Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

particular woman, and then to die, could neatly accomplish those
two wishes at one stroke by taking this journey in the rain. That I’ve
done. I have seen her for the last time, and I’ve 
finished myself––put
an end to a feverish life which ought never to have been begun.’
‘Lord––you do talk lofty. Won’t you have something warm to
drink?’
‘No thank you. Let’s get home.’
They went along by the silent colleges, and Jude kept stopping.
‘What are you looking at?’
‘Stupid fancies. I see, in a way, those spirits of the dead again, on
this my last walk, that I saw when I 
first walked here!’
‘What a curious chap you are!’
‘I seem to see them, and almost hear them rustling. But I don’t
revere all of them as I did then. I don’t believe in half of them. The
theologians, the apologists, and their kin the metaphysicians, the
high-handed statesmen, and others, no longer interest me. All that
has been spoilt for me by the grind of stern reality.’

---

The expression of Jude’s corpse-like face in the watery lamplight
was indeed as if he saw people where there was nobody. At moments
he stood still by an archway, like one watching a 
figure walk out; then
he would look at a window like one discerning a familiar face behind
it. He seemed to hear voices, whose words he repeated as if to gather
their meaning.
‘They seem laughing at me!’
‘Who?’
‘O––I was talking to myself. The phantoms all about here, in the
college archways, and windows. They used to look friendly in the old
days, particularly Addison, and Gibbon, and Johnson, and Dr.
Browne, and Bishop Ken——’
‘Come along do! Phantoms! There’s neither living nor dead here-
abouts, except a damn policeman! I never saw the streets emptier.’
‘Fancy! The Poet of Liberty used to walk here, and the great
Dissector of Melancholy there.’
‘I don’t want to hear about ’em! They bore me.’
‘Walter Raleigh is beckoning to me from that lane––Wycli
ffe––
Harvey––Hooker––Arnold––and a whole crowd of Tractarian
Shades*——’
‘I don’t want to know their names, I tell you! What do I care about
folk dead and gone? Upon my soul you are more sober when you’ve
been drinking than when you have not!’
‘I must rest a moment,’ he said. And as he paused, holding to the
railings, he measured with his eye the height of a college front. ‘This
is old Rubric. And that Sarcophagus, and up that lane Crozier and
Tudor: and all down there is Cardinal with its long front, and its
windows with lifted eyebrows, representing the polite surprise of the
University at the e
fforts of such as I.’
‘Come along, and I’ll treat you!’
‘Very well. It will help me home, for I feel the chilly fog from the
meadows of Cardinal as if death-claws were grabbing me through
and through. As Antigone said, I am neither a dweller among men
nor ghosts. But, Arabella, when I am dead, you’ll see my spirit
flitting up and down here among these.’
‘Pooh. You mayn’t die after all. You are tough enough yet, old man.’
It was night at Marygreen, and the rain of the afternoon showed no
sign of abatement. About the time at which Jude and Arabella were
At Christminster Again


---

walking the streets of Christminster homeward, the Widow Edlin
crossed the green, and opened the back door of the schoolmaster’s
dwelling, which she often did now before bedtime, to assist Sue in
putting things away.
Sue was muddling helplessly in the kitchen, for she was not a good
housewife, though she tried to be, and grew impatient of domestic
details.
‘Lord love ’ee, what do ye do that yourself for, when I’ve come o’
purpose. You knew I should come.’
‘O––I don’t know––I forgot. No, I didn’t forget. I did it to discip-
line myself. I have scrubbed the stairs since eight o’clock. I must
practise myself in my household duties. I’ve shamefully neglected
them!’
‘Why should ye? He’ll get a better school, perhaps be a parson, in
time, and you’ll keep two servants. ’Tis a pity to spoil them pretty
hands.’
‘Don’t talk of my pretty hands, Mrs. Edlin. This pretty body of
mine has been the ruin of me already!’
‘Pshoo––you’ve got no body to speak of. You put me more in mind
of a sperrit. But there seems something wrong to-night, my dear.
Husband cross?’
‘No. He never is. He’s gone to bed early.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘I cannot tell you. I have done wrong to-day. And I want to
eradicate it. Well––I will tell you this––Jude has been here this
afternoon, and I 
find I still love him––O, grossly! I cannot tell you
more.’
‘Ah!’ said the widow. ‘I told ’ee how ’twould be!’
‘But it shan’t be! I have not told my husband of his visit; it is not
necessary to trouble him about it, as I never mean to see Jude any
more. But I am going to make my conscience right on my duty to
Richard––by doing a penance––the ultimate thing. I must.’
‘I wouldn’t––since he agrees to it being otherwise, and it has gone
on three months very well as it is.’
‘Yes––he agrees to my living as I choose; but I feel it is an indul-
gence I ought not to exact from him. It ought not to have been
accepted by me. To reverse it will be terrible. But I must be more just
to him. O why was I so unheroic!’
‘What is it you don’t like in him?’ asked Mrs. Edlin curiously.