his from lips to heel!" said Phillotson; but so faintly
that in closing the door she did not hear it.  The dread of a
reactionary change in the schoolmaster's sentiments, coupled,
perhaps, with a faint shamefacedness at letting even him know
what a slipshod lack of thoroughness, from a man's point of view,
characterized her transferred allegiance, prevented her telling him
of her, thus far, incomplete relations with Jude; and Phillotson lay
writhing like a man in hell as he pictured the prettily dressed,
maddening compound of sympathy and averseness who bore his name,
returning impatiently to the home of her lover.

Gillingham was so interested in Phillotson's affairs, and so
seriously concerned about him, that he walked up the hill-side to
Shaston two or three times a week, although, there and back, it was
a journey of nine miles, which had to be performed between tea and
supper, after a hard day's work in school.  When he called on the
next occasion after Sue's visit his friend was downstairs, and
Gillingham noticed that his restless mood had been supplanted by a
more fixed and composed one.

"She's been here since you called last," said Phillotson.

"Not Mrs. Phillotson?"

"Yes."

"Ah!  You have made it up?"

"No...  She just came, patted my pillow with 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?"

"Oh--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."

"Oh--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 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).

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: When Sue does not return to Phillotson and he does not hesitate to tell the school authorities why, he is asked to resign, refuses to do so, and is dismissed. In the public meeting he calls to defend himself, most townspeople are against him, but some few are for him. The scuffle that results turns the meeting into a bad farce. Owing to Gillingham's telling her that he is ill, Sue comes to see Phillotson; he asks her to come back but she will not. He learns for the first time that Jude has been married. Later, he tells Gillingham that for Sue's sake he is going to divorce her, as Jude is divorcing Arabella.


prompt:
Chapter: 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 we should have had infinite trouble, and days and weeks
would have been spent in investigations."

By degrees Sue acquired her lover's cheerfulness at the sense of
freedom, 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, putting
on a joyful coloured gown in observance of her liberty; seeing which
Jude put on a lighter tie.

"Now we'll strut arm and arm," he said, "like any other engaged
couple.  We've a legal right to."

They rambled out of the town, and along a path over the low-lying
lands that bordered it, though these were frosty now, and the
extensive seed-fields were bare of colour and produce.  The pair,
however, were so absorbed in their own situation that their
surroundings were little in their consciousness.

"Well, my dearest, the result of all this is that we can marry after
a 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 about
it now as I have done all along.  I have just the same dread lest an
iron contract should extinguish your tenderness for me, and mine for
you, 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 living
always as lovers, as we are living now, and only meeting by day.  It
is so much sweeter--for the woman at least, and when she is sure of
the man.  And henceforward we needn't be so particular as we have
been about appearances."

"Our experiences of matrimony with others have not been encouraging,
I own," said he, with some gloom; "either owing to our own
dissatisfied, unpractical natures, or by our misfortune.  But we
two--"

"Should be two dissatisfied ones linked together, which would be
twice as bad as before...  I think I should begin to be afraid of
you, Jude, the moment you had contracted to cherish me under a
Government stamp, and I was licensed to be loved on the premises by
you--Ugh, how horrible and sordid!  Although, as you are, free, I
trust you more than any other man in the world."

"No, no--don't say I should change!" he expostulated; yet there was
misgiving in his own voice also.

"Apart from ourselves, and our unhappy peculiarities, it is foreign
to a man's nature to go on loving a person when he is told that
he must and shall be that person's lover.  There would be a much
likelier chance of his doing it if he were told not to love.  If the
marriage ceremony consisted in an oath and signed contract between
the parties to cease loving from that day forward, in consideration
of personal possession being given, and to avoid each other's society
as much as possible in public, there would be more loving couples
than there are now.  Fancy the secret meetings between the perjuring
husband and wife, the denials of having seen each other, the
clambering in at bedroom windows, and the hiding in closets!  There'd
be little cooling then."

"Yes; but admitting this, or something like it, to be true, you are
not the only one in the world to see it, dear little Sue.  People go
on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many
of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a
month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.  No doubt my father and
mother, and your father and mother, saw it, if they at all resembled
us in habits of observation.  But then they went and married just the
same, because they had ordinary passions.  But you, Sue, are such a
phantasmal, bodiless creature, one who--if you'll allow me to say
it--has so little animal passion in you, that you can act upon reason
in the matter, when we poor unfortunate wretches of grosser substance
can't."

