Chapter: The unnoticed lives that the pair had hitherto led began, from the
day of the suspended wedding onwards, to be observed and discussed by
other persons than Arabella.  The society of Spring Street and the
neighbourhood generally did not understand, and probably could not
have been made to understand, Sue and Jude's private minds, emotions,
positions, and fears.  The curious facts of a child coming to them
unexpectedly, who called Jude "Father," and Sue "Mother," and a hitch
in a marriage ceremony intended for quietness to be performed at a
registrar's office, together with rumours of the undefended cases in
the law-courts, bore only one translation to plain minds.

Little Time--for though he was formally turned into "Jude," the apt
nickname stuck to him--would come home from school in the evening,
and repeat inquiries and remarks that had been made to him by the
other boys; and cause Sue, and Jude when he heard them, a great deal
of pain and sadness.

The result was that shortly after the attempt at the registrar's the
pair went off--to London it was believed--for several days, hiring
somebody to look to the boy.  When they came back they let it be
understood indirectly, and with total indifference and weariness
of mien, that they were legally married at last.  Sue, who had
previously been called Mrs. Bridehead now openly adopted the name of
Mrs. Fawley.  Her dull, cowed, and listless manner for days seemed
to substantiate all this.

But the mistake (as it was called) of their going away so secretly
to do the business, kept up much of the mystery of their lives; and
they found that they made not such advances with their neighbours as
they had expected to do thereby.  A living mystery was not much less
interesting than a dead scandal.

The baker's lad and the grocer's boy, who at first had used to lift
their hats gallantly to Sue when they came to execute their errands,
in these days no longer took the trouble to render her that homage,
and the neighbouring artizans' wives looked straight along the
pavement when they encountered her.

Nobody molested them, it is true; but an oppressive atmosphere began
to encircle their souls, particularly after their excursion to the
show, as if that visit had brought some evil influence to bear on
them.  And their temperaments were precisely of a kind to suffer from
this atmosphere, and to be indisposed to lighten it by vigorous and
open statements.  Their apparent attempt at reparation had come too
late to be effective.

The headstone and epitaph orders fell off: and two or three months
later, when autumn came, Jude perceived that he would have to return
to journey-work again, a course all the more unfortunate just now,
in that he had not as yet cleared off the debt he had unavoidably
incurred in the payment of the law-costs of the previous year.

One evening he sat down to share the common meal with Sue and the
child as usual.  "I am thinking," he said to her, "that I'll hold on
here no longer.  The life suits us, certainly; but if we could get
away to a place where we are unknown, we should be lighter hearted,
and have a better chance.  And so I am afraid we must break it up
here, however awkward for you, poor dear!"

Sue was always much affected at a picture of herself as an object of
pity, and she saddened.

"Well--I am not sorry," said she presently.  "I am much depressed
by the way they look at me here.  And you have been keeping on this
house and furniture entirely for me and the boy!  You don't want
it yourself, and the expense is unnecessary.  But whatever we do,
wherever we go, you won't take him away from me, Jude dear?  I could
not let him go now!  The cloud upon his young mind makes him so
pathetic to me; I do hope to lift it some day!  And he loves me so.
You won't take him away from me?"

"Certainly I won't, dear little girl!  We'll get nice lodgings,
wherever we go.  I shall be moving about probably--getting a job
here and a job there."

"I shall do something too, of course, till--till--  Well, now I can't
be useful in the lettering it behoves me to turn my hand to something
else."

"Don't hurry about getting employment," he said regretfully.  "I
don't want you to do that.  I wish you wouldn't, Sue.  The boy and
yourself are enough for you to attend to."

There was a knock at the door, and Jude answered it.  Sue could hear
the conversation:

"Is Mr. Fawley at home? ...  Biles and Willis, the building
contractors, sent me to know if you'll undertake the relettering
of the ten commandments in a little church they've been restoring
lately in the country near here."

Jude reflected, and said he could undertake it.

"It is not a very artistic job," continued the messenger.  "The
clergyman is a very old-fashioned chap, and he has refused to let
anything more be done to the church than cleaning and repairing."

"Excellent old man!" said Sue to herself, who was sentimentally
opposed to the horrors of over-restoration.

