Chapter: On their arrival the station was lively with straw-hatted young men,
welcoming young girls who bore a remarkable family likeness to their
welcomers, and who were dressed up in the brightest and lightest of
raiment.

"The place seems gay," said Sue.  "Why--it is Remembrance
Day!--Jude--how sly of you--you came to-day on purpose!"

"Yes," said Jude quietly, as he took charge of the small child, and
told Arabella's boy to keep close to them, Sue attending to their own
eldest.  "I thought we might as well come to-day as on any other."

"But I am afraid it will depress you!" she said, looking anxiously at
him up and down.

"Oh, I mustn't let it interfere with our business; and we have a good
deal to do before we shall be settled here.  The first thing is
lodgings."

Having left their luggage and his tools at the station they proceeded
on foot up the familiar street, the holiday people all drifting in
the same direction.  Reaching the Fourways they were about to turn
off to where accommodation was likely to be found when, looking at
the clock and the hurrying crowd, Jude said: "Let us go and see the
procession, and never mind the lodgings just now.  We can get them
afterwards."

"Oughtn't we to get a house over our heads first?" she asked.

But his soul seemed full of the anniversary, and together they went
down Chief Street, their smallest child in Jude's arms, Sue leading
her little girl, and Arabella's boy walking thoughtfully and silently
beside them.  Crowds of pretty sisters in airy costumes, and meekly
ignorant parents who had known no college in their youth, were under
convoy in the same direction by brothers and sons bearing the opinion
written large on them that no properly qualified human beings had
lived on earth till they came to grace it here and now.

"My failure is reflected on me by every one of those young
fellows," said Jude.  "A lesson on presumption is awaiting me
to-day!--Humiliation Day for me! ...  If you, my dear darling, hadn't
come to my rescue, I should have gone to the dogs with despair!"

She saw from his face that he was getting into one of his
tempestuous, self-harrowing moods.  "It would have been better if we
had gone at once about our own affairs, dear," she answered.  "I am
sure this sight will awaken old sorrows in you, and do no good!"

"Well--we are near; we will see it now," said he.

They turned in on the left by the church with the Italian porch,
whose helical columns were heavily draped with creepers, and pursued
the lane till there arose on Jude's sight the circular theatre with
that well-known lantern above it, which stood in his mind as the sad
symbol of his abandoned hopes, for it was from that outlook that he
had finally surveyed the City of Colleges on the afternoon of his
great meditation, which convinced him at last of the futility of his
attempt to be a son of the university.

To-day, in the open space stretching between this building and the
nearest college, stood a crowd of expectant people.  A passage was
kept clear through their midst by two barriers of timber, extending
from the door of the college to the door of the large building
between it and the theatre.

"Here is the place--they are just going to pass!" cried Jude in
sudden excitement.  And pushing his way to the front he took up a
position close to the barrier, still hugging the youngest child in
his arms, while Sue and the others kept immediately behind him.
The crowd filled in at their back, and fell to talking, joking, and
laughing as carriage after carriage drew up at the lower door of
the college, and solemn stately figures in blood-red robes began to
alight.  The sky had grown overcast and livid, and thunder rumbled
now and then.

Father Time shuddered.  "It do seem like the Judgment Day!" he
whispered.

"They are only learned Doctors," said Sue.

While they waited big drops of rain fell on their heads and
shoulders, and the delay grew tedious.  Sue again wished not to stay.

"They won't be long now," said Jude, without turning his head.

But the procession did not come forth, and somebody in the crowd, to
pass the time, looked at the facade of the nearest college, and said
he wondered what was meant by the Latin inscription in its midst.
Jude, who stood near the inquirer, explained it, and finding that
the people all round him were listening with interest, went on to
describe the carving of the frieze (which he had studied years
before), and to criticize some details of masonry in other college
fronts about the city.

The idle crowd, including the two policemen at the doors, stared like
the Lycaonians at Paul, for Jude was apt to get too enthusiastic over
any subject in hand, and they seemed to wonder how the stranger
should know more about the buildings of their town than they
themselves did; till one of them said: "Why, I know that man; he used
to work here years ago--Jude Fawley, that's his name!  Don't you mind
he used to be nicknamed Tutor of St. Slums, d'ye mind?--because he
aimed at that line o' business?  He's married, I suppose, then, and
that's his child he's carrying.  Taylor would know him, as he knows
everybody."

The speaker was a man named Jack Stagg, with whom Jude had formerly
worked in repairing the college masonries; Tinker Taylor was seen to
be standing near.  Having his attention called the latter cried
across the barriers to Jude: "You've honoured us by coming back
again, my friend!"

