III
Sue's distressful confession recurred to Jude's mind all the night asbeing a sorrow indeed.
The morning after, when it was time for her to go, the neighbours sawher companion and herself disappearing on foot down the hill pathwhich led into the lonely road to Alfredston. An hour passed beforehe returned along the same route, and in his face there was a look ofexaltation not unmixed with recklessness. An incident had occurred.
They had stood parting in the silent highway, and their tense andpassionate moods had led to bewildered inquiries of each other on howfar their intimacy ought to go; till they had almost quarrelled, andshe said tearfully that it was hardly proper of him as a parson inembryo to think of such a thing as kissing her even in farewell as henow wished to do. Then she had conceded that the fact of the kisswould be nothing: all would depend upon the spirit of it. If givenin the spirit of a cousin and a friend she saw no objection: if inthe spirit of a lover she could not permit it. "Will you swear thatit will not be in that spirit?" she had said.
No: he would not. And then they had turned from each other inestrangement, and gone their several ways, till at a distanceof twenty or thirty yards both had looked round simultaneously.That look behind was fatal to the reserve hitherto more or lessmaintained. They had quickly run back, and met, and embracing mostunpremeditatedly, kissed close and long. When they parted for goodit was with flushed cheeks on her side, and a beating heart on his.
The kiss was a turning-point in Jude's career. Back again in thecottage, and left to reflection, he saw one thing: that thoughhis kiss of that aerial being had seemed the purest moment of hisfaultful life, as long as he nourished this unlicensed tenderness itwas glaringly inconsistent for him to pursue the idea of becoming thesoldier and servant of a religion in which sexual love was regardedas at its best a frailty, and at its worst damnation. What Suehad said in warmth was really the cold truth. When to defendhis affection tooth and nail, to persist with headlong force inimpassioned attentions to her, was all he thought of, he wascondemned _ipso facto_ as a professor of the accepted school ofmorals. He was as unfit, obviously, by nature, as he had been bysocial position, to fill the part of a propounder of accrediteddogma.
Strange that his first aspiration--towards academicalproficiency--had been checked by a woman, and that his secondaspiration--towards apostleship--had also been checked by a woman."Is it," he said, "that the women are to blame; or is it theartificial system of things, under which the normal sex-impulses areturned into devilish domestic gins and springs to noose and hold backthose who want to progress?"
It had been his standing desire to become a prophet, however humble,to his struggling fellow-creatures, without any thought of personalgain. Yet with a wife living away from him with another husband, andhimself in love erratically, the loved one's revolt against her statebeing possibly on his account, he had sunk to be barely respectableaccording to regulation views.
It was not for him to consider further: he had only to confront theobvious, which was that he had made himself quite an impostor as alaw-abiding religious teacher.
At dusk that evening he went into the garden and dug a shallow hole,to which he brought out all the theological and ethical works thathe possessed, and had stored here. He knew that, in this country oftrue believers, most of them were not saleable at a much higher pricethan waste-paper value, and preferred to get rid of them in his ownway, even if he should sacrifice a little money to the sentiment ofthus destroying them. Lighting some loose pamphlets to begin with,he cut the volumes into pieces as well as he could, and with athree-pronged fork shook them over the flames. They kindled, andlighted up the back of the house, the pigsty, and his own face, tillthey were more or less consumed.
Though he was almost a stranger here now, passing cottagers talked tohim over the garden hedge.
"Burning up your awld aunt's rubbidge, I suppose? Ay; a lot getsheaped up in nooks and corners when you've lived eighty years in onehouse."
It was nearly one o'clock in the morning before the leaves, covers,and binding of Jeremy Taylor, Butler, Doddridge, Paley, Pusey, Newmanand the rest had gone to ashes, but the night was quiet, and as heturned and turned the paper shreds with the fork, the sense of beingno longer a hypocrite to himself afforded his mind a relief whichgave him calm. He might go on believing as before, but he professednothing, and no longer owned and exhibited engines of faith which,as their proprietor, he might naturally be supposed to exercise onhimself first of all. In his passion for Sue he could not stand asan ordinary sinner, and not as a whited sepulchre.