"Well," she sighed, "you've owned that it would probably end in
misery for us.  And I am not so exceptional a woman as you think.
Fewer women like marriage than you suppose, only they enter into it
for the dignity it is assumed to confer, and the social advantages
it gains them sometimes--a dignity and an advantage that I am quite
willing 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 she
loved or could love him.  "I really fear sometimes that you cannot,"
he said, with a dubiousness approaching anger.  "And you are so
reticent.  I know that women are taught by other women that they
must never admit the full truth to a man.  But the highest form of
affection is based on full sincerity on both sides.  Not being men,
these women don't know that in looking back on those he has had
tender relations with, a man's heart returns closest to her who
was the soul of truth in her conduct.  The better class of man,
even if caught by airy affectations of dodging and parrying, is not
retained by them.  A Nemesis attends the woman who plays the game of
elusiveness too often, in the utter contempt for her that, sooner
or later, her old admirers feel; under which they allow her to go
unlamented to her grave."

Sue, who was regarding the distance, had acquired a guilty look; and
she suddenly replied in a tragic voice: "I don't think I like you
to-day so well as I did, Jude!"

"Don't you?  Why?"

"Oh, well--you are not nice--too sermony.  Though I suppose I am so
bad and worthless that I deserve the utmost rigour of lecturing!"

"No, you are not bad.  You are a dear.  But as slippery as an eel
when I want to get a confession from you."

"Oh yes, I am bad, and obstinate, and all sorts!  It is no use your
pretending I am not!  People who are good don't want scolding as I
do...  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'll
live with you, and whether I'll be married or no!"

"Sue, my own comrade and sweetheart, I don't want to force you either
to marry or to do the other thing--of course I don't!  It is too
wicked 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 our
walk we'll talk of the meadows only, and the floods, and the prospect
of the farmers this coming year."

After this the subject of marriage was not mentioned by them for
several days, though living as they were with only a landing between
them it was constantly in their minds.  Sue was assisting Jude very
materially now: he had latterly occupied himself on his own account
in working and lettering headstones, which he kept in a little yard
at the back of his little house, where in the intervals of domestic
duties she marked out the letters full size for him, and blacked them
in after he had cut them.  It was a lower class of handicraft than
were his former performances as a cathedral mason, and his only
patrons 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 the
simple memorials they required for their dead.  But he seemed more
independent than before, and it was the only arrangement under which
Sue, who particularly wished to be no burden on him, could render any
assistance.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: A year later at Aldbrickham, Jude and Sue are still living as they were. With Phillotson's divorce from Sue now final, they both are free, Jude's divorce from Arabella having become final some time before. When Jude brings up the subject of their marrying, Sue says she would rather they go on as lovers and avoid the oppressive effects of marriage, though Jude objects that most people marry as a matter of course. Again, he complains of her lack of "animal passion" and her seeming inability to love him, but she still wants to dictate the terms of their relationship and Jude acquiesces. With some assistance from Sue, Jude is doing work on headstones, "a lower class of handicraft" than his cathedral work previously.


prompt:
Chapter: It was an evening at the end of the month, and Jude had just returned
home from hearing a lecture on ancient history in the public hall not
far off.  When he entered, Sue, who had been keeping indoors during
his absence, laid out supper for him.  Contrary to custom she did not
speak.  Jude had taken up some illustrated paper, which he perused
till, raising his eyes, he saw that her face was troubled.

"Are you depressed, Sue?" he said.

She paused a moment.  "I have a message for you," she answered.

"Somebody has called?"

"Yes.  A woman."  Sue's voice quavered as she spoke, and she suddenly
sat down from her preparations, laid her hands in her lap, and looked
into the fire.  "I don't know whether I did right or not!" she
continued.  "I said you were not at home, and when she said she would
wait, I said I thought you might not be able to see her."

"Why did you say that, dear?  I suppose she wanted a headstone.  Was
she in mourning?"

"No. She wasn't in mourning, and she didn't want a headstone; and I
thought you couldn't see her."  Sue looked critically and imploringly
at him.

"But who was she?  Didn't she say?"

"No. She wouldn't give her name.  But I know who she was--I think I
do!  It was Arabella!"