"The Ten Commandments are fixed to the east end," the messenger went
on, "and they want doing up with the rest of the wall there, since
he won't have them carted off as old materials belonging to the
contractor in the usual way of the trade."

A bargain as to terms was struck, and Jude came indoors.  "There, you
see," he said cheerfully.  "One more job yet, at any rate, and you
can help in it--at least you can try.  We shall have all the church
to ourselves, as the rest of the work is finished."

Next day Jude went out to the church, which was only two miles
off.  He found that what the contractor's clerk had said was true.
The tables of the Jewish law towered sternly over the utensils of
Christian grace, as the chief ornament of the chancel end, in the
fine dry style of the last century.  And as their framework was
constructed of ornamental plaster they could not be taken down for
repair.  A portion, crumbled by damp, required renewal; and when
this had been done, and the whole cleansed, he began to renew the
lettering.  On the second morning Sue came to see what assistance
she could render, and also because they liked to be together.

The silence and emptiness of the building gave her confidence, and,
standing on a safe low platform erected by Jude, which she was
nevertheless timid at mounting, she began painting in the letters
of the first Table while he set about mending a portion of the
second.  She was quite pleased at her powers; she had acquired them
in the days she painted illumined texts for the church-fitting shop
at Christminster.  Nobody seemed likely to disturb them; and the
pleasant twitter of birds, and rustle of October leafage, came in
through an open window, and mingled with their talk.

They were not, however, to be left thus snug and peaceful for long.
About half-past twelve there came footsteps on the gravel without.
The old vicar and his churchwarden entered, and, coming up to see
what was being done, seemed surprised to discover that a young woman
was assisting.  They passed on into an aisle, at which time the door
again opened, and another figure entered--a small one, that of little
Time, who was crying.  Sue had told him where he might find her
between school-hours, if he wished.  She came down from her perch,
and said, "What's the matter, my dear?"

"I couldn't stay to eat my dinner in school, because they said--"
He described how some boys had taunted him about his nominal mother,
and Sue, grieved, expressed her indignation to Jude aloft.  The child
went into the churchyard, and Sue returned to her work.  Meanwhile
the door had opened again, and there shuffled in with a businesslike
air the white-aproned woman who cleaned the church.  Sue recognized
her as one who had friends in Spring Street, whom she visited.  The
church-cleaner looked at Sue, gaped, and lifted her hands; she had
evidently recognized Jude's companion as the latter had recognized
her.  Next came two ladies, and after talking to the charwoman they
also moved forward, and as Sue stood reaching upward, watched her
hand tracing the letters, and critically regarded her person in
relief against the white wall, till she grew so nervous that she
trembled visibly.

They went back to where the others were standing, talking in
undertones: and one said--Sue could not hear which--"She's his wife,
I suppose?"

"Some say Yes: some say No," was the reply from the charwoman.

"Not?  Then she ought to be, or somebody's--that's very clear!"

"They've only been married a very few weeks, whether or no."

"A strange pair to be painting the Two Tables!  I wonder Biles and
Willis could think of such a thing as hiring those!"

The churchwarden supposed that Biles and Willis knew of nothing
wrong, and then the other, who had been talking to the old woman,
explained what she meant by calling them strange people.

The probable drift of the subdued conversation which followed was
made plain by the churchwarden breaking into an anecdote, in a voice
that everybody in the church could hear, though obviously suggested
by the present situation:

