Chapter: Sue was convalescent, though she had hoped for death, and Jude had
again obtained work at his old trade.  They were in other lodgings
now, in the direction of Beersheba, and not far from the Church of
Ceremonies--Saint Silas.

They would sit silent, more bodeful of the direct antagonism of
things than of their insensate and stolid obstructiveness.  Vague
and quaint imaginings had haunted Sue in the days when her intellect
scintillated like a star, that the world resembled a stanza or melody
composed in a dream; it was wonderfully excellent to the half-aroused
intelligence, but hopelessly absurd at the full waking; that the
First Cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not
reflectively like a sage; that at the framing of the terrestrial
conditions there seemed never to have been contemplated such
a development of emotional perceptiveness among the creatures
subject to those conditions as that reached by thinking and
educated humanity.  But affliction makes opposing forces loom
anthropomorphous; and those ideas were now exchanged for a sense of
Jude and herself fleeing from a persecutor.

"We must conform!" she said mournfully.  "All the ancient wrath of
the Power above us has been vented upon us, His poor creatures, and
we must submit.  There is no choice.  We must.  It is no use fighting
against God!"

"It is only against man and senseless circumstance," said Jude.

"True!" she murmured.  "What have I been thinking of!  I am getting
as superstitious as a savage! ...  But whoever or whatever our foe
may be, I am cowed into submission.  I have no more fighting strength
left; no more enterprise.  I am beaten, beaten! ...  'We are made a
spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men!'  I am always
saying that now."

"I feel the same!"

"What shall we do?  You are in work now; but remember, it may
only be because our history and relations are not absolutely
known...  Possibly, if they knew our marriage had not been formalized they
would turn you out of your job as they did at Aldbrickham!"

"I hardly know.  Perhaps they would hardly do that.  However, I think
that we ought to make it legal now--as soon as you are able to go
out."

"You think we ought?"

"Certainly."

And Jude fell into thought.  "I have seemed to myself lately,"
he said, "to belong to that vast band of men shunned by the
virtuous--the men called seducers.  It amazes me when I think of it!
I have not been conscious of it, or of any wrongdoing towards you,
whom I love more than myself.  Yet I am one of those men!  I wonder
if any other of them are the same purblind, simple creatures as
I? ...  Yes, Sue--that's what I am.  I seduced you...  You were a
distinct type--a refined creature, intended by Nature to be left
intact.  But I couldn't leave you alone!"

"No, no, Jude!" she said quickly.  "Don't reproach yourself with
being what you are not.  If anybody is to blame it is I."

"I supported you in your resolve to leave Phillotson; and without me
perhaps you wouldn't have urged him to let you go."

"I should have, just the same.  As to ourselves, the fact of our not
having entered into a legal contract is the saving feature in our
union.  We have thereby avoided insulting, as it were, the solemnity
of our first marriages."

"Solemnity?"  Jude looked at her with some surprise, and grew
conscious that she was not the Sue of their earlier time.

"Yes," she said, with a little quiver in her words, "I have had
dreadful fears, a dreadful sense of my own insolence of action.
I have thought--that I am still his wife!"

"Whose?"

"Richard's."

"Good God, dearest!--why?"

"Oh I can't explain!  Only the thought comes to me."

"It is your weakness--a sick fancy, without reason or meaning!
Don't let it trouble you."

Sue sighed uneasily.

As a set-off against such discussions as these there had come
an improvement in their pecuniary position, which earlier in
their experience would have made them cheerful.  Jude had quite
unexpectedly found good employment at his old trade almost directly
he arrived, the summer weather suiting his fragile constitution; and
outwardly his days went on with that monotonous uniformity which
is in itself so grateful after vicissitude.  People seemed to have
forgotten that he had ever shown any awkward aberrancies, and he
daily mounted to the parapets and copings of colleges he could never
enter, and renewed the crumbling freestones of mullioned windows he
would never look from, as if he had known no wish to do otherwise.

There was this change in him; that he did not often go to any service
at the churches now.  One thing troubled him more than any other;
that Sue and himself had mentally travelled in opposite directions
since the tragedy: events which had enlarged his own views of life,
laws, customs, and dogmas, had not operated in the same manner on
Sue's.  She was no longer the same as in the independent days, when
her intellect played like lambent lightning over conventions and
formalities which he at that time respected, though he did not now.

On a particular Sunday evening he came in rather late.  She was
not at home, but she soon returned, when he found her silent and
meditative.

"What are you thinking of, little woman?" he asked curiously.

"Oh I can't tell clearly!  I have thought that we have been selfish,
careless, even impious, in our courses, you and I.  Our life has been
a vain attempt at self-delight.  But self-abnegation is the higher
road.  We should mortify the flesh--the terrible flesh--the curse of
Adam!"

"Sue!" he murmured.  "What has come over you?"