Meanwhile Sue, after parting from him earlier in the day, had gonealong to the station, with tears in her eyes for having run back andlet him kiss her. Jude ought not to have pretended that he was not alover, and made her give way to an impulse to act unconventionally,if not wrongly. She was inclined to call it the latter; for Sue'slogic was extraordinarily compounded, and seemed to maintain thatbefore a thing was done it might be right to do, but that being doneit became wrong; or, in other words, that things which were right intheory were wrong in practice.
"I have been too weak, I think!" she jerked out as she pranced on,shaking down tear-drops now and then. "It was burning, like alover's--oh, it was! And I won't write to him any more, or at leastfor a long time, to impress him with my dignity! And I hope it willhurt him very much--expecting a letter to-morrow morning, and thenext, and the next, and no letter coming. He'll suffer then withsuspense--won't he, that's all!--and I am very glad of it!"--Tearsof pity for Jude's approaching sufferings at her hands mingled withthose which had surged up in pity for herself.
Then the slim little wife of a husband whose person was disagreeableto her, the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted bytemperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonialrelation with Phillotson, possibly with scarce any man, walkedfitfully along, and panted, and brought weariness into her eyes bygazing and worrying hopelessly.
Phillotson met her at the arrival station, and, seeing that she wastroubled, thought it must be owing to the depressing effect of heraunt's death and funeral. He began telling her of his day's doings,and how his friend Gillingham, a neighbouring schoolmaster whom hehad not seen for years, had called upon him. While ascending to thetown, seated on the top of the omnibus beside him, she said suddenlyand with an air of self-chastisement, regarding the white road andits bordering bushes of hazel:
"Richard--I let Mr. Fawley hold my hand a long while. I don't knowwhether you think it wrong?"
He, waking apparently from thoughts of far different mould, saidvaguely, "Oh, did you? What did you do that for?"
"I don't know. He wanted to, and I let him."
"I hope it pleased him. I should think it was hardly a novelty."
They lapsed into silence. Had this been a case in the court of anomniscient judge, he might have entered on his notes the curious factthat Sue had placed the minor for the major indiscretion, and had notsaid a word about the kiss.
After tea that evening Phillotson sat balancing the school registers.She remained in an unusually silent, tense, and restless condition,and at last, saying she was tired, went to bed early. WhenPhillotson arrived upstairs, weary with the drudgery of theattendance-numbers, it was a quarter to twelve o'clock. Enteringtheir chamber, which by day commanded a view of some thirty or fortymiles over the Vale of Blackmoor, and even into Outer Wessex, he wentto the window, and, pressing his face against the pane, gazed withhard-breathing fixity into the mysterious darkness which now coveredthe far-reaching scene. He was musing, "I think," he said at last,without turning his head, "that I must get the committee to changethe school-stationer. All the copybooks are sent wrong this time."
There was no reply. Thinking Sue was dozing he went on:
"And there must be a rearrangement of that ventilator in theclass-room. The wind blows down upon my head unmercifully and givesme the ear-ache."
As the silence seemed more absolute than
ordinarily he turned round.The heavy, gloomy oak wainscot, which extended over the wallsupstairs and down in the dilapidated "Old-Grove Place," and themassive chimney-piece reaching to the ceiling, stood in odd contrastto the new and shining brass bedstead, and the new suite of birchfurniture that he had bought for her, the two styles seeming to nodto each other across three centuries upon the shaking floor.
"Soo!" he said (this being the way in which he pronounced her name).
She was not in the bed, though she had apparently been there--theclothes on her side being flung back. Thinking she might haveforgotten some kitchen detail and gone downstairs for a moment tosee to it, he pulled off his coat and idled quietly enough for afew minutes, when, finding she did not come, he went out upon thelanding, candle in hand, and said again "Soo!"
"Yes!" came back to him in her voice, from the distant kitchenquarter.
"What are you doing down there at midnight--tiring yourself out fornothing!"
"I am not sleepy; I am reading; and there is a larger fire here."
He went to bed. Some time in the night he awoke. She was not there,even now. Lighting a candle he hastily stepped out upon the landing,and again called her name.
She answered "Yes!" as before, but the tones were small and confined,and whence they came he could not at first understand. Under thestaircase was a large clothes-closet, without a window; they seemedto come from it. The door was shut, but there was no lock or otherfastening. Phillotson, alarmed, went towards it, wondering if shehad suddenly become deranged.
