Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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her, and she so disliked living with him afterwards that she went
away to London with her little maid.* The Fawleys were not made for
wedlock; it never seemed to sit well upon us. There’s sommat in our
blood that won’t take kindly to the notion of being bound to do what
we do readily enough if not bound. That’s why you ought to have
hearkened to me, and not ha’ married.’
‘Where did father and mother part––by the Brown House, did
you say?’
‘A little further on––where the road to Fenworth branches o
ff,
and the handpost stands. A gibbet once stood there not onconnected
with our history. But let that be.’
In the dusk of that evening Jude walked away from his old aunt’s,
as if to go home. But as soon as he reached the open down he struck
out upon it till he came to a large round pond. The frost continued,
though it was not particularly sharp, and the larger stars overhead
came out, slow and 
flickering. Jude put one foot on the edge of the
ice, and then the other: it cracked under his weight; but this did not
deter him. He ploughed his way inward to the centre, the ice making
sharp noises as he went. When just about the middle he looked
around him and gave a jump. The cracking repeated itself; but he did
not go down. He jumped again, but the cracking had ceased. Jude
went back to the edge, and stepped upon the ground.
It was curious, he thought. What was he reserved for? He sup-
posed he was not a su
fficiently dignified person for suicide. Peaceful
death abhorred him as a subject, and would not take him.
What could he do of a lower kind than self-extermination; what
was there less noble, more in keeping with his present degraded
position? He could get drunk. Of course that was it, he had forgot-
ten. Drinking was the regular, stereotyped resource of the despairing
worthless. He began to see now why some men boozed at inns. He
struck down the hill northwards and came to an obscure public-
house. On entering and sitting down the sight of the picture of
Samson and Delilah on the wall caused him to recognize the place as
that he had visited with Arabella on that 
first Sunday evening of
their courtship. He called for liquor and drank briskly for an hour or
more.
Staggering homeward late that night, with all his sense of depres-
sion gone, and his head fairly clear still, he began to laugh boister-
ously, and to wonder how Arabella would receive him in his new
At Marygreen
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aspect. The house was in darkness when he entered, and in his
stumbling state it was some time before he could get a light. Then he
found that, though the marks of pig-dressing, of fats and scallops,
were visible, the materials themselves had been taken away. A line
written by his wife on the inside of an old envelope was pinned to the
cotton blower of the 
fireplace:
‘Have gone to my friends. Shall not return.’
All the next day he remained at home, and sent o
ff the carcase of
the pig to Alfredston. He then cleaned up the premises, locked the
door, put the key in a place she would know if she came back, and
returned to his masonry at Alfredston.
At night when he again plodded home he found she had not
visited the house. The next day went in the same way, and the next.
Then there came a letter from her.
That she had grown tired of him she frankly admitted. He was
such a slow old coach, and she did not care for the sort of life he led.
There was no prospect of his ever bettering himself or her. She
further went on to say that her parents had, as he knew, for some
time considered the question of emigrating to Australia, the pig-
jobbing business being a poor one nowadays. They had at last
decided to go, and she proposed to go with them, if he had no
objection. A woman of her sort would have more chance over there
than in this stupid country.
Jude replied that he had not the least objection to her going. He
thought it a wise course, since she wished to go, and one that might
be to the advantage of both. He enclosed in the packet containing the
letter the money that had been realized by the sale of the pig, with all
he had besides, which was not much.
From that day he heard no more of her except indirectly, though
her father and his household did not immediately leave, but waited
till his goods and other e
ffects had been sold off. When Jude learnt
that there was to be an auction at the house of the Donns he packed
his own household goods into a waggon, and sent them to her at the
aforesaid homestead, that she might sell them with the rest, or as
many of them as she should choose.
He then went into lodgings at Alfredston, and saw in a shop-
window the little handbill announcing the sale of his father-in-law’s
furniture. He noted its date, which came and passed without Jude’s
going near the place, or perceiving that the tra
ffic out of Alfredston