Chapter: Arabella was preparing breakfast in the downstairs back room of this
small, recently hired tenement of her father's.  She put her head
into the little pork-shop in front, and told Mr. Donn it was ready.
Donn, endeavouring to look like a master pork-butcher, in a greasy
blue blouse, and with a strap round his waist from which a steel
dangled, came in promptly.

"You must mind the shop this morning," he said casually.  "I've to
go and get some inwards and half a pig from Lumsdon, and to call
elsewhere.  If you live here you must put your shoulder to the wheel,
at least till I get the business started!"

"Well, for to-day I can't say."  She looked deedily into his face.
"I've got a prize upstairs."

"Oh?  What's that?"

"A husband--almost."

"No!"

"Yes.  It's Jude.  He's come back to me."

"Your old original one?  Well, I'm damned!"

"Well, I always did like him, that I will say."

"But how does he come to be up there?" said Donn, humour-struck, and
nodding to the ceiling.

"Don't ask inconvenient questions, Father.  What we've to do is to
keep him here till he and I are--as we were."

"How was that?"

"Married."

"Ah...  Well it is the rummest thing I ever heard of--marrying an
old husband again, and so much new blood in the world!  He's no
catch, to my thinking.  I'd have had a new one while I was about it."

"It isn't rum for a woman to want her old husband back for
respectability, though for a man to want his old wife back--well,
perhaps it is funny, rather!"  And Arabella was suddenly seized with
a fit of loud laughter, in which her father joined more moderately.

"Be civil to him, and I'll do the rest," she said when she had
recovered seriousness.  "He told me this morning that his head ached
fit to burst, and he hardly seemed to know where he was.  And no
wonder, considering how he mixed his drink last night.  We must keep
him jolly and cheerful here for a day or two, and not let him go back
to his lodging.  Whatever you advance I'll pay back to you again.
But I must go up and see how he is now, poor deary."

Arabella ascended the stairs, softly opened the door of the first
bedroom, and peeped in.  Finding that her shorn Samson was asleep
she entered to the bedside and stood regarding him.  The fevered
flush on his face from the debauch of the previous evening lessened
the fragility of his ordinary appearance, and his long lashes,
dark brows, and curly back hair and beard against the white pillow
completed the physiognomy of one whom Arabella, as a woman of rank
passions, still felt it worth while to recapture, highly important
to recapture as a woman straitened both in means and in reputation.
Her ardent gaze seemed to affect him; his quick breathing became
suspended, and he opened his eyes.

"How are you now, dear?" said she.  "It is I--Arabella."

"Ah!--where--oh yes, I remember!  You gave me shelter...  I am
stranded--ill--demoralized--damn bad!  That's what I am!"

"Then do stay here.  There's nobody in the house but father and me,
and you can rest till you are thoroughly well.  I'll tell them at
the stoneworks that you are knocked up."

"I wonder what they are thinking at the lodgings!"

"I'll go round and explain.  Perhaps you had better let me pay up, or
they'll think we've run away?"

"Yes.  You'll find enough money in my pocket there."

Quite indifferent, and shutting his eyes because he could not bear
the daylight in his throbbing eye-balls, Jude seemed to doze again.
Arabella took his purse, softly left the room, and putting on her
outdoor things went off to the lodgings she and he had quitted the
evening before.

Scarcely half an hour had elapsed ere she reappeared round the
corner, walking beside a lad wheeling a truck on which were piled all
Jude's household possessions, and also the few of Arabella's things
which she had taken to the lodging for her short sojourn there.
Jude was in such physical pain from his unfortunate break-down of
the previous night, and in such mental pain from the loss of Sue and
from having yielded in his half-somnolent state to Arabella, that
when he saw his few chattels unpacked and standing before his eyes in
this strange bedroom, intermixed with woman's apparel, he scarcely
considered how they had come there, or what their coming signalized.

"Now," said Arabella to her father downstairs, "we must keep plenty
of good liquor going in the house these next few days.  I know his
nature, and if he once gets into that fearfully low state that he
does get into sometimes, he'll never do the honourable thing by me
in this world, and I shall be left in the lurch.  He must be kept
cheerful.  He has a little money in the savings bank, and he has
given me his purse to pay for anything necessary.  Well, that will
be the licence; for I must have that ready at hand, to catch him
the moment he's in the humour.  You must pay for the liquor.  A few
friends, and a quiet convivial party would be the thing, if we could
get it up.  It would advertise the shop, and help me too."

"That can be got up easy enough by anybody who'll afford victuals and
drink...  Well yes--it would advertise the shop--that's true."