"We ought to be continually sacrificing ourselves on the altar of
duty!  But I have always striven to do what has pleased me.  I well
deserved the scourging I have got!  I wish something would take the
evil right out of me, and all my monstrous errors, and all my sinful
ways!"

"Sue--my own too suffering dear!--there's no evil woman in you.  Your
natural instincts are perfectly healthy; not quite so impassioned,
perhaps, as I could wish; but good, and dear, and pure.  And as I
have often said, you are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual
woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness.  Why do you
talk in such a changed way?  We have not been selfish, except when no
one could profit by our being otherwise.  You used to say that human
nature was noble and long-suffering, not vile and corrupt, and at
last I thought you spoke truly.  And now you seem to take such a much
lower view!"

"I want a humble heart; and a chastened mind; and I have never had
them yet!"

"You have been fearless, both as a thinker and as a feeler, and you
deserved more admiration than I gave.  I was too full of narrow
dogmas at that time to see it."

"Don't say that, Jude!  I wish my every fearless word and thought
could be rooted out of my history.  Self-renunciation--that's
everything!  I cannot humiliate myself too much.  I should like to
prick myself all over with pins and bleed out the badness that's in
me!"

"Hush!" he said, pressing her little face against his breast as if
she were an infant.  "It is bereavement that has brought you to this!
Such remorse is not for you, my sensitive plant, but for the wicked
ones of the earth--who never feel it!"

"I ought not to stay like this," she murmured, when she had remained
in the position a long while.

"Why not?"

"It is indulgence."

"Still on the same tack!  But is there anything better on earth than
that we should love one another?"

"Yes.  It depends on the sort of love; and yours--ours--is the
wrong."

"I won't have it, Sue!  Come, when do you wish our marriage to be
signed in a vestry?"

She paused, and looked up uneasily.  "Never," she whispered.

Not knowing the whole of her meaning he took the objection serenely,
and said nothing.  Several minutes elapsed, and he thought she had
fallen asleep; but he spoke softly, and found that she was wide awake
all the time.  She sat upright and sighed.

"There is a strange, indescribable perfume or atmosphere about you
to-night, Sue," he said.  "I mean not only mentally, but about your
clothes, also.  A sort of vegetable scent, which I seem to know, yet
cannot remember."

"It is incense."

"Incense?"

"I have been to the service at St. Silas', and I was in the fumes of
it."

"Oh--St. Silas."

"Yes.  I go there sometimes."

"Indeed.  You go there!"

"You see, Jude, it is lonely here in the weekday mornings, when you
are at work, and I think and think of--of my--"  She stopped till she
could control the lumpiness of her throat.  "And I have taken to go
in there, as it is so near."

"Oh well--of course, I say nothing against it.  Only it is odd, for
you.  They little think what sort of chiel is amang them!"

"What do you mean, Jude?"

"Well--a sceptic, to be plain."

"How can you pain me so, dear Jude, in my trouble!  Yet I know you
didn't mean it.  But you ought not to say that."

"I won't. But I am much surprised!"

"Well--I want to tell you something else, Jude.  You won't be angry,
will you?  I have thought of it a good deal since my babies died.
I don't think I ought to be your wife--or as your wife--any longer."

"What? ...  But you ARE!"

"From your point of view; but--"

"Of course we were afraid of the ceremony, and a good many others
would have been in our places, with such strong reasons for fears.
But experience has proved how we misjudged ourselves, and overrated
our infirmities; and if you are beginning to respect rites and
ceremonies, as you seem to be, I wonder you don't say it shall be
carried out instantly?  You certainly ARE my wife, Sue, in all but
law.  What do you mean by what you said?"

"I don't think I am!"

"Not?  But suppose we HAD gone through the ceremony?  Would you feel
that you were then?"

"No. I should not feel even then that I was.  I should feel worse
than I do now."

"Why so--in the name of all that's perverse, my dear?"

"Because I am Richard's."

"Ah--you hinted that absurd fancy to me before!"

"It was only an impression with me then; I feel more and more
convinced as time goes on that--I belong to him, or to nobody."

"My good heavens--how we are changing places!"

"Yes.  Perhaps so."

Some few days later, in the dusk of the summer evening, they were
sitting in the same small room downstairs, when a knock came to the
front door of the carpenter's house where they were lodging, and in a
few moments there was a tap at the door of their room.  Before they
could open it the comer did so, and a woman's form appeared.

"Is Mr. Fawley here?"

Jude and Sue started as he mechanically replied in the affirmative,
for the voice was Arabella's.

He formally requested her to come in, and she sat down in the window
bench, where they could distinctly see her outline against the light;
but no characteristic that enabled them to estimate her general
aspect and air.  Yet something seemed to denote that she was not
quite so comfortably circumstanced, nor so bouncingly attired, as she
had been during Cartlett's lifetime.