"Heaven save us!  What should Arabella come for?  What made you think
it was she?"

"Oh, I can hardly tell.  But I know it was!  I feel perfectly certain
it was--by the light in her eyes as she looked at me.  She was a
fleshy, coarse woman."

"Well--I should not have called Arabella coarse exactly, except in
speech, though she may be getting so by this time under the duties of
the public house.  She was rather handsome when I knew her."

"Handsome!  But yes!--so she is!"

"I think I heard a quiver in your little mouth.  Well, waiving that,
as she is nothing to me, and virtuously married to another man, why
should she come troubling us?"

"Are you sure she's married?  Have you definite news of it?"

"No--not definite news.  But that was why she asked me to release
her.  She and the man both wanted to lead a proper life, as I
understood."

"Oh Jude--it was, it WAS Arabella!" cried Sue, covering her eyes
with her hand.  "And I am so miserable!  It seems such an ill omen,
whatever she may have come for.  You could not possibly see her,
could you?"

"I don't really think I could.  It would be so very painful to talk
to her now--for her as much as for me.  However, she's gone.  Did she
say she would come again?"

"No. But she went away very reluctantly."

Sue, whom the least thing upset, could not eat any supper, and when
Jude had finished his he prepared to go to bed.  He had no sooner
raked out the fire, fastened the doors, and got to the top of the
stairs than there came a knock.  Sue instantly emerged from her room,
which she had but just entered.

"There she is again!"  Sue whispered in appalled accents.

"How do you know?"

"She knocked like that last time."

They listened, and the knocking came again.  No servant was kept in
the house, and if the summons were to be responded to one of them
would have to do it in person.  "I'll open a window," said Jude.
"Whoever it is cannot be expected to be let in at this time."

He accordingly went into his bedroom and lifted the sash.  The lonely
street of early retiring workpeople was empty from end to end save of
one figure--that of a woman walking up and down by the lamp a few
yards off.

"Who's there?" he asked.

"Is that Mr. Fawley?" came up from the woman, in a voice which was
unmistakably Arabella's.

Jude replied that it was.

"Is it she?" asked Sue from the door, with lips apart.

"Yes, dear," said Jude.  "What do you want, Arabella?" he inquired.

"I beg your pardon, Jude, for disturbing you," said Arabella humbly.
"But I called earlier--I wanted particularly to see you to-night, if
I could.  I am in trouble, and have nobody to help me!"

"In trouble, are you?"

"Yes."

There was a silence.  An inconvenient sympathy seemed to be rising in
Jude's breast at the appeal.  "But aren't you married?" he said.

Arabella hesitated.  "No, Jude, I am not," she returned.  "He
wouldn't, after all.  And I am in great difficulty.  I hope to get
another situation as barmaid soon.  But it takes time, and I really
am in great distress because of a sudden responsibility that's been
sprung upon me from Australia; or I wouldn't trouble you--believe me
I wouldn't. I want to tell you about it."

Sue remained at gaze, in painful tension, hearing every word, but
speaking none.

"You are not really in want of money, Arabella?" he asked, in a
distinctly softened tone.

"I have enough to pay for the night's lodging I have obtained, but
barely enough to take me back again."

"Where are you living?"

"In London still."  She was about to give the address, but she
said, "I am afraid somebody may hear, so I don't like to call out
particulars of myself so loud.  If you could come down and walk
a little way with me towards the Prince Inn, where I am staying
to-night, I would explain all.  You may as well, for old time's
sake!"

"Poor thing!  I must do her the kindness of hearing what's the
matter, I suppose," said Jude in much perplexity.  "As she's going
back to-morrow it can't make much difference."

"But you can go and see her to-morrow, Jude!  Don't go now, Jude!"
came in plaintive accents from the doorway.  "Oh, it is only to
entrap you, I know it is, as she did before!  Don't go, dear!  She is
such a low-passioned woman--I can see it in her shape, and hear it in
her voice!

"But I shall go," said Jude.  "Don't attempt to detain me, Sue.  God
knows I love her little enough now, but I don't want to be cruel to
her."  He turned to the stairs.

"But she's not your wife!" cried Sue distractedly.  "And I--"

"And you are not either, dear, yet," said Jude.

"Oh, but are you going to her?  Don't!  Stay at home!  Please, please
stay at home, Jude, and not go to her, now she's not your wife any
more than I!"