Jude nodded.

"An' you don't seem to have done any great things for yourself by
going away?"

Jude assented to this also.

"Except found more mouths to fill!"  This came in a new voice, and
Jude recognized its owner to be Uncle Joe, another mason whom he had
known.

Jude replied good-humouredly that he could not dispute it; and from
remark to remark something like a general conversation arose between
him and the crowd of idlers, during which Tinker Taylor asked Jude if
he remembered the Apostles' Creed in Latin still, and the night of
the challenge in the public house.

"But Fortune didn't lie that way?" threw in Joe.  "Yer powers wasn't
enough to carry 'ee through?"

"Don't answer them any more!" entreated Sue.

"I don't think I like Christminster!" murmured little Time
mournfully, as he stood submerged and invisible in the crowd.

But finding himself the centre of curiosity, quizzing, and comment,
Jude was not inclined to shrink from open declarations of what he
had no great reason to be ashamed of; and in a little while was
stimulated to say in a loud voice to the listening throng generally:

"It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man--that
question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing
at the present moment in these uprising times--whether to follow
uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his
aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and
re-shape his course accordingly.  I tried to do the latter, and I
failed.  But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a
wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though
that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays--I mean, not by their
essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes.  If I had
ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that
we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: 'See how
wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!'  But
having ended no better than I began they say: 'See what a fool that
fellow was in following a freak of his fancy!'

"However it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be
beaten.  It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do
in one; and my impulses--affections--vices perhaps they should be
called--were too strong not to hamper a man without advantages; who
should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a
really good chance of being one of his country's worthies.  You may
ridicule me--I am quite willing that you should--I am a fit subject,
no doubt.  But I think if you knew what I have gone through these
last few years you would rather pity me.  And if they knew"--he
nodded towards the college at which the dons were severally
arriving--"it is just possible they would do the same."

"He do look ill and worn-out, it is true!" said a woman.

Sue's face grew more emotional; but though she stood close to Jude
she was screened.

"I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a
frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral
story," continued Jude, beginning to grow bitter, though he had
opened serenely enough.  "I was, perhaps, after all, a paltry victim
to the spirit of mental and social restlessness that makes so many
unhappy in these days!"

"Don't tell them that!" whispered Sue with tears, at perceiving
Jude's state of mind.  "You weren't that.  You struggled nobly to
acquire knowledge, and only the meanest souls in the world would
blame you!"

Jude shifted the child into a more easy position on his arm, and
concluded: "And what I appear, a sick and poor man, is not the worst
of me.  I am in a chaos of principles--groping in the dark--acting by
instinct and not after example.  Eight or nine years ago when I came
here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped
away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am.  I doubt
if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following
inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give
pleasure to those I love best.  There, gentlemen, since you wanted to
know how I was getting on, I have told you.  Much good may it do you!
I cannot explain further here.  I perceive there is something wrong
somewhere in our social formulas: what it is can only be discovered
by men or women with greater insight than mine--if, indeed, they ever
discover it--at least in our time.  'For who knoweth what is good for
man in this life?--and who can tell a man what shall be after him
under the sun?'"

"Hear, hear," said the populace.

"Well preached!" said Tinker Taylor.  And privately to his
neighbours: "Why, one of them jobbing pa'sons swarming about here,
that takes the services when our head reverends want a holiday,
wouldn't ha' discoursed such doctrine for less than a guinea down.
Hey?  I'll take my oath not one o' 'em would!  And then he must have
had it wrote down for 'n.  And this only a working-man!"

As a sort of objective commentary on Jude's remarks there drove up
at this moment with a belated Doctor, robed and panting, a cab whose
horse failed to stop at the exact point required for setting down the
hirer, who jumped out and entered the door.  The driver, alighting,
began to kick the animal in the belly.

"If that can be done," said Jude, "at college gates in the most
religious and educational city in the world, what shall we say as to
how far we've got?"

"Order!" said one of the policemen, who had been engaged with a
comrade in opening the large doors opposite the college.  "Keep yer
tongue quiet, my man, while the procession passes."  The rain came on
more heavily, and all who had umbrellas opened them.  Jude was not
one of these, and Sue only possessed a small one, half sunshade.  She
had grown pale, though Jude did not notice it then.

"Let us go on, dear," she whispered, endeavouring to shelter him.
"We haven't any lodgings yet, remember, and all our things are at the
station; and you are by no means well yet.  I am afraid this wet will
hurt you!"