The three attempted an awkward conversation about the tragedy, of
which Jude had felt it to be his duty to inform her immediately,
though she had never replied to his letter.

"I have just come from the cemetery," she said.  "I inquired and
found the child's grave.  I couldn't come to the funeral--thank you
for inviting me all the same.  I read all about it in the papers,
and I felt I wasn't wanted...  No--I couldn't come to the funeral,"
repeated Arabella, who, seeming utterly unable to reach the ideal of
a catastrophic manner, fumbled with iterations.  "But I am glad I
found the grave.  As 'tis your trade, Jude, you'll be able to put up
a handsome stone to 'em."

"I shall put up a headstone," said Jude drearily.

"He was my child, and naturally I feel for him."

"I hope so.  We all did."

"The others that weren't mine I didn't feel so much for, as was
natural."

"Of course."

A sigh came from the dark corner where Sue sat.

"I had often wished I had mine with me," continued Mrs. Cartlett.
"Perhaps 'twouldn't have happened then!  But of course I didn't wish
to take him away from your wife."

"I am not his wife," came from Sue.

The unexpectedness of her words struck Jude silent.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, I'm sure," said Arabella.  "I thought you
were!"

Jude had known from the quality of Sue's tone that her new and
transcendental views lurked in her words; but all except their
obvious meaning was, naturally, missed by Arabella.  The latter,
after evincing that she was struck by Sue's avowal, recovered
herself, and went on to talk with placid bluntness about "her" boy,
for whom, though in his lifetime she had shown no care at all,
she now exhibited a ceremonial mournfulness that was apparently
sustaining to the conscience.  She alluded to the past, and in making
some remark appealed again to Sue.  There was no answer: Sue had
invisibly left the room.

"She said she was not your wife?" resumed Arabella in another voice.
"Why should she do that?"

"I cannot inform you," said Jude shortly.

"She is, isn't she?  She once told me so."

"I don't criticize what she says."

"Ah--I see!  Well, my time is up.  I am staying here to-night, and
thought I could do no less than call, after our mutual affliction.
I am sleeping at the place where I used to be barmaid, and to-morrow
I go back to Alfredston.  Father is come home again, and I am living
with him."

"He has returned from Australia?" said Jude with languid curiosity.

"Yes.  Couldn't get on there.  Had a rough time of it.  Mother died
of dys--what do you call it--in the hot weather, and Father and two
of the young ones have just got back.  He has got a cottage near the
old place, and for the present I am keeping house for him."

Jude's former wife had maintained a stereotyped manner of strict good
breeding even now that Sue was gone, and limited her stay to a number
of minutes that should accord with the highest respectability.  When
she had departed Jude, much relieved, went to the stairs and called
Sue--feeling anxious as to what had become of her.

There was no answer, and the carpenter who kept the lodgings said she
had not come in.  Jude was puzzled, and became quite alarmed at her
absence, for the hour was growing late.  The carpenter called his
wife, who conjectured that Sue might have gone to St. Silas' church,
as she often went there.

"Surely not at this time o' night?" said Jude.  "It is shut."

"She knows somebody who keeps the key, and she has it whenever she
wants it."

"How long has she been going on with this?"

"Oh, some few weeks, I think."

Jude went vaguely in the direction of the church, which he had never
once approached since he lived out that way years before, when his
young opinions were more mystical than they were now.  The spot was
deserted, but the door was certainly unfastened; he lifted the latch
without noise, and pushing to the door behind him, stood absolutely
still inside.  The prevalent silence seemed to contain a faint sound,
explicable as a breathing, or a sobbing, which came from the other
end of the building.  The floor-cloth deadened his footsteps as he
moved in that direction through the obscurity, which was broken only
by the faintest reflected night-light from without.

High overhead, above the chancel steps, Jude could discern a huge,
solidly constructed Latin cross--as large, probably, as the original
it was designed to commemorate.  It seemed to be suspended in the
air by invisible wires; it was set with large jewels, which faintly
glimmered in some weak ray caught from outside, as the cross swayed
to and fro in a silent and scarcely perceptible motion.  Underneath,
upon the floor, lay what appeared to be a heap of black clothes, and
from this was repeated the sobbing that he had heard before.  It was
his Sue's form, prostrate on the paving.

"Sue!" he whispered.

Something white disclosed itself; she had turned up her face.

"What--do you want with me here, Jude?" she said almost sharply.
"You shouldn't come!  I wanted to be alone!  Why did you intrude
here?"

"How can you ask!" he retorted in quick reproach, for his full heart
was wounded to its centre at this attitude of hers towards him.
"Why do I come?  Who has a right to come, I should like to know, if
I have not!  I, who love you better than my own self--better--far
better--than you have loved me!  What made you leave me to come here
alone?"

"Don't criticize me, Jude--I can't bear it!--I have often told
you so.  You must take me as I am.  I am a wretch--broken by my
distractions!  I couldn't BEAR it when Arabella came--I felt so
utterly miserable I had to come away.  She seems to be your wife
still, and Richard to be my husband!"