"Well, she is, rather more than you, come to that," he said, taking
his hat determinedly.  "I've wanted you to be, and I've waited with
the patience of Job, and I don't see that I've got anything by my
self-denial.  I shall certainly give her something, and hear what it
is she is so anxious to tell me; no man could do less!"

There was that in his manner which she knew it would be futile to
oppose.  She said no more, but, turning to her room as meekly as a
martyr, heard him go downstairs, unbolt the door, and close it
behind him.  With a woman's disregard of her dignity when in the
presence of nobody but herself, she also trotted down, sobbing
articulately as she went.  She listened.  She knew exactly how far
it was to the inn that Arabella had named as her lodging.  It would
occupy about seven minutes to get there at an ordinary walking pace;
seven to come back again.  If he did not return in fourteen minutes
he would have lingered.  She looked at the clock.  It was twenty-five
minutes to eleven.  He MIGHT enter the inn with Arabella, as they
would reach it before closing time; she might get him to drink with
her; and Heaven only knew what disasters would befall him then.

In a still suspense she waited on.  It seemed as if the whole time
had nearly elapsed when the door was opened again, and Jude appeared.

Sue gave a little ecstatic cry.  "Oh, I knew I could trust you!--how
good you are!"--she began.

"I can't find her anywhere in this street, and I went out in my
slippers only.  She has walked on, thinking I've been so hard-hearted
as to refuse her requests entirely, poor woman.  I've come back for
my boots, as it is beginning to rain."

"Oh, but why should you take such trouble for a woman who has served
you so badly!" said Sue in a jealous burst of disappointment.

"But, Sue, she's a woman, and I once cared for her; and one can't be
a brute in such circumstances."

"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!--Oh, 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."

"Oh 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 relation 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.

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?"

"Oh--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.

"Oh, 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
businesslike 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 to-day!  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 oneyer 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."

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 oft-times do.  He saw
that she was preoccupied, and forbore to question her.

"Oh 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!"

"Oh, 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 Phryne made complaint that she was tired
of posing."

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.

"Oh, 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
goodwill, 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
gratuitousness?"

"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 ...

They thought it over, or postponed thinking.  Certainly they
postponed action, and seemed to live on 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 inn-keeper.

"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, Jude, 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."

"The poor child seems to be wanted by nobody!"  Sue replied, and her
eyes filled.

Jude had by this time come to himself.  "What a view of life he
must have, mine or not mine!" he said.  "I must say that, if I were
better off, I should not stop for a moment to think whose he might
be.  I would take him and bring him up.  The beggarly question of
parentage--what is it, after all?  What does it matter, when you come
to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not?  All the
little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of
the time, and entitled to our general care.  That excessive regard of
parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people's,
is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soul-ism, and other
virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom."

Sue jumped up and kissed Jude with passionate devotion.  "Yes--so
it is, dearest!  And we'll have him here!  And if he isn't yours it
makes it all the better.  I do hope he isn't--though perhaps I ought
not to feel quite that!  If he isn't, I should like so much for us
to have him as an adopted child!"

"Well, you must assume about him what is most pleasing to you, my
curious little comrade!" he said.  "I feel that, anyhow, I don't like
to leave the unfortunate little fellow to neglect.  Just think of
his life in a Lambeth pothouse, and all its evil influences, with a
parent who doesn't want him, and has, indeed, hardly seen him, and
a stepfather who doesn't know him.  'Let the day perish wherein I
was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child
conceived!'  That's what the boy--MY boy, perhaps, will find himself
saying before long!"

"Oh no!"

"As I was the petitioner, I am really entitled to his custody, I
suppose."

"Whether or no, we must have him.  I see that.  I'll do the best I
can to be a mother to him, and we can afford to keep him somehow.
I'll work harder.  I wonder when he'll arrive?"

"In the course of a few weeks, I suppose."

"I wish--When shall we have courage to marry, Jude?"

"Whenever you have it, I think I shall.  It remains with you
entirely, dear.  Only say the word, and it's done."

"Before the boy comes?"

"Certainly."

"It would make a more natural home for him, perhaps," she murmured.

Jude thereupon wrote in purely formal terms to request that the boy
should be sent on to them as soon as he arrived, making no remark
whatever on the surprising nature of Arabella's information, nor
vouchsafing a single word of opinion on the boy's paternity, nor on
whether, had he known all this, his conduct towards her would have
been quite the same.