"They are coming now.  Just a moment, and I'll go!" said he.

A peal of six bells struck out, human faces began to crowd the
windows around, and the procession of heads of houses and new Doctors
emerged, their red and black gowned forms passing across the field of
Jude's vision like inaccessible planets across an object-glass.

As they went their names were called by knowing informants, and when
they reached the old round theatre of Wren a cheer rose high.

"Let's go that way!" cried Jude, and though it now rained steadily
he seemed not to know it, and took them round to the theatre.  Here
they stood upon the straw that was laid to drown the discordant noise
of wheels, where the quaint and frost-eaten stone busts encircling
the building looked with pallid grimness on the proceedings, and in
particular at the bedraggled Jude, Sue, and their children, as at
ludicrous persons who had no business there.

"I wish I could get in!" he said to her fervidly.  "Listen--I may
catch a few words of the Latin speech by staying here; the windows
are open."

However, beyond the peals of the organ, and the shouts and hurrahs
between each piece of oratory, Jude's standing in the wet did not
bring much Latin to his intelligence more than, now and then, a
sonorous word in _um_ or _ibus_.

"Well--I'm an outsider to the end of my days!" he sighed after a
while.  "Now I'll go, my patient Sue.  How good of you to wait in the
rain all this time--to gratify my infatuation!  I'll never care any
more about the infernal cursed place, upon my soul I won't!  But what
made you tremble so when we were at the barrier?  And how pale you
are, Sue!"

"I saw Richard amongst the people on the other side."

"Ah--did you!"

"He is evidently come up to Jerusalem to see the festival like the
rest of us: and on that account is probably living not so very far
away.  He had the same hankering for the university that you had, in
a milder form.  I don't think he saw me, though he must have heard
you speaking to the crowd.  But he seemed not to notice."

"Well--suppose he did.  Your mind is free from worries about him now,
my Sue?"

"Yes, I suppose so.  But I am weak.  Although I know it is all right
with our plans, I felt a curious dread of him; an awe, or terror, of
conventions I don't believe in.  It comes over me at times like a
sort of creeping paralysis, and makes me so sad!"

"You are getting tired, Sue.  Oh--I forgot, darling!  Yes, we'll go
on at once."

They started in quest of the lodging, and at last found something
that seemed to promise well, in Mildew Lane--a spot which to Jude was
irresistible--though to Sue it was not so fascinating--a narrow lane
close to the back of a college, but having no communication with
it.  The little houses were darkened to gloom by the high collegiate
buildings, within which life was so far removed from that of the
people in the lane as if it had been on opposite sides of the globe;
yet only a thickness of wall divided them.  Two or three of the
houses had notices of rooms to let, and the newcomers knocked at the
door of one, which a woman opened.

"Ah--listen!" said Jude suddenly, instead of addressing her.

"What?"

"Why the bells--what church can that be?  The tones are familiar."

Another peal of bells had begun to sound out at some distance off.

"I don't know!" said the landlady tartly.  "Did you knock to ask
that?"

"No; for lodgings," said Jude, coming to himself.

The householder scrutinized Sue's figure a moment.  "We haven't any
to let," said she, shutting the door.

Jude looked discomfited, and the boy distressed.  "Now, Jude," said
Sue, "let me try.  You don't know the way."

They found a second place hard by; but here the occupier, observing
not only Sue, but the boy and the small children, said civilly, "I am
sorry to say we don't let where there are children"; and also closed
the door.

The small child squared its mouth and cried silently, with an
instinct that trouble loomed.  The boy sighed.  "I don't like
Christminster!" he said.  "Are the great old houses gaols?"

"No; colleges," said Jude; "which perhaps you'll study in some day."

"I'd rather not!" the boy rejoined.

"Now we'll try again," said Sue.  "I'll pull my cloak more round
me...  Leaving Kennetbridge for this place is like coming from
Caiaphas to Pilate! ...  How do I look now, dear?"

"Nobody would notice it now," said Jude.

There was one other house, and they tried a third time.  The woman
here was more amiable; but she had little room to spare, and could
only agree to take in Sue and the children if her husband could go
elsewhere.  This arrangement they perforce adopted, in the stress
from delaying their search till so late.  They came to terms with
her, though her price was rather high for their pockets.  But they
could not afford to be critical till Jude had time to get a more
permanent abode; and in this house Sue took possession of a back room
on the second floor with an inner closet-room for the children.  Jude
stayed and had a cup of tea; and was pleased to find that the window
commanded the back of another of the colleges.  Kissing all four he
went to get a few necessaries and look for lodgings for himself.