"But they are nothing to us!"

"Yes, dear friend, they are.  I see marriage differently now.  My
babies have been taken from me to show me this!  Arabella's child
killing mine was a judgement--the right slaying the wrong.  What,
WHAT shall I do!  I am such a vile creature--too worthless to mix
with ordinary human beings!"

"This is terrible!" said Jude, verging on tears.  "It is monstrous
and unnatural for you to be so remorseful when you have done no
wrong!"

"Ah--you don't know my badness!"

He returned vehemently: "I do!  Every atom and dreg of it!  You make
me hate Christianity, or mysticism, or Sacerdotalism, or whatever it
may be called, if it's that which has caused this deterioration in
you.  That a woman-poet, a woman-seer, a woman whose soul shone like
a diamond--whom all the wise of the world would have been proud of,
if they could have known you--should degrade herself like this!  I am
glad I had nothing to do with Divinity--damn glad--if it's going to
ruin you in this way!"

"You are angry, Jude, and unkind to me, and don't see how things
are."

"Then come along home with me, dearest, and perhaps I shall.  I am
overburdened--and you, too, are unhinged just now."  He put his arm
round her and lifted her; but though she came, she preferred to walk
without his support.

"I don't dislike you, Jude," she said in a sweet and imploring voice.
"I love you as much as ever!  Only--I ought not to love you--any
more.  Oh I must not any more!"

"I can't own it."

"But I have made up my mind that I am not your wife!  I belong to
him--I sacramentally joined myself to him for life.  Nothing can
alter it!"

"But surely we are man and wife, if ever two people were in this
world?  Nature's own marriage it is, unquestionably!"

"But not Heaven's.  Another was made for me there, and ratified
eternally in the church at Melchester."

"Sue, Sue--affliction has brought you to this unreasonable state!
After converting me to your views on so many things, to find you
suddenly turn to the right-about like this--for no reason whatever,
confounding all you have formerly said through sentiment merely!
You root out of me what little affection and reverence I had left in
me for the Church as an old acquaintance...  What I can't understand
in you is your extraordinary blindness now to your old logic.  Is it
peculiar to you, or is it common to woman?  Is a woman a thinking
unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer?  How you
argued that marriage was only a clumsy contract--which it is--how you
showed all the objections to it--all the absurdities!  If two and two
made four when we were happy together, surely they make four now?  I
can't understand it, I repeat!"

"Ah, dear Jude; that's because you are like a totally deaf man
observing people listening to music.  You say 'What are they
regarding?  Nothing is there.'  But something is."

"That is a hard saying from you; and not a true parallel!  You threw
off old husks of prejudices, and taught me to do it; and now you go
back upon yourself.  I confess I am utterly stultified in my estimate
of you."

"Dear friend, my only friend, don't be hard with me!  I can't help
being as I am, I am convinced I am right--that I see the light at
last.  But oh, how to profit by it!"

They walked along a few more steps till they were outside the
building and she had returned the key.  "Can this be the girl," said
Jude when she came back, feeling a slight renewal of elasticity now
that he was in the open street; "can this be the girl who brought
the pagan deities into this most Christian city?--who mimicked Miss
Fontover when she crushed them with her heel?--quoted Gibbon, and
Shelley, and Mill?  Where are dear Apollo, and dear Venus now!"

"Oh don't, don't be so cruel to me, Jude, and I so unhappy!" she
sobbed.  "I can't bear it!  I was in error--I cannot reason with you.
I was wrong--proud in my own conceit!  Arabella's coming was the
finish.  Don't satirize me: it cuts like a knife!"

He flung his arms round her and kissed her passionately there in the
silent street, before she could hinder him.  They went on till they
came to a little coffee-house. "Jude," she said with suppressed
tears, "would you mind getting a lodging here?"

"I will--if, if you really wish?  But do you?  Let me go to our door
and understand you."

He went and conducted her in.  She said she wanted no supper, and
went in the dark upstairs and struck a light.  Turning she found that
Jude had followed her, and was standing at the chamber door.  She
went to him, put her hand in his, and said "Good-night."

"But Sue!  Don't we live here?"

"You said you would do as I wished!"

"Yes.  Very well! ...  Perhaps it was wrong of me to argue
distastefully as I have done!  Perhaps as we couldn't conscientiously
marry at first in the old-fashioned way, we ought to have parted.
Perhaps the world is not illuminated enough for such experiments as
ours!  Who were we, to think we could act as pioneers!"

"I am so glad you see that much, at any rate.  I never deliberately
meant to do as I did.  I slipped into my false position through
jealousy and agitation!"

"But surely through love--you loved me?"

"Yes.  But I wanted to let it stop there, and go on always as mere
lovers; until--"

"But people in love couldn't live for ever like that!"