In the down-train that was timed to reach Aldbrickham station about
ten o'clock the next evening, a small, pale child's face could
be seen in the gloom of a third-class carriage.  He had large,
frightened eyes, and wore a white woollen cravat, over which a
key was suspended round his neck by a piece of common string: the
key attracting attention by its occasional shine in the lamplight.
In the band of his hat his half-ticket was stuck.  His eyes
remained mostly fixed on the back of the seat opposite, and never
turned to the window even when a station was reached and called.
On the other seat were two or three passengers, one of them a working
woman who held a basket on her lap, in which was a tabby kitten.
The woman opened the cover now and then, whereupon the kitten would
put out its head, and indulge in playful antics.  At these the
fellow-passengers laughed, except the solitary boy bearing the key
and ticket, who, regarding the kitten with his saucer eyes, seemed
mutely to say: "All laughing comes from misapprehension.  Rightly
looked at, there is no laughable thing under the sun."

Occasionally, at a stoppage, the guard would look into the compartment
and say to the boy, "All right, my man.  Your box is safe in the
van."  The boy would say, "Yes," without animation, would try to
smile, and fail.

He was Age masquerading as Juvenility, and doing it so badly that
his real self showed through crevices.  A ground-swell from ancient
years of night seemed now and then to lift the child in this his
morning-life, when his face took a back view over some great Atlantic
of Time, and appeared not to care about what it saw.

When the other travellers closed their eyes, which they did one by
one--even the kitten curling itself up in the basket, weary of its
too circumscribed play--the boy remained just as before.  He then
seemed to be doubly awake, like an enslaved and dwarfed divinity,
sitting passive and regarding his companions as if he saw their whole
rounded lives rather than their immediate figures.

This was Arabella's boy.  With her usual carelessness, she had
postponed writing to Jude about him till the eve of his landing,
when she could absolutely postpone no longer, though she had known
for weeks of his approaching arrival, and had, as she truly said,
visited Aldbrickham mainly to reveal the boy's existence and his near
home-coming to Jude.  This very day on which she had received her
former husband's answer at some time in the afternoon, the child
reached the London Docks, and the family in whose charge he had come,
having put him into a cab for Lambeth and directed the cabman to his
mother's house, bade him good-bye, and went their way.

On his arrival at the Three Horns, Arabella had looked him over with
an expression that was as good as saying, "You are very much what I
expected you to be," had given him a good meal, a little money, and,
late as it was getting, dispatched him to Jude by the next train,
wishing her husband Cartlett, who was out, not to see him.

The train reached Aldbrickham, and the boy was deposited on the
lonely platform beside his box.  The collector took his ticket, and,
with a meditative sense of the unfitness of things, asked him where
he was going by himself at that time of night.

"Going to Spring Street," said the little one impassively.

"Why, that's a long way from here; a'most out in the country; and the
folks will be gone to bed."

"I've got to go there."

"You must have a fly for your box."

"No. I must walk."

"Oh well: you'd better leave your box here and send for it.  There's
a 'bus goes half-way, but you'll have to walk the rest."

"I am not afraid."

"Why didn't your friends come to meet 'ee?"

"I suppose they didn't know I was coming."

"Who is your friends?"

"Mother didn't wish me to say."

"All I can do, then, is to take charge of this.  Now walk as fast as
you can."

Saying nothing further the boy came out into the street, looking
round to see that nobody followed or observed him.  When he
had walked some little distance he asked for the street of his
destination.  He was told to go straight on quite into the outskirts
of the place.

The child fell into a steady mechanical creep which had in it an
impersonal quality--the movement of the wave, or of the breeze, or
of the cloud.  He followed his directions literally, without an
inquiring gaze at anything.  It could have been seen that the boy's
ideas of life were different from those of the local boys.  Children
begin with detail, and learn up to the general; they begin with the
contiguous, and gradually comprehend the universal.  The boy seemed
to have begun with the generals of life, and never to have concerned
himself with the particulars.  To him the houses, the willows,
the obscure fields beyond, were apparently regarded not as brick
residences, pollards, meadows; but as human dwellings in the
abstract, vegetation, and the wide dark world.