When he was gone the landlady came up to talk a little with Sue, and
gather something of the circumstances of the family she had taken in.
Sue had not the art of prevarication, and, after admitting several
facts as to their late difficulties and wanderings, she was startled
by the landlady saying suddenly:

"Are you really a married woman?"

Sue hesitated; and then impulsively told the woman that her husband
and herself had each been unhappy in their first marriages, after
which, terrified at the thought of a second irrevocable union, and
lest the conditions of the contract should kill their love, yet
wishing to be together, they had literally not found the courage
to repeat it, though they had attempted it two or three times.
Therefore, though in her own sense of the words she was a married
woman, in the landlady's sense she was not.

The housewife looked embarrassed, and went downstairs.  Sue sat by
the window in a reverie, watching the rain.  Her quiet was broken by
the noise of someone entering the house, and then the voices of a
man and woman in conversation in the passage below.  The landlady's
husband had arrived, and she was explaining to him the incoming of
the lodgers during his absence.

His voice rose in sudden anger.  "Now who wants such a woman here?
and perhaps a confinement! ...  Besides, didn't I say I wouldn't have
children?  The hall and stairs fresh painted, to be kicked about by
them!  You must have known all was not straight with 'em--coming like
that.  Taking in a family when I said a single man."

The wife expostulated, but, as it seemed, the husband insisted on
his point; for presently a tap came to Sue's door, and the woman
appeared.

"I am sorry to tell you, ma'am," she said, "that I can't let you have
the room for the week after all.  My husband objects; and therefore
I must ask you to go.  I don't mind your staying over to-night, as
it is getting late in the afternoon; but I shall be glad if you can
leave early in the morning."

Though she knew that she was entitled to the lodging for a week, Sue
did not wish to create a disturbance between the wife and husband,
and she said she would leave as requested.  When the landlady had
gone Sue looked out of the window again.  Finding that the rain had
ceased she proposed to the boy that, after putting the little ones
to bed, they should go out and search about for another place, and
bespeak it for the morrow, so as not to be so hard-driven then as
they had been that day.

Therefore, instead of unpacking her boxes, which had just been sent
on from the station by Jude, they sallied out into the damp though
not unpleasant streets, Sue resolving not to disturb her husband
with the news of her notice to quit while he was perhaps worried
in obtaining a lodging for himself.  In the company of the boy she
wandered into this street and into that; but though she tried a dozen
different houses she fared far worse alone than she had fared in
Jude's company, and could get nobody to promise her a room for the
following day.  Every householder looked askance at such a woman and
child inquiring for accommodation in the gloom.

"I ought not to be born, ought I?" said the boy with misgiving.

Thoroughly tired at last Sue returned to the place where she was
not welcome, but where at least she had temporary shelter.  In her
absence Jude had left his address; but knowing how weak he still was
she adhered to her determination not to disturb him till the next
day.




Sue sat looking at the bare floor of the room, the house being little
more than an old intramural cottage, and then she regarded the scene
outside the uncurtained window.  At some distance opposite, the outer
walls of Sarcophagus College--silent, black, and windowless--threw
their four centuries of gloom, bigotry, and decay into the little
room she occupied, shutting out the moonlight by night and the sun by
day.  The outlines of Rubric College also were discernible beyond the
other, and the tower of a third farther off still.  She thought of
the strange operation of a simple-minded man's ruling passion, that
it should have led Jude, who loved her and the children so tenderly,
to place them here in this depressing purlieu, because he was still
haunted by his dream.  Even now he did not distinctly hear the
freezing negative that those scholared walls had echoed to his
desire.

The failure to find another lodging, and the lack of room in this
house for his father, had made a deep impression on the boy--a
brooding undemonstrative horror seemed to have seized him.  The
silence was broken by his saying: "Mother, WHAT shall we do
to-morrow!"

"I don't know!" said Sue despondently.  "I am afraid this will
trouble your father."

"I wish Father was quite well, and there had been room for him!
Then it wouldn't matter so much!  Poor Father!"

"It wouldn't!"

"Can I do anything?"

"No!  All is trouble, adversity, and suffering!"

"Father went away to give us children room, didn't he?"

"Partly."

"It would be better to be out o' the world than in it, wouldn't it?"

"It would almost, dear."

"'Tis because of us children, too, isn't it, that you can't get a
good lodging?"

"Well--people do object to children sometimes."

"Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have 'em?"