"Well, now, it is a curious thing, but my grandfather told me a
strange tale of a most immoral case that happened at the painting of
the Commandments in a church out by Gaymead--which is quite within a
walk of this one.  In them days Commandments were mostly done in gilt
letters on a black ground, and that's how they were out where I say,
before the owld church was rebuilded.  It must have been somewhere
about a hundred years ago that them Commandments wanted doing up just
as ours do here, and they had to get men from Aldbrickham to do 'em.
Now they wished to get the job finished by a particular Sunday, so
the men had to work late Saturday night, against their will, for
overtime was not paid then as 'tis now.  There was no true religion
in the country at that date, neither among pa'sons, clerks, nor
people, and to keep the men up to their work the vicar had to let 'em
have plenty of drink during the afternoon.  As evening drawed on they
sent for some more themselves; rum, by all account.  It got later and
later, and they got more and more fuddled, till at last they went
a-putting their rum-bottle and rummers upon the communion table, and
drawed up a trestle or two, and sate round comfortable and poured
out again right hearty bumpers.  No sooner had they tossed off their
glasses than, so the story goes, they fell down senseless, one and
all.  How long they bode so they didn't know, but when they came
to themselves there was a terrible thunder-storm a-raging, and
they seemed to see in the gloom a dark figure with very thin legs
and a curious voot, a-standing on the ladder, and finishing their
work.  When it got daylight they could see that the work was really
finished, and couldn't at all mind finishing it themselves.  They
went home, and the next thing they heard was that a great scandal had
been caused in the church that Sunday morning, for when the people
came and service began, all saw that the Ten Commandments wez painted
with the 'nots' left out.  Decent people wouldn't attend service
there for a long time, and the Bishop had to be sent for to
reconsecrate the church.  That's the tradition as I used to hear it
as a child.  You must take it for what it is wo'th, but this case
to-day has reminded me o't, as I say."

The visitors gave one more glance, as if to see whether Jude and
Sue had left the "nots" out likewise, and then severally left the
church, even the old woman at last.  Sue and Jude, who had not
stopped working, sent back the child to school, and remained without
speaking; till, looking at her narrowly, he found she had been crying
silently.

"Never mind, comrade!" he said.  "I know what it is!"

"I can't BEAR that they, and everybody, should think people wicked
because they may have chosen to live their own way!  It is really
these opinions that make the best intentioned people reckless, and
actually become immoral!"

"Never be cast down!  It was only a funny story."

"Ah, but we suggested it!  I am afraid I have done you mischief,
Jude, instead of helping you by coming!"

To have suggested such a story was certainly not very exhilarating,
in a serious view of their position.  However, in a few minutes Sue
seemed to see that their position this morning had a ludicrous side,
and wiping her eyes she laughed.

"It is droll, after all," she said, "that we two, of all people,
with our queer history, should happen to be here painting the
Ten Commandments!  You a reprobate, and I--in my condition...  O
dear!" ...  And with her hand over her eyes she laughed again
silently and intermittently, till she was quite weak.

"That's better," said Jude gaily.  "Now we are right again, aren't
we, little girl!"

"Oh but it is serious, all the same!" she sighed as she took up the
brush and righted herself.  "But do you see they don't think we are
married?  They WON'T believe it!  It is extraordinary!"

"I don't care whether they think so or not," said Jude.  "I shan't
take any more trouble to make them."

They sat down to lunch--which they had brought with them not to
hinder time--and having eaten it, were about to set to work anew when
a man entered the church, and Jude recognized in him the contractor
Willis.  He beckoned to Jude, and spoke to him apart.

"Here--I've just had a complaint about this," he said, with rather
breathless awkwardness.  "I don't wish to go into the matter--as of
course I didn't know what was going on--but I am afraid I must ask
you and her to leave off, and let somebody else finish this!  It is
best, to avoid all unpleasantness.  I'll pay you for the week, all
the same."

Jude was too independent to make any fuss; and the contractor paid
him, and left.  Jude picked up his tools, and Sue cleansed her brush.
Then their eyes met.

"How could we be so simple as to suppose we might do this!" said
she, dropping to her tragic note.  "Of course we ought not--I ought
not--to have come!"

"I had no idea that anybody was going to intrude into such a lonely
place and see us!"  Jude returned.  "Well, it can't be helped, dear;
and of course I wouldn't wish to injure Willis's trade-connection by
staying."  They sat down passively for a few minutes, proceeded out
of the church, and overtaking the boy pursued their thoughtful way
to Aldbrickham.

