Chapter: The time arrived for killing the pig which Jude and his wife had
fattened in their sty during the autumn months, and the butchering
was timed to take place as soon as it was light in the morning, so
that Jude might get to Alfredston without losing more than a quarter
of a day.

The night had seemed strangely silent.  Jude looked out of the window
long before dawn, and perceived that the ground was covered with
snow--snow rather deep for the season, it seemed, a few flakes still
falling.

"I'm afraid the pig-killer won't be able to come," he said to
Arabella.

"Oh, he'll come.  You must get up and make the water hot, if you want
Challow to scald him.  Though I like singeing best."

"I'll get up," said Jude.  "I like the way of my own county."

He went downstairs, lit the fire under the copper, and began feeding
it with bean-stalks, all the time without a candle, the blaze
flinging a cheerful shine into the room; though for him the sense of
cheerfulness was lessened by thoughts on the reason of that blaze--to
heat water to scald the bristles from the body of an animal that as
yet lived, and whose voice could be continually heard from a corner
of the garden.  At half-past six, the time of appointment with the
butcher, the water boiled, and Jude's wife came downstairs.

"Is Challow come?" she asked.

"No."

They waited, and it grew lighter, with the dreary light of a snowy
dawn.  She went out, gazed along the road, and returning said, "He's
not coming.  Drunk last night, I expect.  The snow is not enough to
hinder him, surely!"

"Then we must put it off.  It is only the water boiled for nothing.
The snow may be deep in the valley."

"Can't be put off.  There's no more victuals for the pig.  He ate the
last mixing o' barleymeal yesterday morning."

"Yesterday morning?  What has he lived on since?"

"Nothing."

"What--he has been starving?"

"Yes.  We always do it the last day or two, to save bother with the
innerds.  What ignorance, not to know that!"

"That accounts for his crying so.  Poor creature!"

"Well--you must do the sticking--there's no help for it.  I'll show
you how.  Or I'll do it myself--I think I could.  Though as it is
such a big pig I had rather Challow had done it.  However, his basket
o' knives and things have been already sent on here, and we can use
'em."

"Of course you shan't do it," said Jude.  "I'll do it, since it must
be done."

He went out to the sty, shovelled away the snow for the space of a
couple of yards or more, and placed the stool in front, with the
knives and ropes at hand.  A robin peered down at the preparations
from the nearest tree, and, not liking the sinister look of the
scene, flew away, though hungry.  By this time Arabella had joined
her husband, and Jude, rope in hand, got into the sty, and noosed the
affrighted animal, who, beginning with a squeak of surprise, rose to
repeated cries of rage.  Arabella opened the sty-door, and together
they hoisted the victim on to the stool, legs upward, and while Jude
held him Arabella bound him down, looping the cord over his legs to
keep him from struggling.

The animal's note changed its quality.  It was not now rage, but the
cry of despair; long-drawn, slow and hopeless.

"Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have had
this to do!" said Jude.  "A creature I have fed with my own hands."

"Don't be such a tender-hearted fool!  There's the sticking-knife--
the one with the point.  Now whatever you do, don't stick un too
deep."

"I'll stick him effectually, so as to make short work of it.  That's
the chief thing."

"You must not!" she cried.  "The meat must be well bled, and to do
that he must die slow.  We shall lose a shilling a score if the meat
is red and bloody!  Just touch the vein, that's all.  I was brought
up to it, and I know.  Every good butcher keeps un bleeding long.
He ought to be eight or ten minutes dying, at least."

"He shall not be half a minute if I can help it, however the meat may
look," said Jude determinedly.  Scraping the bristles from the pig's
upturned throat, as he had seen the butchers do, he slit the fat;
then plunged in the knife with all his might.

"'Od damn it all!" she cried, "that ever I should say it!  You've
over-stuck un!  And I telling you all the time--"

"Do be quiet, Arabella, and have a little pity on the creature!"

"Hold up the pail to catch the blood, and don't talk!"

However unworkmanlike the deed, it had been mercifully done.  The
blood flowed out in a torrent instead of in the trickling stream she
had desired.  The dying animal's cry assumed its third and final
tone, the shriek of agony; his glazing eyes riveting themselves on
Arabella with the eloquently keen reproach of a creature recognizing
at last the treachery of those who had seemed his only friends.

"Make un stop that!" said Arabella.  "Such a noise will bring
somebody or other up here, and I don't want people to know we are
doing it ourselves."  Picking up the knife from the ground whereon
Jude had flung it, she slipped it into the gash, and slit the
windpipe.  The pig was instantly silent, his dying breath coming
through the hole.

"That's better," she said.

"It is a hateful business!" said he.

"Pigs must be killed."

The animal heaved in a final convulsion, and, despite the rope,
kicked out with all his last strength.  A tablespoonful of black
clot came forth, the trickling of red blood having ceased for some
seconds.

"That's it; now he'll go," said she.  "Artful creatures--they always
keep back a drop like that as long as they can!"

The last plunge had come so unexpectedly as to make Jude stagger, and
in recovering himself he kicked over the vessel in which the blood
had been caught.

"There!" she cried, thoroughly in a passion.  "Now I can't make any
blackpot.  There's a waste, all through you!"

Jude put the pail upright, but only about a third of the whole
steaming liquid was left in it, the main part being splashed over
the snow, and forming a dismal, sordid, ugly spectacle--to those who
saw it as other than an ordinary obtaining of meat.  The lips and
nostrils of the animal turned livid, then white, and the muscles of
his limbs relaxed.