"Oh--because it is a law of nature."

"But we don't ask to be born?"

"No indeed."

"And what makes it worse with me is that you are not my real mother,
and you needn't have had me unless you liked.  I oughtn't to have
come to 'ee--that's the real truth!  I troubled 'em in Australia,
and I trouble folk here.  I wish I hadn't been born!"

"You couldn't help it, my dear."

"I think that whenever children be born that are not wanted they
should be killed directly, before their souls come to 'em, and not
allowed to grow big and walk about!"

Sue did not reply.  She was doubtfully pondering how to treat this
too reflective child.

She at last concluded that, so far as circumstances permitted, she
would be honest and candid with one who entered into her difficulties
like an aged friend.

"There is going to be another in our family soon," she hesitatingly
remarked.

"How?"

"There is going to be another baby."

"What!"  The boy jumped up wildly.  "Oh God, Mother, you've never
a-sent for another; and such trouble with what you've got!"

"Yes, I have, I am sorry to say!" murmured Sue, her eyes glistening
with suspended tears.

The boy burst out weeping.  "Oh you don't care, you don't care!" he
cried in bitter reproach.  "How EVER could you, Mother, be so wicked
and cruel as this, when you needn't have done it till we was better
off, and Father well!  To bring us all into MORE trouble!  No room
for us, and Father a-forced to go away, and we turned out to-morrow;
and yet you be going to have another of us soon! ...  'Tis done o'
purpose!--'tis--'tis!"  He walked up and down sobbing.

"Y-you must forgive me, little Jude!" she pleaded, her bosom heaving
now as much as the boy's. "I can't explain--I will when you are
older.  It does seem--as if I had done it on purpose, now we are in
these difficulties!  I can't explain, dear!  But it--is not quite on
purpose--I can't help it!"

"Yes it is--it must be!  For nobody would interfere with us, like
that, unless you agreed!  I won't forgive you, ever, ever!  I'll
never believe you care for me, or Father, or any of us any more!"

He got up, and went away into the closet adjoining her room, in which
a bed had been spread on the floor.  There she heard him say: "If we
children was gone there'd be no trouble at all!"

"Don't think that, dear," she cried, rather peremptorily.  "But go to
sleep!"

The following morning she awoke at a little past six, and decided
to get up and run across before breakfast to the inn which Jude had
informed her to be his quarters, to tell him what had happened before
he went out.  She arose softly, to avoid disturbing the children,
who, as she knew, must be fatigued by their exertions of yesterday.

She found Jude at breakfast in the obscure tavern he had chosen as a
counterpoise to the expense of her lodging: and she explained to him
her homelessness.  He had been so anxious about her all night, he
said.  Somehow, now it was morning, the request to leave the lodgings
did not seem such a depressing incident as it had seemed the night
before, nor did even her failure to find another place affect her so
deeply as at first.  Jude agreed with her that it would not be worth
while to insist upon her right to stay a week, but to take immediate
steps for removal.

"You must all come to this inn for a day or two," he said.  "It is
a rough place, and it will not be so nice for the children, but we
shall have more time to look round.  There are plenty of lodgings in
the suburbs--in my old quarter of Beersheba.  Have breakfast with me
now you are here, my bird.  You are sure you are well?  There will
be plenty of time to get back and prepare the children's meal before
they wake.  In fact, I'll go with you."

She joined Jude in a hasty meal, and in a quarter of an hour they
started together, resolving to clear out from Sue's too respectable
lodging immediately.  On reaching the place and going upstairs she
found that all was quiet in the children's room, and called to the
landlady in timorous tones to please bring up the tea-kettle and
something for their breakfast.  This was perfunctorily done, and
producing a couple of eggs which she had brought with her she put
them into the boiling kettle, and summoned Jude to watch them for the
youngsters, while she went to call them, it being now about half-past
eight o'clock.

Jude stood bending over the kettle, with his watch in his hand,
timing the eggs, so that his back was turned to the little inner
chamber where the children lay.  A shriek from Sue suddenly caused
him to start round.  He saw that the door of the room, or rather
closet--which had seemed to go heavily upon its hinges as she pushed
it back--was open, and that Sue had sunk to the floor just within it.
Hastening forward to pick her up he turned his eyes to the little
bed spread on the boards; no children were there.  He looked in
bewilderment round the room.  At the back of the door were fixed
two hooks for hanging garments, and from these the forms of the two
youngest children were suspended, by a piece of box-cord round each
of their necks, while from a nail a few yards off the body of little
Jude was hanging in a similar manner.  An overturned chair was near
the elder boy, and his glazed eyes were slanted into the room; but
those of the girl and the baby boy were closed.