Fawley had still a pretty zeal in the cause of education, and, as was
natural with his experiences, he was active in furthering "equality
of opportunity" by any humble means open to him.  He had joined an
Artizans' Mutual Improvement Society established in the town about
the time of his arrival there; its members being young men of all
creeds and denominations, including Churchmen, Congregationalists,
Baptists, Unitarians, Positivists, and others--Agnostics had scarcely
been heard of at this time--their one common wish to enlarge their
minds forming a sufficiently close bond of union.  The subscription
was small, and the room homely; and Jude's activity, uncustomary
acquirements, and, above all, singular intuition on what to read
and how to set about it--begotten of his years of struggle against
malignant stars--had led to his being placed on the committee.

A few evenings after his dismissal from the church repairs, and
before he had obtained any more work to do, he went to attend a
meeting of the aforesaid committee.  It was late when he arrived: all
the others had come, and as he entered they looked dubiously at him,
and hardly uttered a word of greeting.  He guessed that something
bearing on himself had been either discussed or mooted.  Some
ordinary business was transacted, and it was disclosed that the
number of subscriptions had shown a sudden falling off for that
quarter.  One member--a really well-meaning and upright man--began
speaking in enigmas about certain possible causes: that it behoved
them to look well into their constitution; for if the committee were
not respected, and had not at least, in their differences, a common
standard of CONDUCT, they would bring the institution to the ground.
Nothing further was said in Jude's presence, but he knew what this
meant; and turning to the table wrote a note resigning his office
there and then.

Thus the supersensitive couple were more and more impelled to go
away.  And then bills were sent in, and the question arose, what
could Jude do with his great-aunt's heavy old furniture, if he left
the town to travel he knew not whither?  This, and the necessity of
ready money, compelled him to decide on an auction, much as he would
have preferred to keep the venerable goods.

The day of the sale came on; and Sue for the last time cooked her
own, the child's, and Jude's breakfast in the little house he had
furnished.  It chanced to be a wet day; moreover Sue was unwell, and
not wishing to desert her poor Jude in such gloomy circumstances,
for he was compelled to stay awhile, she acted on the suggestion of
the auctioneer's man, and ensconced herself in an upper room, which
could be emptied of its effects, and so kept closed to the bidders.
Here Jude discovered her; and with the child, and their few trunks,
baskets, and bundles, and two chairs and a table that were not in
the sale, the two sat in meditative talk.

Footsteps began stamping up and down the bare stairs, the comers
inspecting the goods, some of which were of so quaint and ancient a
make as to acquire an adventitious value as art.  Their door was
tried once or twice, and to guard themselves against intrusion Jude
wrote "Private" on a scrap of paper, and stuck it upon the panel.

They soon found that, instead of the furniture, their own personal
histories and past conduct began to be discussed to an unexpected
and intolerable extent by the intending bidders.  It was not till
now that they really discovered what a fools' paradise of supposed
unrecognition they had been living in of late.  Sue silently took
her companion's hand, and with eyes on each other they heard these
passing remarks--the quaint and mysterious personality of Father
Time being a subject which formed a large ingredient in the hints and
innuendoes.  At length the auction began in the room below, whence
they could hear each familiar article knocked down, the highly prized
ones cheaply, the unconsidered at an unexpected price.

"People don't understand us," he sighed heavily.  "I am glad we have
decided to go."

"The question is, where to?"

"It ought to be to London.  There one can live as one chooses."

"No--not London, dear!  I know it well.  We should be unhappy there."

"Why?"

"Can't you think?"

"Because Arabella is there?"

"That's the chief reason."

"But in the country I shall always be uneasy lest there should be
some more of our late experience.  And I don't care to lessen it by
explaining, for one thing, all about the boy's history.  To cut him
off from his past I have determined to keep silence.  I am sickened
of ecclesiastical work now; and I shouldn't like to accept it, if
offered me!"

"You ought to have learnt classic.  Gothic is barbaric art, after
all.  Pugin was wrong, and Wren was right.  Remember the interior of
Christminster Cathedral--almost the first place in which we looked
in each other's faces.  Under the picturesqueness of those Norman
details one can see the grotesque childishness of uncouth people
trying to imitate the vanished Roman forms, remembered by dim
tradition only."

"Yes--you have half-converted me to that view by what you have said
before.  But one can work, and despise what one does.  I must do
something, if not church-gothic."