"What are you doing in there?" he asked.
"Not to disturb you I came here, as it was so late."
"But there's no bed, is there? And no ventilation! Why, you'll besuffocated if you stay all night!"
"Oh no, I think not. Don't trouble about me."
"But--" Phillotson seized the knob and pulled at the door. She hadfastened it inside with a piece of string, which broke at his pull.There being no bedstead she had flung down some rugs and made alittle nest for herself in the very cramped quarters the closetafforded.
When he looked in upon her she sprang out of her lair, great-eyed andtrembling.
"You ought not to have pulled open the door!" she cried excitedly."It is not becoming in you! Oh, will you go away; please will you!"
She looked so pitiful and pleading in her white nightgown against theshadowy lumber-hole that he was quite worried. She continued tobeseech him not to disturb her.
He said: "I've been kind to you, and given you every liberty; and itis monstrous that you should feel in this way!"
"Yes," said she, weeping. "I know that! It is wrong and wicked ofme, I suppose! I am very sorry. But it is not I altogether that amto blame!"
"Who is then? Am I?"
"No--I don't know! The universe, I suppose--things in general,because they are so horrid and cruel!"
"Well, it is no use talking like that. Making a man's house sounseemly at this time o' night! Eliza will hear if we don't mind."(He meant the servant.) "Just think if either of the parsons in thistown was to see us now! I hate such eccentricities, Sue. There's noorder or regularity in your sentiments! ... But I won't intrude onyou further; only I would advise you not to shut the door too tight,or I shall find you stifled to-morrow."
On rising the next morning he immediately looked into the closet, butSue had already gone downstairs. There was a little nest where shehad lain, and spiders' webs hung overhead. "What must a woman'saversion be when it is stronger than her fear of spiders!" he saidbitterly.
He found her sitting at the breakfast-table, and the meal beganalmost in silence, the burghers walking past upon the pavement--orrather roadway, pavements being scarce here--which was two or threefeet above the level of the parlour floor. They nodded down to thehappy couple their morning greetings, as they went on.
"Richard," she said all at once; "would you mind my living away fromyou?"
"Away from me? Why, that's what you were doing when I married you.What then was the meaning of marrying at all?"
"You wouldn't like me any the better for telling you."
"I don't object to know."
"Because I thought I could do nothing else. You had got my promise along time before that, remember. Then, as time went on, I regrettedI had promised you, and was trying to see an honourable way to breakit off. But as I couldn't I became rather reckless and carelessabout the conventions. Then you know what scandals were spread, andhow I was turned out of the training school you had taken such timeand trouble to prepare me for and get me into; and this frightenedme and it seemed then that the one thing I could do would be to letthe engagement stand. Of course I, of all people, ought not to havecared what was said, for it was just what I fancied I never did carefor. But I was a coward--as so many women are--and my theoreticunconventionality broke down. If that had not entered into the caseit would have been better to have hurt your feelings once for allthen, than to marry you and hurt them all my life after... And youwere so generous in never giving credit for a moment to the rumour."
"I am bound in honesty to tell you that I weighed its probability andinquired of your cousin about it."
"Ah!" she said with pained surprise.
"I didn't doubt you."
"But you inquired!"
"I took his word."
Her eyes had filled. "HE wouldn't have inquired!" she said."But you haven't answered me. Will you let me go away? I know howirregular it is of me to ask it--"
"It is irregular."
"But I do ask it! Domestic laws should be made according totemperaments, which should be classified. If people are at allpeculiar in character they have to suffer from the very rules thatproduce comfort in others! ... Will you let me?"
"But we married--"
"What is the use of thinking of laws and ordinances," she burst out,"if they make you miserable when you know you are committing no sin?"
"But you are committing a sin in not liking me."
"I DO like you! But I didn't reflect it would be--that it would beso much more than that... For a man and woman to live on intimateterms when one feels as I do is adultery, in any circumstances,however legal. There--I've said it! ... Will you let me, Richard?"
"You distress me, Susanna, by such importunity!"
"Why can't we agree to free each other? We made the compact, andsurely we can cancel it--not legally of course; but we can morally,especially as no new interests, in the shape of children, have arisento be looked after. Then we might be friends, and meet without painto either. Oh Richard, be my friend and have pity! We shall both bedead in a few years, and then what will it matter to anybody that yourelieved me from constraint for a little while? I daresay you thinkme eccentric, or super-sensitive, or something absurd. Well--whyshould I suffer for what I was born to be, if it doesn't hurt otherpeople?"