Half-paralyzed by the strange and consummate horror of the scene, he
let Sue lie, cut the cords with his pocket-knife and threw the three
children on the bed; but the feel of their bodies in the momentary
handling seemed to say that they were dead.  He caught up Sue, who
was in fainting fits, and put her on the bed in the other room, after
which he breathlessly summoned the landlady and ran out for a doctor.

When he got back Sue had come to herself, and the two helpless
women, bending over the children in wild efforts to restore them,
and the triplet of little corpses, formed a sight which overthrew
his self-command.  The nearest surgeon came in, but, as Jude had
inferred, his presence was superfluous.  The children were past
saving, for though their bodies were still barely cold it was
conjectured that they had been hanging more than an hour.  The
probability held by the parents later on, when they were able to
reason on the case, was that the elder boy, on waking, looked into
the outer room for Sue, and, finding her absent, was thrown into a
fit of aggravated despondency that the events and information of the
evening before had induced in his morbid temperament.  Moreover a
piece of paper was found upon the floor, on which was written, in
the boy's hand, with the bit of lead pencil that he carried:


   _Done because we are too menny._


At sight of this Sue's nerves utterly gave way, an awful conviction
that her discourse with the boy had been the main cause of the
tragedy, throwing her into a convulsive agony which knew no
abatement.  They carried her away against her wish to a room on the
lower floor; and there she lay, her slight figure shaken with her
gasps, and her eyes staring at the ceiling, the woman of the house
vainly trying to soothe her.

They could hear from this chamber the people moving about above, and
she implored to be allowed to go back, and was only kept from doing
so by the assurance that, if there were any hope, her presence might
do harm, and the reminder that it was necessary to take care of
herself lest she should endanger a coming life.  Her inquiries were
incessant, and at last Jude came down and told her there was no hope.
As soon as she could speak she informed him what she had said to the
boy, and how she thought herself the cause of this.

"No," said Jude.  "It was in his nature to do it.  The Doctor says
there are such boys springing up amongst us--boys of a sort unknown
in the last generation--the outcome of new views of life.  They seem
to see all its terrors before they are old enough to have staying
power to resist them.  He says it is the beginning of the coming
universal wish not to live.  He's an advanced man, the Doctor: but
he can give no consolation to--"

Jude had kept back his own grief on account of her; but he now
broke down; and this stimulated Sue to efforts of sympathy which in
some degree distracted her from her poignant self-reproach.  When
everybody was gone, she was allowed to see the children.

The boy's face expressed the whole tale of their situation.  On
that little shape had converged all the inauspiciousness and shadow
which had darkened the first union of Jude, and all the accidents,
mistakes, fears, errors of the last.  He was their nodal point, their
focus, their expression in a single term.  For the rashness of those
parents he had groaned, for their ill assortment he had quaked, and
for the misfortunes of these he had died.

When the house was silent, and they could do nothing but await the
coroner's inquest, a subdued, large, low voice spread into the air of
the room from behind the heavy walls at the back.

"What is it?" said Sue, her spasmodic breathing suspended.

"The organ of the college chapel.  The organist practising I suppose.
It's the anthem from the seventy-third Psalm; 'Truly God is loving
unto Israel.'"

She sobbed again.  "Oh, oh my babies!  They had done no harm!  Why
should they have been taken away, and not I!"

There was another stillness--broken at last by two persons in
conversation somewhere without.

"They are talking about us, no doubt!" moaned Sue.  "'We are made a
spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men!'"

Jude listened--"No--they are not talking of us," he said.  "They
are two clergymen of different views, arguing about the eastward
position.  Good God--the eastward position, and all creation
groaning!"

Then another silence, till she was seized with another uncontrollable
fit of grief.  "There is something external to us which says, 'You
shan't!'  First it said, 'You shan't learn!'  Then it said, 'You
shan't labour!'  Now it says, 'You shan't love!'"

He tried to soothe her by saying, "That's bitter of you, darling."

"But it's true!"

Thus they waited, and she went back again to her room.  The baby's
frock, shoes, and socks, which had been lying on a chair at the time
of his death, she would not now have removed, though Jude would fain
have got them out of her sight.  But whenever he touched them she
implored him to let them lie, and burst out almost savagely at the
woman of the house when she also attempted to put them away.