"Women could: men can't, because they--won't. An average woman is
in this superior to an average man--that she never instigates, only
responds.  We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more."

"I was the unhappy cause of the change, as I have said
before! ...  Well, as you will! ...  But human nature can't help
being itself."

"Oh yes--that's just what it has to learn--self-mastery."

"I repeat--if either were to blame it was not you but I."

"No--it was I.  Your wickedness was only the natural man's desire
to possess the woman.  Mine was not the reciprocal wish till envy
stimulated me to oust Arabella.  I had thought I ought in charity to
let you approach me--that it was damnably selfish to torture you as
I did my other friend.  But I shouldn't have given way if you hadn't
broken me down by making me fear you would go back to her...  But
don't let us say any more about it!  Jude, will you leave me to
myself now?"

"Yes...  But Sue--my wife, as you are!" he burst out; "my old
reproach to you was, after all, a true one.  You have never loved me
as I love you--never--never!  Yours is not a passionate heart--your
heart does not burn in a flame!  You are, upon the whole, a sort of
fay, or sprite--not a woman!"

"At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own.  When I first knew
you I merely wanted you to love me.  I did not exactly flirt with
you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals
almost more than unbridled passion--the craving to attract and
captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man--was in me; and
when I found I had caught you, I was frightened.  And then--I don't
know how it was--I couldn't bear to let you go--possibly to Arabella
again--and so I got to love you, Jude.  But you see, however fondly
it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart
ache for me without letting mine ache for you."

"And now you add to your cruelty by leaving me!"

"Ah--yes!  The further I flounder, the more harm I do!"

"O Sue!" said he with a sudden sense of his own danger.  "Do not
do an immoral thing for moral reasons!  You have been my social
salvation.  Stay with me for humanity's sake!  You know what a weak
fellow I am.  My two arch-enemies you know--my weakness for womankind
and my impulse to strong liquor.  Don't abandon me to them, Sue, to
save your own soul only!  They have been kept entirely at a distance
since you became my guardian-angel!  Since I have had you I have been
able to go into any temptations of the sort, without risk.  Isn't
my safety worth a little sacrifice of dogmatic principle?  I am in
terror lest, if you leave me, it will be with me another case of the
pig that was washed turning back to his wallowing in the mire!"

Sue burst out weeping.  "Oh, but you must not, Jude!  You won't!
I'll pray for you night and day!"

"Well--never mind; don't grieve," said Jude generously.  "I did
suffer, God knows, about you at that time; and now I suffer again.
But perhaps not so much as you.  The woman mostly gets the worst of
it in the long run!"

"She does."

"Unless she is absolutely worthless and contemptible.  And this one
is not that, anyhow!"

Sue drew a nervous breath or two.  "She is--I fear! ...  Now
Jude--good-night,--please!"

"I mustn't stay?--Not just once more?  As it has been so many
times--O Sue, my wife, why not?"

"No--no--not wife! ...  I am in your hands, Jude--don't tempt me back
now I have advanced so far!"

"Very well.  I do your bidding.  I owe that to you, darling, in
penance for how I overruled it at the first time.  My God, how
selfish I was!  Perhaps--perhaps I spoilt one of the highest and
purest loves that ever existed between man and woman! ...  Then let
the veil of our temple be rent in two from this hour!"

He went to the bed, removed one of the pair of pillows thereon, and
flung it to the floor.

Sue looked at him, and bending over the bed-rail wept silently.
"You don't see that it is a matter of conscience with me, and not
of dislike to you!" she brokenly murmured.  "Dislike to you!  But I
can't say any more--it breaks my heart--it will be undoing all I
have begun!  Jude--good-night!"

"Good-night," he said, and turned to go.

"Oh but you shall kiss me!" said she, starting up.  "I
can't--bear--!"

He clasped her, and kissed her weeping face as he had scarcely ever
done before, and they remained in silence till she said, "Good-bye,
good-bye!" And then gently pressing him away she got free, trying to
mitigate the sadness by saying: "We'll be dear friends just the same,
Jude, won't we?  And we'll see each other sometimes--yes!--and forget
all this, and try to be as we were long ago?"

Jude did not permit himself to speak, but turned and descended the
stairs.




The man whom Sue, in her mental _volte-face_, was now regarding as
her inseparable husband, lived still at Marygreen.

On the day before the tragedy of the children, Phillotson had seen
both her and Jude as they stood in the rain at Christminster watching
the procession to the theatre.  But he had said nothing of it at the
moment to his companion Gillingham, who, being an old friend, was
staying with him at the village aforesaid, and had, indeed, suggested
the day's trip to Christminster.

"What are you thinking of?" said Gillingham, as they went home.  "The
university degree you never obtained?"

"No, no," said Phillotson gruffly.  "Of somebody I saw to-day."  In a
moment he added, "Susanna."

"I saw her, too."

