Jude the Obsure

"We have been doing such a funny thing!" said she, smiling candidly.

"We've been to the church, rehearsing as it were. Haven't we, Jude?"

"How?" said Phillotson curiously.

Jude inwardly deplored what he thought to be unnecessary frankness;

but she had gone too far not to explain all, which she accordingly

did, telling him how they had marched up to the altar.

Seeing how puzzled Phillotson seemed, Jude said as cheerfully as he

could, "I am going to buy her another little present. Will you both

come to the shop with me?"

"No," said Sue, "I'll go on to the house with him"; and requesting

her lover not to be a long time she departed with the schoolmaster.

Jude soon joined them at his rooms, and shortly after they prepared

for the ceremony. Phillotson's hair was brushed to a painful

extent, and his shirt collar appeared stiffer than it had been for

the previous twenty years. Beyond this he looked dignified and

thoughtful, and altogether a man of whom it was not unsafe to predict

that he would make a kind and considerate husband. That he adored

Sue was obvious; and she could almost be seen to feel that she was

undeserving his adoration.

Although the distance was so short he had hired a fly from the Red

Lion, and six or seven women and children had gathered by the door

when they came out. The schoolmaster and Sue were unknown, though

Jude was getting to be recognized as a citizen; and the couple were

judged to be some relations of his from a distance, nobody supposing

Sue to have been a recent pupil at the training school.

In the carriage Jude took from his pocket his extra little

wedding-present, which turned out to be two or three yards of white

tulle, which he threw over her bonnet and all, as a veil.

"It looks so odd over a bonnet," she said. "I'll take the bonnet

off."

"Oh no--let it stay," said Phillotson. And she obeyed.

When they had passed up the church and were standing in their places

Jude found that the antecedent visit had certainly taken off the edge

of this performance, but by the time they were half-way on with the

service he wished from his heart that he had not undertaken the

business of giving her away. How could Sue have had the temerity to

ask him to do it--a cruelty possibly to herself as well as to him?

Women were different from men in such matters. Was it that they

were, instead of more sensitive, as reputed, more callous, and less

romantic; or were they more heroic? Or was Sue simply so perverse

that she wilfully gave herself and him pain for the odd and mournful

luxury of practising long-suffering in her own person, and of being

touched with tender pity for him at having made him practise it? He

could perceive that her face was nervously set, and when they reached

the trying ordeal of Jude giving her to Phillotson she could hardly

command herself; rather, however, as it seemed, from her knowledge of

what her cousin must feel, whom she need not have had there at all,

than from self-consideration. Possibly she would go on inflicting

such pains again and again, and grieving for the sufferer again and

again, in all her colossal inconsistency.