Jude dreaded her dull apathetic silences almost more than her
paroxysms.  "Why don't you speak to me, Jude?" she cried out, after
one of these.  "Don't turn away from me!  I can't BEAR the loneliness
of being out of your looks!"

"There, dear; here I am," he said, putting his face close to hers.

"Yes...  Oh, my comrade, our perfect union--our two-in-oneness--is
now stained with blood!"

"Shadowed by death--that's all."

"Ah; but it was I who incited him really, though I didn't know I was
doing it!  I talked to the child as one should only talk to people of
mature age.  I said the world was against us, that it was better to
be out of life than in it at this price; and he took it literally.
And I told him I was going to have another child.  It upset him.  Oh
how bitterly he upbraided me!"

"Why did you do it, Sue?"

"I can't tell.  It was that I wanted to be truthful.  I couldn't
bear deceiving him as to the facts of life.  And yet I wasn't
truthful, for with a false delicacy I told him too obscurely.--Why
was I half-wiser than my fellow-women?  And not entirely wiser!  Why
didn't I tell him pleasant untruths, instead of half-realities?  It
was my want of self-control, so that I could neither conceal things
nor reveal them!"

"Your plan might have been a good one for the majority of cases; only
in our peculiar case it chanced to work badly perhaps.  He must have
known sooner or later."

"And I was just making my baby darling a new frock; and now I shall
never see him in it, and never talk to him any more! ...  My eyes are
so swollen that I can scarcely see; and yet little more than a year
ago I called myself happy!  We went about loving each other too
much--indulging ourselves to utter selfishness with each other!  We
said--do you remember?--that we would make a virtue of joy.  I said
it was Nature's intention, Nature's law and _raison d'etre_ that we
should be joyful in what instincts she afforded us--instincts which
civilization had taken upon itself to thwart. What dreadful things I
said!  And now Fate has given us this stab in the back for being such
fools as to take Nature at her word!"

She sank into a quiet contemplation, till she said, "It is best,
perhaps, that they should be gone.--Yes--I see it is!  Better that
they should be plucked fresh than stay to wither away miserably!"

"Yes," replied Jude.  "Some say that the elders should rejoice when
their children die in infancy."

"But they don't know! ...  Oh my babies, my babies, could you be
alive now!  You may say the boy wished to be out of life, or he
wouldn't have done it.  It was not unreasonable for him to die: it
was part of his incurably sad nature, poor little fellow!  But then
the others--my OWN children and yours!"

Again Sue looked at the hanging little frock and at the socks and
shoes; and her figure quivered like a string.  "I am a pitiable
creature," she said, "good neither for earth nor heaven any more!
I am driven out of my mind by things!  What ought to be done?"
She stared at Jude, and tightly held his hand.

"Nothing can be done," he replied.  "Things are as they are, and will
be brought to their destined issue."

She paused.  "Yes!  Who said that?" she asked heavily.

"It comes in the chorus of the _Agamemnon_.  It has been in my mind
continually since this happened."

"My poor Jude--how you've missed everything!--you more than I, for
I did get you!  To think you should know that by your unassisted
reading, and yet be in poverty and despair!"

After such momentary diversions her grief would return in a wave.

The jury duly came and viewed the bodies, the inquest was held; and
next arrived the melancholy morning of the funeral.  Accounts in
the newspapers had brought to the spot curious idlers, who stood
apparently counting the window-panes and the stones of the walls.
Doubt of the real relations of the couple added zest to their
curiosity.  Sue had declared that she would follow the two little
ones to the grave, but at the last moment she gave way, and the
coffins were quietly carried out of the house while she was lying
down.  Jude got into the vehicle, and it drove away, much to the
relief of the landlord, who now had only Sue and her luggage
remaining on his hands, which he hoped to be also clear of later on
in the day, and so to have freed his house from the exasperating
notoriety it had acquired during the week through his wife's unlucky
admission of these strangers.  In the afternoon he privately
consulted with the owner of the house, and they agreed that if any
objection to it arose from the tragedy which had occurred there they
would try to get its number changed.

When Jude had seen the two little boxes--one containing little Jude,
and the other the two smallest--deposited in the earth he hastened
back to Sue, who was still in her room, and he therefore did not
disturb her just then.  Feeling anxious, however, he went again
about four o'clock.  The woman thought she was still lying down, but
returned to him to say that she was not in her bedroom after all.
Her hat and jacket, too, were missing: she had gone out.  Jude
hurried off to the public house where he was sleeping.  She had not
been there.  Then bethinking himself of possibilities he went along
the road to the cemetery, which he entered, and crossed to where the
interments had recently taken place.  The idlers who had followed to
the spot by reason of the tragedy were all gone now.  A man with a
shovel in his hands was attempting to earth in the common grave of
the three children, but his arm was held back by an expostulating
woman who stood in the half-filled hole.  It was Sue, whose coloured
clothing, which she had never thought of changing for the mourning he
had bought, suggested to the eye a deeper grief than the conventional
garb of bereavement could express.