"You said nothing."

"I didn't wish to draw your attention to her.  But, as you did see
her, you should have said: 'How d'ye do, my dear-that-was?'"

"Ah, well.  I might have.  But what do you think of this: I have good
reason for supposing that she was innocent when I divorced her--that
I was all wrong.  Yes, indeed!  Awkward, isn't it?"

"She has taken care to set you right since, anyhow, apparently."

"H'm. That's a cheap sneer.  I ought to have waited, unquestionably."

At the end of the week, when Gillingham had gone back to his school
near Shaston, Phillotson, as was his custom, went to Alfredston
market; ruminating again on Arabella's intelligence as he walked down
the long hill which he had known before Jude knew it, though his
history had not beaten so intensely upon its incline.  Arrived in
the town he bought his usual weekly local paper; and when he had sat
down in an inn to refresh himself for the five miles' walk back, he
pulled the paper from his pocket and read awhile.  The account of the
"strange suicide of a stone-mason's children" met his eye.

Unimpassioned as he was, it impressed him painfully, and puzzled him
not a little, for he could not understand the age of the elder child
being what it was stated to be.  However, there was no doubt that the
newspaper report was in some way true.

"Their cup of sorrow is now full!" he said: and thought and thought
of Sue, and what she had gained by leaving him.

Arabella having made her home at Alfredston, and the schoolmaster
coming to market there every Saturday, it was not wonderful that in
a few weeks they met again--the precise time being just after her
return from Christminster, where she had stayed much longer than she
had at first intended, keeping an interested eye on Jude, though Jude
had seen no more of her.  Phillotson was on his way homeward when he
encountered Arabella, and she was approaching the town.

"You like walking out this way, Mrs. Cartlett?" he said.

"I've just begun to again," she replied.  "It is where I lived
as maid and wife, and all the past things of my life that are
interesting to my feelings are mixed up with this road.  And they
have been stirred up in me too, lately; for I've been visiting at
Christminster.  Yes; I've seen Jude."

"Ah!  How do they bear their terrible affliction?"

"In a ve-ry strange way--ve-ry strange!  She don't live with him any
longer.  I only heard of it as a certainty just before I left; though
I had thought things were drifting that way from their manner when I
called on them."

"Not live with her husband?  Why, I should have thought 'twould have
united them more."

"He's not her husband, after all.  She has never really married him
although they have passed as man and wife so long.  And now, instead
of this sad event making 'em hurry up, and get the thing done
legally, she's took in a queer religious way, just as I was in my
affliction at losing Cartlett, only hers is of a more 'sterical sort
than mine.  And she says, so I was told, that she's your wife in the
eye of Heaven and the Church--yours only; and can't be anybody else's
by any act of man."

"Ah--indeed? ...  Separated, have they!"

"You see, the eldest boy was mine--"

"Oh--yours!"

"Yes, poor little fellow--born in lawful wedlock, thank God.  And
perhaps she feels, over and above other things, that I ought to have
been in her place.  I can't say.  However, as for me, I am soon off
from here.  I've got Father to look after now, and we can't live in
such a hum-drum place as this.  I hope soon to be in a bar again at
Christminster, or some other big town."

They parted.  When Phillotson had ascended the hill a few steps he
stopped, hastened back, and called her.

"What is, or was, their address?"

Arabella gave it.

"Thank you.  Good afternoon."

Arabella smiled grimly as she resumed her way, and practised
dimple-making all along the road from where the pollard willows begin
to the old almshouses in the first street of the town.

Meanwhile Phillotson ascended to Marygreen, and for the first time
during a lengthened period he lived with a forward eye.  On crossing
under the large trees of the green to the humble schoolhouse to which
he had been reduced he stood a moment, and pictured Sue coming out of
the door to meet him.  No man had ever suffered more inconvenience
from his own charity, Christian or heathen, than Phillotson had done
in letting Sue go.  He had been knocked about from pillar to post at
the hands of the virtuous almost beyond endurance; he had been nearly
starved, and was now dependent entirely upon the very small stipend
from the school of this village (where the parson had got ill-spoken
of for befriending him). He had often thought of Arabella's remarks
that he should have been more severe with Sue, that her recalcitrant
spirit would soon have been broken.  Yet such was his obstinate and
illogical disregard of opinion, and of the principles in which he had
been trained, that his convictions on the rightness of his course
with his wife had not been disturbed.

Principles which could be subverted by feeling in one direction were
liable to the same catastrophe in another.  The instincts which had
allowed him to give Sue her liberty now enabled him to regard her
as none the worse for her life with Jude.  He wished for her still,
in his curious way, if he did not love her, and, apart from policy,
soon felt that he would be gratified to have her again as his, always
provided that she came willingly.