"Thank God!" Jude said.  "He's dead."

"What's God got to do with such a messy job as a pig-killing, I
should like to know!" she said scornfully.  "Poor folks must live."

"I know, I know," said he.  "I don't scold you."

Suddenly they became aware of a voice at hand.

"Well done, young married volk!  I couldn't have carried it out much
better myself, cuss me if I could!"  The voice, which was husky,
came from the garden-gate, and looking up from the scene of slaughter
they saw the burly form of Mr. Challow leaning over the gate,
critically surveying their performance.

"'Tis well for 'ee to stand there and glane!" said Arabella.  "Owing
to your being late the meat is blooded and half spoiled! 'Twon't
fetch so much by a shilling a score!"

Challow expressed his contrition.  "You should have waited a bit"
he said, shaking his head, "and not have done this--in the delicate
state, too, that you be in at present, ma'am.  'Tis risking yourself
too much."

"You needn't be concerned about that," said Arabella, laughing.
Jude too laughed, but there was a strong flavour of bitterness in
his amusement.

Challow made up for his neglect of the killing by zeal in the
scalding and scraping.  Jude felt dissatisfied with himself as a man
at what he had done, though aware of his lack of common sense, and
that the deed would have amounted to the same thing if carried out by
deputy.  The white snow, stained with the blood of his fellow-mortal,
wore an illogical look to him as a lover of justice, not to say a
Christian; but he could not see how the matter was to be mended.  No
doubt he was, as his wife had called him, a tender-hearted fool.

He did not like the road to Alfredston now.  It stared him cynically
in the face.  The wayside objects reminded him so much of his
courtship of his wife that, to keep them out of his eyes, he
read whenever he could as he walked to and from his work.  Yet
he sometimes felt that by caring for books he was not escaping
common-place nor gaining rare ideas, every working-man being of that
taste now.  When passing near the spot by the stream on which he had
first made her acquaintance he one day heard voices just as he had
done at that earlier time.  One of the girls who had been Arabella's
companions was talking to a friend in a shed, himself being the
subject of discourse, possibly because they had seen him in the
distance.  They were quite unaware that the shed-walls were so thin
that he could hear their words as he passed.

"Howsomever, 'twas I put her up to it!  'Nothing venture nothing
have,' I said.  If I hadn't she'd no more have been his mis'ess than
I."

"'Tis my belief she knew there was nothing the matter when she told
him she was..."

What had Arabella been put up to by this woman, so that he should
make her his "mis'ess," otherwise wife?  The suggestion was horridly
unpleasant, and it rankled in his mind so much that instead of
entering his own cottage when he reached it he flung his basket
inside the garden-gate and passed on, determined to go and see his
old aunt and get some supper there.

This made his arrival home rather late.  Arabella however, was busy
melting down lard from fat of the deceased pig, for she had been out
on a jaunt all day, and so delayed her work.  Dreading lest what he
had heard should lead him to say something regrettable to her he
spoke little.  But Arabella was very talkative, and said among other
things that she wanted some money.  Seeing the book sticking out of
his pocket she added that he ought to earn more.

"An apprentice's wages are not meant to be enough to keep a wife on,
as a rule, my dear."

"Then you shouldn't have had one."

"Come, Arabella!  That's too bad, when you know how it came about."

"I'll declare afore Heaven that I thought what I told you was true.
Doctor Vilbert thought so.  It was a good job for you that it wasn't
so!"

"I don't mean that," he said hastily.  "I mean before that time.
I know it was not your fault; but those women friends of yours gave
you bad advice.  If they hadn't, or you hadn't taken it, we should at
this moment have been free from a bond which, not to mince matters,
galls both of us devilishly.  It may be very sad, but it is true."

"Who's been telling you about my friends?  What advice?  I insist
upon you telling me."

"Pooh--I'd rather not."

"But you shall--you ought to.  It is mean of 'ee not to!"

"Very well."  And he hinted gently what had been revealed to him.
"But I don't wish to dwell upon it.  Let us say no more about it."

Her defensive manner collapsed.  "That was nothing," she said,
laughing coldly.  "Every woman has a right to do such as that.  The
risk is hers."

"I quite deny it, Bella.  She might if no lifelong penalty attached
to it for the man, or, in his default, for herself; if the weakness
of the moment could end with the moment, or even with the year.
But when effects stretch so far she should not go and do that which
entraps a man if he is honest, or herself if he is otherwise."

"What ought I to have done?"

"Given me time...  Why do you fuss yourself about melting down that
pig's fat to-night?  Please put it away!"

"Then I must do it to-morrow morning.  It won't keep."

"Very well--do."

 Jude and Arabella have been fattening a pig all autumn, and it is now time for the killing. When Challow, the professional pig killer, is late, Jude is forced to kill the pig himself although he finds the job distasteful. Ignoring Arabella's instructions to let it bleed slowly, he kill the animal quickly and mercifully. The butcher arrives just as the pig is killed. That evening, returning home, Jude overhears Arabella's friends discussing how Arabella had tricked Jude with the pretended pregnancy and how they put her up to it. When Jude confronts Arabella, she is defiant and claims it is a woman's right to get her man by any means. Jude disagrees with her, arguing that to trap a man into such a marriage can have serious consequences, especially when it is unsuitable to both of them.