"I wish we could both follow an occupation in which personal
circumstances don't count," she said, smiling up wistfully.  "I am
as disqualified for teaching as you are for ecclesiastical art.  You
must fall back upon railway stations, bridges, theatres, music-halls,
hotels--everything that has no connection with conduct."

"I am not skilled in those...  I ought to take to bread-baking.  I
grew up in the baking business with aunt, you know.  But even a baker
must be conventional, to get customers."

"Unless he keeps a cake and gingerbread stall at markets and fairs,
where people are gloriously indifferent to everything except the
quality of the goods."

Their thoughts were diverted by the voice of the auctioneer: "Now
this antique oak settle--a unique example of old English furniture,
worthy the attention of all collectors!"

"That was my great-grandfather's," said Jude.  "I wish we could have
kept the poor old thing!"

One by one the articles went, and the afternoon passed away.  Jude
and the other two were getting tired and hungry, but after the
conversation they had heard they were shy of going out while the
purchasers were in their line of retreat.  However, the later lots
drew on, and it became necessary to emerge into the rain soon, to
take on Sue's things to their temporary lodging.

"Now the next lot: two pairs of pigeons, all alive and plump--a nice
pie for somebody for next Sunday's dinner!"

The impending sale of these birds had been the most trying suspense
of the whole afternoon.  They were Sue's pets, and when it was found
that they could not possibly be kept, more sadness was caused than by
parting from all the furniture.  Sue tried to think away her tears
as she heard the trifling sum that her dears were deemed to be worth
advanced by small stages to the price at which they were finally
knocked down.  The purchaser was a neighbouring poulterer, and they
were unquestionably doomed to die before the next market day.

Noting her dissembled distress Jude kissed her, and said it was time
to go and see if the lodgings were ready.  He would go on with the
boy, and fetch her soon.

When she was left alone she waited patiently, but Jude did not come
back.  At last she started, the coast being clear, and on passing the
poulterer's shop, not far off, she saw her pigeons in a hamper by the
door.  An emotion at sight of them, assisted by the growing dusk of
evening, caused her to act on impulse, and first looking around her
quickly, she pulled out the peg which fastened down the cover, and
went on.  The cover was lifted from within, and the pigeons flew
away with a clatter that brought the chagrined poulterer cursing and
swearing to the door.

Sue reached the lodging trembling, and found Jude and the boy making
it comfortable for her.  "Do the buyers pay before they bring away
the things?" she asked breathlessly.

"Yes, I think.  Why?"

"Because, then, I've done such a wicked thing!"  And she explained,
in bitter contrition.

"I shall have to pay the poulterer for them, if he doesn't catch
them," said Jude.  "But never mind.  Don't fret about it, dear."

"It was so foolish of me!  Oh why should Nature's law be mutual
butchery!"

"Is it so, Mother?" asked the boy intently.

"Yes!" said Sue vehemently.

"Well, they must take their chance, now, poor things," said Jude.
"As soon as the sale-account is wound up, and our bills paid, we go."

"Where do we go to?" asked Time, in suspense.

"We must sail under sealed orders, that nobody may trace us...  We
mustn't go to Alfredston, or to Melchester, or to Shaston, or to
Christminster.  Apart from those we may go anywhere."

"Why mustn't we go there, Father?"

"Because of a cloud that has gathered over us; though 'we have
wronged no man, corrupted no man, defrauded no man!'  Though perhaps
we have 'done that which was right in our own eyes.'"

 To stop the talk about them, Jude and Sue go off to London for a few days as if to marry, but the talk continues and Jude thinks they should move to where they are unknown. Several incidents confirm this idea: Jude loses a job at a church when, because of Sue's presence there, he is recognized and the rumors about them are repeated; Little Father Time is taunted at school by other boys; Jude feels pressured to resign from the committee governing an artisans' improvement society he belongs to. Since they plan to live in lodgings instead of a house and also since they need money, Jude auctions off most of their household effects. They aren't sure where they'll go, but not to London, and since Jude is dissatisfied with church work he isn't sure what he'll do. Sue is upset by the sale of her pet pigeons, turns them loose later at the shop of the poulterer who bought them, and remarks bitterly, "0 why should Nature's law be mutual butchery!"