He found the way to the little lane, and knocked at the door of
Jude's house.  Jude had just retired to bed, and Sue was about to
enter her chamber adjoining when she heard the knock and came down.

"Is this where Father lives?" asked the child.

"Who?"

"Mr. Fawley, that's his name."

Sue ran up to Jude's room and told him, and he hurried down as soon
as he could, though to her impatience he seemed long.

"What--is it he--so soon?" she asked as Jude came.

She scrutinized the child's features, and suddenly went away into the
little sitting-room adjoining.  Jude lifted the boy to a level with
himself, keenly regarded him with gloomy tenderness, and telling him
he would have been met if they had known of his coming so soon, set
him provisionally in a chair whilst he went to look for Sue, whose
supersensitiveness was disturbed, as he knew.  He found her in the
dark, bending over an arm-chair.  He enclosed her with his arm, and
putting his face by hers, whispered, "What's the matter?"

"What Arabella says is true--true!  I see you in him!"

"Well: that's one thing in my life as it should be, at any rate."

"But the other half of him is--SHE!  And that's what I can't bear!
But I ought to--I'll try to get used to it; yes, I ought!"

"Jealous little Sue!  I withdraw all remarks about your sexlessness.
Never mind!  Time may right things...  And Sue, darling; I have an
idea!  We'll educate and train him with a view to the university.
What I couldn't accomplish in my own person perhaps I can carry out
through him?  They are making it easier for poor students now, you
know."

"Oh you dreamer!" said she, and holding his hand returned to the
child with him.  The boy looked at her as she had looked at him.
"Is it you who's my REAL mother at last?" he inquired.

"Why?  Do I look like your father's wife?"

"Well, yes; 'cept he seems fond of you, and you of him.  Can I call
you Mother?"

Then a yearning look came over the child and he began to cry.  Sue
thereupon could not refrain from instantly doing likewise, being a
harp which the least wind of emotion from another's heart could make
to vibrate as readily as a radical stir in her own.

"You may call me Mother, if you wish to, my poor dear!" she said,
bending her cheek against his to hide her tears.

"What's this round your neck?" asked Jude with affected calmness.

"The key of my box that's at the station."

They bustled about and got him some supper, and made him up a
temporary bed, where he soon fell asleep.  Both went and looked at
him as he lay.

"He called you Mother two or three times before he dropped off,"
murmured Jude.  "Wasn't it odd that he should have wanted to!"

"Well--it was significant," said Sue.  "There's more for us to think
about in that one little hungry heart than in all the stars of the
sky...  I suppose, dear, we must pluck up courage, and get that
ceremony over?  It is no use struggling against the current, and I
feel myself getting intertwined with my kind.  Oh Jude, you'll love
me dearly, won't you, afterwards?  I do want to be kind to this
child, and to be a mother to him; and our adding the legal form to
our marriage might make it easier for me."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: When Arabella calls on Jude and Sue, he discovers she is not married; she tells him that she has something important to discuss with him. When Sue urges him not to go out with Arabella because she isn't his wife, Jude replies that neither is Sue. When he returns soon, not having found Arabella in the street, Sue again implores him not to go to her. Though Jude admits his weaknesses, he is bitter about denying himself for nothing. Faced with a choice, Sue gives in to Jude, saying she will marry him, will allow the intimacy he has so strongly desired; and Jude does not go out looking for Arabella. The next morning Jude talks of starting arrangements for their marriage, and Sue goes to see Arabella. She quickly sees that Sue possesses Jude in a way she didn't yesterday and says her visit probably helped it along. She receives a telegram from her Australian husband in which he agrees to marry her, a circumstance she has brought about by telling him Jude might take her back. Arabella tells Sue that she will write to Jude about the important matter she came to discuss. Though Jude and Sue start out to the parish clerk's, they decide to delay putting up the banns for their marriage, Sue saying Arabella's remarks about matrimony have reminded her of the oppressiveness of such an obligation. Arabella's letter arrives, announcing that she is married to Cartlett and that she wants Jude to look after their son, born soon after her arrival in Australia. Jude is willing to look after the child, whether or not it actually is his, and Sue agrees, suggesting maybe they should now marry. The boy arrives by himself from London, sent on by Arabella after he leaves the ship from Australia, and comes to Jude and Sue. Sue says she sees Jude in the boy and allows him to call her mother.