But artifice was necessary, he had found, for stemming the cold and
inhumane blast of the world's contempt.  And here were the materials
ready made.  By getting Sue back and remarrying her on the
respectable plea of having entertained erroneous views of her, and
gained his divorce wrongfully, he might acquire some comfort, resume
his old courses, perhaps return to the Shaston school, if not even to
the Church as a licentiate.

He thought he would write to Gillingham to inquire his views, and
what he thought of his, Phillotson's, sending a letter to her.
Gillingham replied, naturally, that now she was gone it were best to
let her be, and considered that if she were anybody's wife she was
the wife of the man to whom she had borne three children and owed
such tragical adventures.  Probably, as his attachment to her seemed
unusually strong, the singular pair would make their union legal in
course of time, and all would be well, and decent, and in order.

"But they won't--Sue won't!" exclaimed Phillotson to himself.
"Gillingham is so matter of fact.  She's affected by Christminster
sentiment and teaching.  I can see her views on the indissolubility
of marriage well enough, and I know where she got them.  They are not
mine; but I shall make use of them to further mine."

He wrote a brief reply to Gillingham.  "I know I am entirely wrong,
but I don't agree with you.  As to her having lived with and had
three children by him, my feeling is (though I can advance no logical
or moral defence of it, on the old lines) that it has done little
more than finish her education.  I shall write to her, and learn
whether what that woman said is true or no."

As he had made up his mind to do this before he had written to his
friend, there had not been much reason for writing to the latter at
all.  However, it was Phillotson's way to act thus.

He accordingly addressed a carefully considered epistle to Sue, and,
knowing her emotional temperament, threw a Rhadamanthine strictness
into the lines here and there, carefully hiding his heterodox
feelings, not to frighten her.  He stated that, it having come to his
knowledge that her views had considerably changed, he felt compelled
to say that his own, too, were largely modified by events subsequent
to their parting.  He would not conceal from her that passionate
love had little to do with his communication.  It arose from a wish
to make their lives, if not a success, at least no such disastrous
failure as they threatened to become, through his acting on what
he had considered at the time a principle of justice, charity, and
reason.

To indulge one's instinctive and uncontrolled sense of justice and
right, was not, he had found, permitted with impunity in an old
civilization like ours.  It was necessary to act under an acquired
and cultivated sense of the same, if you wished to enjoy an average
share of comfort and honour; and to let crude loving kindness take
care of itself.

He suggested that she should come to him there at Marygreen.

On second thoughts he took out the last paragraph but one; and having
rewritten the letter he dispatched it immediately, and in some
excitement awaited the issue.



A few days after a figure moved through the white fog which enveloped
the Beersheba suburb of Christminster, towards the quarter in which
Jude Fawley had taken up his lodging since his division from Sue.  A
timid knock sounded upon the door of his abode.

It was evening--so he was at home; and by a species of divination he
jumped up and rushed to the door himself.

"Will you come out with me?  I would rather not come in.  I want
to--to talk with you--and to go with you to the cemetery."

It had been in the trembling accents of Sue that these words came.
Jude put on his hat.  "It is dreary for you to be out," he said.
"But if you prefer not to come in, I don't mind."

"Yes--I do.  I shall not keep you long."

Jude was too much affected to go on talking at first; she, too, was
now such a mere cluster of nerves that all initiatory power seemed
to have left her, and they proceeded through the fog like Acherontic
shades for a long while, without sound or gesture.

"I want to tell you," she presently said, her voice now quick, now
slow, "so that you may not hear of it by chance.  I am going back to
Richard.  He has--so magnanimously--agreed to forgive all."

"Going back?  How can you go--"

"He is going to marry me again.  That is for form's sake, and to
satisfy the world, which does not see things as they are.  But of
course I AM his wife already.  Nothing has changed that."

He turned upon her with an anguish that was well-nigh fierce.

"But you are MY wife!  Yes, you are.  You know it.  I have always
regretted that feint of ours in going away and pretending to come
back legally married, to save appearances.  I loved you, and you
loved me; and we closed with each other; and that made the marriage.
We still love--you as well as I--KNOW it, Sue!  Therefore our
marriage is not cancelled."

"Yes; I know how you see it," she answered with despairing
self-suppression.  "But I am going to marry him again, as it would
be called by you.  Strictly speaking you, too--don't mind my saying
it, Jude!--you should take back--Arabella."

"I should?  Good God--what next!  But how if you and I had married
legally, as we were on the point of doing?"

"I should have felt just the same--that ours was not a marriage.
And I would go back to Richard without repeating the sacrament, if
he asked me.  But 'the world and its ways have a certain worth' (I
suppose), therefore I concede a repetition of the ceremony...  Don't
crush all the life out of me by satire and argument, I implore you!
I was strongest once, I know, and perhaps I treated you cruelly.
But Jude, return good for evil!  I am the weaker now.  Don't
retaliate upon me, but be kind.  Oh be kind to me--a poor wicked
woman who is trying to mend!"

