Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (bearly read books txt) 📗

sitting silent, his quaint and weird face set, and his eyes resting on things they did not see in the substantial world.

“His face is like the tragic mask of Melpomene,” said Sue. “What is your name, dear? Did you tell us?”

“Little Father Time is what they always called me. It is a nickname; because I look so aged, they say.”

“And you talk so, too,” said Sue tenderly. “It is strange, Jude, that these preternaturally old boys almost always come from new countries. But what were you christened?”

“I never was.”

“Why was that?”

“Because, if I died in damnation, ’twould save the expense of a Christian funeral.”

“O⁠—your name is not Jude, then?” said his father with some disappointment.

The boy shook his head. “Never heerd on it.”

“Of course not,” said Sue quickly; “since she was hating you all the time!”

“We’ll have him christened,” said Jude; and privately to Sue: “The day we are married.” Yet the advent of the child disturbed him.

Their position lent them shyness, and having an impression that a marriage at a Superintendent Registrar’s office was more private than an ecclesiastical one, they decided to avoid a church this time. Both Sue and Jude together went to the office of the district to give notice: they had become such companions that they could hardly do anything of importance except in each other’s company.

Jude Fawley signed the form of notice, Sue looking over his shoulder and watching his hand as it traced the words. As she read the foursquare undertaking, never before seen by her, into which her own and Jude’s names were inserted, and by which that very volatile essence, their love for each other, was supposed to be made permanent, her face seemed to grow painfully apprehensive. “Names and Surnames of the Parties”⁠—(they were to be parties now, not lovers, she thought). “Condition”⁠—(a horrid idea)⁠—“Rank or Occupation”⁠—“Age”⁠—“Dwelling at”⁠—“Length of Residence”⁠—“Church or Building in which the Marriage is to be solemnized”⁠—“District and County in which the Parties respectively dwell.”

“It spoils the sentiment, doesn’t it!” she said on their way home. “It seems making a more sordid business of it even than signing the contract in a vestry. There is a little poetry in a church. But we’ll try to get through with it, dearest, now.”

“We will. ‘For what man is he that hath betrothed a wife and hath not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her.’ So said the Jewish lawgiver.”

“How you know the Scriptures, Jude! You really ought to have been a parson. I can only quote profane writers!”

During the interval before the issuing of the certificate Sue, in her housekeeping errands, sometimes walked past the office, and furtively glancing in saw affixed to the wall the notice of the purposed clinch to their union. She could not bear its aspect. Coming after her previous experience of matrimony, all the romance of their attachment seemed to be starved away by placing her present case in the same category. She was usually leading little Father Time by the hand, and fancied that people thought him hers, and regarded the intended ceremony as the patching up of an old error.

Meanwhile Jude decided to link his present with his past in some slight degree by inviting to the wedding the only person remaining on earth who was associated with his early life at Marygreen⁠—the aged widow Mrs. Edlin, who had been his great-aunt’s friend and nurse in her last illness. He hardly expected that she would come; but she did, bringing singular presents, in the form of apples, jam, brass snuffers, an ancient pewter dish, a warming-pan, and an enormous bag of goose feathers towards a bed. She was allotted the spare room in Jude’s house, whither she retired early, and where they could hear her through the ceiling below, honestly saying the Lord’s Prayer in a loud voice, as the Rubric directed.

As, however, she could not sleep, and discovered that Sue and Jude were still sitting up⁠—it being in fact only ten o’clock⁠—she dressed herself again, and came down; and they all sat by the fire till a late hour⁠—Father Time included; though, as he never spoke, they were hardly conscious of him.

“Well, I bain’t set against marrying as your great-aunt was,” said the widow. “And I hope ’twill be a jocund wedding for ye in all respects this time. Nobody can hope it more, knowing what I do of your families, which is more, I suppose, than anybody else now living. For they have been unlucky that way, God knows.”

Sue breathed uneasily.

“They was always good-hearted people, too⁠—wouldn’t kill a fly if they knowed it,” continued the wedding guest. “But things happened to thwart ’em, and if everything wasn’t vitty they were upset. No doubt that’s how he that the tale is told of came to do what ’a did⁠—if he were one of your family.”

“What was that?” said Jude.

“Well⁠—that tale, ye know; he that was gibbeted just on the brow of the hill by the Brown House⁠—not far from the milestone between Marygreen and Alfredston, where the other road branches off. But Lord, ’twas in my grandfather’s time; and it medn’ have been one of your folk at all.”

“I know where the gibbet is said to have stood, very well,” murmured Jude. “But I never heard of this. What⁠—did this man⁠—my ancestor and Sue’s⁠—kill his wife?”

“ ’Twer not that exactly. She ran away from him, with their child, to her friends; and while she was there the child died. He wanted the body, to bury it where his people lay, but she wouldn’t give it up. Her husband then came in the night with a cart, and broke into the house to steal the coffin away; but he was catched, and being obstinate, wouldn’t tell what he broke in for. They brought it in burglary, and that’s why he was hanged and gibbeted on Brown House Hill. His wife went mad after he was dead. But it medn’ be