Three days later, when Jude had recovered somewhat from the fearful
throbbing of his eyes and brain, but was still considerably confused
in his mind by what had been supplied to him by Arabella during
the interval--to keep him, jolly, as she expressed it--the quiet
convivial gathering, suggested by her, to wind Jude up to the
striking point, took place.

Donn had only just opened his miserable little pork and sausage
shop, which had as yet scarce any customers; nevertheless that party
advertised it well, and the Donns acquired a real notoriety among a
certain class in Christminster who knew not the colleges, nor their
works, nor their ways.  Jude was asked if he could suggest any guest
in addition to those named by Arabella and her father, and in a
saturnine humour of perfect recklessness mentioned Uncle Joe, and
Stagg, and the decayed auctioneer, and others whom he remembered as
having been frequenters of the well-known tavern during his bout
therein years before.  He also suggested Freckles and Bower o' Bliss.
Arabella took him at his word so far as the men went, but drew the
line at the ladies.

Another man they knew, Tinker Taylor, though he lived in the same
street, was not invited; but as he went homeward from a late job on
the evening of the party, he had occasion to call at the shop for
trotters.  There were none in, but he was promised some the next
morning.  While making his inquiry Taylor glanced into the back room,
and saw the guests sitting round, card-playing, and drinking, and
otherwise enjoying themselves at Donn's expense.  He went home to
bed, and on his way out next morning wondered how the party went
off.  He thought it hardly worth while to call at the shop for his
provisions at that hour, Donn and his daughter being probably not up,
if they caroused late the night before.  However, he found in passing
that the door was open, and he could hear voices within, though the
shutters of the meat-stall were not down.  He went and tapped at the
sitting-room door, and opened it.

"Well--to be sure!" he said, astonished.

Hosts and guests were sitting card-playing, smoking, and talking,
precisely as he had left them eleven hours earlier; the gas was
burning and the curtains drawn, though it had been broad daylight
for two hours out of doors.

"Yes!" cried Arabella, laughing.  "Here we are, just the same.  We
ought to be ashamed of ourselves, oughtn't we?  But it is a sort of
housewarming, you see; and our friends are in no hurry.  Come in, Mr.
Taylor, and sit down."

The tinker, or rather reduced ironmonger, was nothing loath, and
entered and took a seat.  "I shall lose a quarter, but never mind,"
he said.  "Well, really, I could hardly believe my eyes when I looked
in!  It seemed as if I was flung back again into last night, all of a
sudden."

"So you are.  Pour out for Mr. Taylor."

He now perceived that she was sitting beside Jude, her arm being
round his waist.  Jude, like the rest of the company, bore on his
face the signs of how deeply he had been indulging.

"Well, we've been waiting for certain legal hours to arrive, to
tell the truth," she continued bashfully, and making her spirituous
crimson look as much like a maiden blush as possible.  "Jude and I
have decided to make up matters between us by tying the knot again,
as we find we can't do without one another after all.  So, as a
bright notion, we agreed to sit on till it was late enough, and go
and do it off-hand."

Jude seemed to pay no great heed to what she was announcing, or
indeed to anything whatever.  The entrance of Taylor infused fresh
spirit into the company, and they remained sitting, till Arabella
whispered to her father: "Now we may as well go."

"But the parson don't know?"

"Yes, I told him last night that we might come between eight and
nine, as there were reasons of decency for doing it as early and
quiet as possible; on account of it being our second marriage, which
might make people curious to look on if they knew.  He highly
approved."

"Oh very well, I'm ready," said her father, getting up and shaking
himself.

"Now, old darling," she said to Jude.  "Come along, as you promised."

"When did I promise anything?" asked he, whom she had made so tipsy
by her special knowledge of that line of business as almost to have
made him sober again--or to seem so to those who did not know him.

"Why!" said Arabella, affecting dismay.  "You've promised to marry me
several times as we've sat here to-night. These gentlemen have heard
you."

"I don't remember it," said Jude doggedly.  "There's only one
woman--but I won't mention her in this Capharnaum!"

Arabella looked towards her father.  "Now, Mr. Fawley be honourable,"
said Donn.  "You and my daughter have been living here together these
three or four days, quite on the understanding that you were going to
marry her.  Of course I shouldn't have had such goings on in my house
if I hadn't understood that.  As a point of honour you must do it
now."

"Don't say anything against my honour!" enjoined Jude hotly,
standing up.  "I'd marry the W---- of Babylon rather than do
anything dishonourable!  No reflection on you, my dear.  It is a
mere rhetorical figure--what they call in the books, hyperbole."

"Keep your figures for your debts to friends who shelter you," said
Donn.

"If I am bound in honour to marry her--as I suppose I am--though
how I came to be here with her I know no more than a dead man--marry
her I will, so help me God!  I have never behaved dishonourably to
a woman or to any living thing.  I am not a man who wants to save
himself at the expense of the weaker among us!"