He shook his head hopelessly, his eyes wet.  The blow of her
bereavement seemed to have destroyed her reasoning faculty.  The once
keen vision was dimmed.  "All wrong, all wrong!" he said huskily.
"Error--perversity!  It drives me out of my senses.  Do you care for
him?  Do you love him?  You know you don't!  It will be a fanatic
prostitution--God forgive me, yes--that's what it will be!"

"I don't love him--I must, must, own it, in deepest remorse!  But I
shall try to learn to love him by obeying him."

Jude argued, urged, implored; but her conviction was proof against
all.  It seemed to be the one thing on earth on which she was firm,
and that her firmness in this had left her tottering in every other
impulse and wish she possessed.

"I have been considerate enough to let you know the whole truth,
and to tell it you myself," she said in cut tones; "that you might
not consider yourself slighted by hearing of it at second hand.  I
have even owned the extreme fact that I do not love him.  I did not
think you would be so rough with me for doing so!  I was going to
ask you..."

"To give you away?"

"No.  To send--my boxes to me--if you would.  But I suppose you
won't."

"Why, of course I will.  What--isn't he coming to fetch you--to marry
you from here?  He won't condescend to do that?"

"No--I won't let him.  I go to him voluntarily, just as I went away
from him.  We are to be married at his little church at Marygreen."

She was so sadly sweet in what he called her wrong-headedness that
Jude could not help being moved to tears more than once for pity of
her.  "I never knew such a woman for doing impulsive penances, as
you, Sue!  No sooner does one expect you to go straight on, as the
one rational proceeding, than you double round the corner!"

"Ah, well; let that go! ...  Jude, I must say good-bye!  But I wanted
you to go to the cemetery with me.  Let our farewell be there--beside
the graves of those who died to bring home to me the error of my
views."

They turned in the direction of the place, and the gate was opened to
them on application.  Sue had been there often, and she knew the way
to the spot in the dark.  They reached it, and stood still.

"It is here--I should like to part," said she.

"So be it!"

"Don't think me hard because I have acted on conviction.  Your
generous devotion to me is unparalleled, Jude!  Your worldly failure,
if you have failed, is to your credit rather than to your blame.
Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do
themselves no worldly good.  Every successful man is more or less a
selfish man.  The devoted fail...  'Charity seeketh not her own.'"

"In that chapter we are at one, ever beloved darling, and on it we'll
part friends.  Its verses will stand fast when all the rest that you
call religion has passed away!"

"Well--don't discuss it.  Good-bye, Jude; my fellow-sinner, and
kindest friend!"

"Good-bye, my mistaken wife.  Good-bye!"

 During her convalescence Sue says she is beaten and must conform, and Jude asserts he belongs to "that vast band of men shunned by the virtuous-the men called seducers." She still feels she belongs to Phillotson. Jude is aware of the fact that he and Sue are going in opposite directions: she is returning to the conventional ideas she taught Jude to abandon. She insists that now she must practice "self-renunciation," but Jude argues that she has only acted out of natural instincts. She has been attending church frequently, Jude finds out, and does not want to be criticized for doing so. She doesn't want to go through the marriage ceremony with him because she feels she is still married to Phillotson. When Arabella calls, having come to Christminster to look at her son's grave, Sue insists that she is not Jude's wife. After Sue mysteriously leaves, Arabella says she is living at Alfredson with her father, now back from Australia. Jude looks for Sue, finally discovering her in church. She tells him that Arabella's child killing hers is a judgment on her. They disagree over whether she is his wife, Jude arguing that their marriage was made by nature, Sue that it was not made in heaven as hers to Phillotson was. Jude cannot understand how Sue can have changed so, but she is convinced she has seen the light at last. She doesn't want him to return to their lodgings, but he does anyway. A conversation ensues in which each tries to take the blame for the relationship between them: Jude says he shouldn't have forced her into intimacy, though he still complains she hasn't felt for him what he feels for her; she admits she tried to attract him and through envy of Arabella gave herself to him in order to hold him. She insists they part, though Jude tries to convince her that he needs her as a defense against his weaknesses. She tells him that they must separate not because she dislikes him but because her conscience says it's right, and she suggests they can still be friends as they used to be. After seeing Jude and Sue in Christminster on Remembrance Day, Phillotson reads of the death of the children in a newspaper while in Alfredston. Encountering Arabella there, he learns from her that Jude and Sue aren't living together, that they have never married, that Sue considers herself Phillotson's wife, and that Little Father Time was really Arabella's child. He decides to ask Sue to return to him, realizing what positive effects it might have on other aspects of his life, and writes her a letter. In Christminster Sue calls on Jude to tell him she has decided to return to Phillotson, to remarry him, and she suggests Jude go back to Arabella. Jude cannot understand this extreme penance on Sue's part. She purposely walks with him to the cemetery so they can say goodbye over the graves of the children.