"But it does--it hurts ME! And you vowed to love me."
"Yes--that's it! I am in the wrong. I always am! It is as culpableto bind yourself to love always as to believe a creed always, and assilly as to vow always to like a particular food or drink!"
"And do you mean, by living away from me, living by yourself?"
"Well, if you insisted, yes. But I meant living with Jude."
"As his wife?"
"As I choose."
Phillotson writhed.
Sue continued: "She, or he, 'who lets the world, or his own portionof it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any otherfaculty than the apelike one of imitation.' J. S. Mill's words,those are. I have been reading it up. Why can't you act upon them?I wish to, always."
"What do I care about J. S. Mill!" moaned he. "I only want to leada quiet life! Do you mind my saying that I have guessed what neveronce occurred to me before our marriage--that you were in love, andare in love, with Jude Fawley!"
"You may go on guessing that I am, since you have begun. But do yousuppose that if I had been I should have asked you to let me go andlive with hi
m?"
The ringing of the school bell saved Phillotson from the necessity ofreplying at present to what apparently did not strike him as beingsuch a convincing _argumentum ad verecundiam_ as she, in her loss ofcourage at the last moment, meant it to appear. She was beginning tobe so puzzling and unstateable that he was ready to throw in with herother little peculiarities the extremest request which a wife couldmake.
They proceeded to the schools that morning as usual, Sue enteringthe class-room, where he could see the back of her head through theglass partition whenever he turned his eyes that way. As he went ongiving and hearing lessons his forehead and eyebrows twitched fromconcentrated agitation of thought, till at length he tore a scrapfrom a sheet of scribbling paper and wrote:
Your request prevents my attending to work at all. I don't know what I am doing! Was it seriously made?
He folded the piece of paper very small, and gave it to a littleboy to take to Sue. The child toddled off into the class-room.Phillotson saw his wife turn and take the note, and the bend of herpretty head as she read it, her lips slightly crisped, to preventundue expression under fire of so many young eyes. He could not seeher hands, but she changed her position, and soon the child returned,bringing nothing in reply. In a few minutes, however, one of Sue'sclass appeared, with a little note similar to his own. These wordsonly were pencilled therein:
I am sincerely sorry to say that it was seriously made.
Phillotson looked more disturbed than before, and the meeting-placeof his brows twitched again. In ten minutes he called up the childhe had just sent to her, and dispatched another missive:
God knows I don't want to thwart you in any reasonable way. My whole thought is to make you comfortable and happy. But I cannot agree to such a preposterous notion as your going to live with your lover. You would lose everybody's respect and regard; and so should I!
After an interval a similar part was enacted in the class-room, andan answer came:
I know you mean my good. But I don't want to be respectable! To produce "Human development in its richest diversity" (to quote your Humboldt) is to my mind far above respectability. No doubt my tastes are low--in your view--hopelessly low! If you won t let me go to him, will you grant me this one request--allow me to live in your house in a separate way?
To this he returned no answer.
She wrote again:
I know what you think. But cannot you have pity on me? I beg you to; I implore you to be merciful! I would not ask if I were not almost compelled by what I can't bear! No poor woman has ever wished more than I that Eve had not fallen, so that (as the primitive Christians believed) some harmless mode of vegetation might have peopled Paradise. But I won't trifle! Be kind to me--even though I have not been kind to you! I will go away, go abroad, anywhere, and never trouble you.
Nearly an hour passed, and then he returned an answer:
I do not wish to pain you. How well you KNOW I don't! Give me a little time. I am disposed to agree to your last request.
One line from her:
Thank you from my heart, Richard. I do not deserve your kindness.
All day Phillotson bent a dazed regard upon her through the glazedpartition; and he felt as lonely as when he had not known her.
But he was as good as his word, and consented to her living apartin the house. At first, when they met at meals, she had seemedmore composed under the new arrangement; but the irksomeness oftheir position worked on her temperament, and the fibres of hernature seemed strained like harp-strings. She talked vaguely andindiscriminately to prevent his talking pertinently.