"There--never mind him, deary," said she, putting her cheek against
Jude's.  "Come up and wash your face, and just put yourself tidy, and
off we'll go.  Make it up with Father."

They shook hands.  Jude went upstairs with her, and soon came down
looking tidy and calm.  Arabella, too, had hastily arranged herself,
and accompanied by Donn away they went.

"Don't go," she said to the guests at parting.  "I've told the little
maid to get the breakfast while we are gone; and when we come back
we'll all have some.  A good strong cup of tea will set everybody
right for going home."



When Arabella, Jude, and Donn had disappeared on their matrimonial
errand the assembled guests yawned themselves wider awake, and
discussed the situation with great interest.  Tinker Taylor, being
the most sober, reasoned the most lucidly.

"I don't wish to speak against friends," he said.  "But it do seem a
rare curiosity for a couple to marry over again!  If they couldn't
get on the first time when their minds were limp, they won't the
second, by my reckoning."

"Do you think he'll do it?"

"He's been put upon his honour by the woman, so he med."

"He'd hardly do it straight off like this.  He's got no licence nor
anything."

"She's got that, bless you.  Didn't you hear her say so to her
father?"

"Well," said Tinker Taylor, relighting his pipe at the gas-jet.
"Take her all together, limb by limb, she's not such a bad-looking
piece--particular by candlelight.  To be sure, halfpence that have
been in circulation can't be expected to look like new ones from
the mint.  But for a woman that's been knocking about the four
hemispheres for some time, she's passable enough.  A little bit thick
in the flitch perhaps: but I like a woman that a puff o' wind won't
blow down."

Their eyes followed the movements of the little girl as she spread
the breakfast-cloth on the table they had been using, without wiping
up the slops of the liquor.  The curtains were undrawn, and the
expression of the house made to look like morning.  Some of the
guests, however, fell asleep in their chairs.  One or two went to the
door, and gazed along the street more than once.  Tinker Taylor was
the chief of these, and after a time he came in with a leer on his
face.

"By Gad, they are coming!  I think the deed's done!"

"No," said Uncle Joe, following him in.  "Take my word, he turned
rusty at the last minute.  They are walking in a very unusual way;
and that's the meaning of it!"

They waited in silence till the wedding-party could be heard entering
the house.  First into the room came Arabella boisterously; and her
face was enough to show that her strategy had succeeded.

"Mrs. Fawley, I presume?" said Tinker Taylor with mock courtesy.

"Certainly.  Mrs. Fawley again," replied Arabella blandly, pulling
off her glove and holding out her left hand.  "There's the padlock,
see...  Well, he was a very nice, gentlemanly man indeed.  I mean
the clergyman.  He said to me as gentle as a babe when all was done:
'Mrs. Fawley, I congratulate you heartily,' he says.  'For having
heard your history, and that of your husband, I think you have both
done the right and proper thing.  And for your past errors as a wife,
and his as a husband, I think you ought now to be forgiven by the
world, as you have forgiven each other,' says he.  Yes; he was a very
nice, gentlemanly man.  'The Church don't recognize divorce in her
dogma, strictly speaking,' he says: 'and bear in mind the words of
the service in your goings out and your comings in: What God hath
joined together let no man put asunder.'  Yes; he was a very nice,
gentlemanly man...  But, Jude, my dear, you were enough to make a cat
laugh!  You walked that straight, and held yourself that steady, that
one would have thought you were going 'prentice to a judge; though I
knew you were seeing double all the time, from the way you fumbled
with my finger."

"I said I'd do anything to--save a woman's honour," muttered Jude.
"And I've done it!"

"Well now, old deary, come along and have some breakfast."

"I want--some--more whisky," said Jude stolidly.

"Nonsense, dear.  Not now!  There's no more left.  The tea will take
the muddle out of our heads, and we shall be as fresh as larks."

"All right.  I've--married you.  She said I ought to marry you again,
and I have straightway.  It is true religion!  Ha--ha--ha!"

 Arabella plots with her father to make Jude stay with them until she can remarry him. She arranges to have his belongings brought over, and all the while, they ply Jude with liquor. Finally, they arrange an-all night party to advertise her father's shop, and in the morning Arabella insists that Jude has promised to marry her. Jude, who is intoxicated and dazed, claims he has made no such promise. But when Mr. Donn questions Jude's "honor," Jude gives in. He defends himself, claiming that he has never in his life intended to treat anyone with indignity. He is also too befuddled to make any more protests. They go off to the church and are remarried. When they return, Arabella is triumphant at having achieved her goal, while Jude is still drunk and in a daze.