"He's filling them in, and he shan't till I've seen my little ones
again!" she cried wildly when she saw Jude.  "I want to see them once
more.  Oh Jude--please Jude--I want to see them!  I didn't know you
would let them be taken away while I was asleep!  You said perhaps I
should see them once more before they were screwed down; and then you
didn't, but took them away!  Oh Jude, you are cruel to me too!"

"She's been wanting me to dig out the grave again, and let her get
to the coffins," said the man with the spade.  "She ought to be took
home, by the look o' her.  She is hardly responsible, poor thing,
seemingly.  Can't dig 'em up again now, ma'am.  Do ye go home with
your husband, and take it quiet, and thank God that there'll be
another soon to swage yer grief."

But Sue kept asking piteously: "Can't I see them once more--just
once!  Can't I?  Only just one little minute, Jude?  It would not
take long!  And I should be so glad, Jude!  I will be so good, and
not disobey you ever any more, Jude, if you will let me?  I would go
home quietly afterwards, and not want to see them any more!  Can't I?
Why can't I?"

Thus she went on.  Jude was thrown into such acute sorrow that he
almost felt he would try to get the man to accede.  But it could
do no good, and might make her still worse; and he saw that it
was imperative to get her home at once.  So he coaxed her, and
whispered tenderly, and put his arm round her to support her; till
she helplessly gave in, and was induced to leave the cemetery.

He wished to obtain a fly to take her back in, but economy being so
imperative she deprecated his doing so, and they walked along slowly,
Jude in black crape, she in brown and red clothing.  They were to
have gone to a new lodging that afternoon, but Jude saw that it was
not practicable, and in course of time they entered the now hated
house.  Sue was at once got to bed, and the Doctor sent for.

Jude waited all the evening downstairs.  At a very late hour the
intelligence was brought to him that a child had been prematurely
born, and that it, like the others, was a corpse.

 Jude has planned it so they arrive on Remembrance Day , and instead of looking for lodgings he wants to view the festivities. But when he sees young men from the colleges, he feels it will be "Humiliation Day" for him. He passes the building from which he looked out over the colleges and decided he would never achieve his academic ambitions, and he is recognized by several men with whom he drank and who now remind him of his failure. He addresses a speech to them and the crowd, in which he discusses his attempt to succeed and the reasons for failure, ending with the declaration that "there is something wrong somewhere in our social formulas." In their wanderings through the crowds Sue has spotted Phillotson, an indication to her that he must live somewhere near. They have a difficult time finding lodgings for the whole family, finally settling for rooms for Sue and the children only. When the landlady discovers Sue is not married, she tells her husband and informs Sue she must leave the next day. With Little Father Time she looks unsuccessfully for another place but decides not to worry Jude with the problem until the next day. In the bare rooms from which Sue can see some of the colleges, a proximity Jude has insisted on, Sue talks to Little Father Time before they go to bed. The boy is sure the family's plight is caused by the children and can't understand why children are born at all, though Sue explains to him it is a law of nature. When she tells him she is pregnant with another child, he says she has done it on purpose to bring the family to further ruin. The next morning, without looking in on the children she goes to find Jude and tells him of their problem about lodgings. When they return to Sue's lodgings to prepare breakfast for the children, she goes into their room, to discover all three are dead. Jude and Sue decide, when they think about it later, that Little Father Time awakened to find Sue gone, hanged the two younger children first and then hanged himself. The note he left seems to confirm this. To comfort Sue, Jude repeats the doctor's observation that Little Father Time is one of a new generation of children with a preternatural wisdom and sense of defeat. Sue, not relieved, speaks of a fate that has ruled their lives inexorably, says that in dealing with the boy she should have been wiser, and remembers with dismay that once she asserted they should enjoy the instincts nature gave them. Jude agrees that a fate rules and that they can do nothing about their destiny. Jude doesn't allow Sue to attend the funeral; however, when he returns from it he discovers she is gone and finds her at the grave, insisting the gravedigger stop filling in the grave so she can look at her dead children. Jude takes her home, puts her to bed, and calls the doctor; her baby is prematurely born dead.

