Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Shaston
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She added in hurt tones, without turning round: ‘My liking for you
is not as some women’s perhaps. But it is a delight in being with you,
of a supremely delicate kind, and I don’t want to go further and risk
it by––an attempt to intensify it! I quite realized that, as woman with
man, it was a risk to come. But, as me with you, I resolved to trust
you to set my wishes above your grati
fication. Don’t discuss it
further, dear Jude!’
‘Of course, if it would make you reproach yourself . . . but you do
like me very much, Sue? say you do! Say that you do a quarter, a
tenth, as much as I do you; and I’ll be content!’
‘I’ve let you kiss me, and that tells enough.’
‘Just once or so!’
‘Well––don’t be a greedy boy.’
He leant back, and did not look at her for a long time. That
episode in her past history of which she had told him––of the poor
Christminster graduate whom she had handled thus, returned to
Jude’s mind; and he saw himself as a possible second in such a
torturing destiny.
‘This is a queer elopement!’ he murmured. ‘Perhaps you are mak-
ing a cat’s-paw of me with Phillotson all this time. Upon my word it
almost seems so––to see you sitting up there so prim!’
‘Now you mustn’t be angry––I won’t let you!’ she coaxed, turning
and moving nearer to him. ‘You did kiss me just now, you know; and
I didn’t dislike you to,* I own it, Jude. Only I don’t want to let you do
it again, just yet––considering how we are circumstanced, don’t you
see!’
He could never resist her when she pleaded (as she well knew).
And they sat side by side with joined hands, till she aroused herself
at some thought.
‘I can’t possibly go to that Temperance Inn, after your telegraph-
ing that message!’
‘Why not?’
‘You can see well enough!’
‘Very well; there’ll be some other one open, no doubt. I have
sometimes thought, since your marrying Phillotson because of a
stupid scandal, that under the a
ffectation of independent views you
are as enslaved to the social code as any woman I know!’
‘Not mentally. But I haven’t the courage of my views, as I said
before. I didn’t marry him altogether because of the scandal. But
Jude the Obscure
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sometimes a woman’s love of being loved gets the better of her con-
science, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man
cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn’t love him at
all. Then, when she sees him su
ffering, her remorse sets in, and she
does what she can to repair the wrong.’
‘You simply mean that you 
flirted outrageously with him, poor old
chap, and then repented, and to make reparation, married him,
though you tortured yourself to death by doing it.’
‘Well––if you will put it brutally!––it was a little like that––that
and the scandal together––and your concealing from me what you
ought to have told me before!’
He could see that she was distressed and tearful at his criticisms,
and soothed her, saying: ‘There, dear; don’t mind! Crucify me, if you
will!* You know you are all the world to me, whatever you do!’
‘I am very bad and unprincipled––I know you think that!’ she
said, trying to blink away her tears.
‘I think and know you are my dear Sue, from whom neither length
nor breadth, nor things present nor things to come, can divide me!’*
Though so sophisticated in many things she was such a child in
others that this satis
fied her, and they reached the end of their jour-
ney on the best of terms. It was about ten o’clock when they arrived
at Aldbrickham, the county town of North Wessex. As she would not
go to the Temperance Hotel because of the form of his telegram,
Jude inquired for another; and a youth who volunteered to 
find one
wheeled their luggage to The George further on, which proved to be
the inn at which Jude had stayed with Arabella on that one occasion
of their meeting after their division for years.
Owing, however, to their now entering it by another door, and to
his preoccupation, he did not at 
first recognize the place. When they
had engaged their respective rooms they went down to a late supper.
During Jude’s temporary absence the waiting-maid spoke to Sue.
‘I think, ma’am, I remember your relation, or friend, or whatever
he is, coming here once before––late, just like this, with his wife––a
lady, at any rate, that wasn’t you by no manner of means––jest as
med be with you now.’
‘O do you?’ said Sue, with a certain sickness of heart. ‘Though I
think you must be mistaken! How long ago was it?’
‘About a month or two. A handsome, full-
figured woman. They
had this room.’*