Jude the Obsure

"Oh--how stupid this is! I thought my visitor was--your friend--your

husband--Mrs. Fawley, as I suppose you call yourself?" said Arabella,

flinging her head back upon the pillows with a disappointed toss, and

ceasing to retain the dimple she had just taken the trouble to

produce.

"Indeed I don't," said Sue.

"Oh, I thought you might have, even if he's not really yours.

Decency is decency, any hour of the twenty-four."

"I don't know what you mean," said Sue stiffly. "He is mine, if you

come to that!"

"He wasn't yesterday."

Sue coloured roseate, and said, "How do you know?"

"From your manner when you talked to me at the door. Well, my dear,

you've been quick about it, and I expect my visit last night helped

it on--ha-ha! But I don't want to get him away from you."

Sue looked out at the rain, and at the dirty toilet-cover, and at the

detached tail of Arabella's hair hanging on the looking-glass, just

as it had done in Jude's time; and wished she had not come. In the

pause there was a knock at the door, and the chambermaid brought in a

telegram for "Mrs. Cartlett."

Arabella opened it as she lay, and her ruffled look disappeared.

"I am much obliged to you for your anxiety about me," she said

blandly when the maid had gone; "but it is not necessary you should

feel it. My man finds he can't do without me after all, and agrees

to stand by the promise to marry again over here that he has made me

all along. See here! This is in answer to one from me." She held

out the telegram for Sue to read, but Sue did not take it. "He asks

me to come back. His little corner public in Lambeth would go to

pieces without me, he says. But he isn't going to knock me about

when he has had a drop, any more after we are spliced by English law

than before! ... As for you, I should coax Jude to take me before

the parson straight off, and have done with it, if I were in your

place. I say it as a friend, my dear."

"He's waiting to, any day," returned Sue, with frigid pride.

"Then let him, in Heaven's name. Life with a man is more

businesslike after it, and money matters work better. And then, you

see, if you have rows, and he turns you out of doors, you can get the

law to protect you, which you can't otherwise, unless he half-runs

you through with a knife, or cracks your noddle with a poker. And

if he bolts away from you--I say it friendly, as woman to woman, for

there's never any knowing what a man med do--you'll have the sticks

o' furniture, and won't be looked upon as a thief. I shall marry my

man over again, now he's willing, as there was a little flaw in the

first ceremony. In my telegram last night which this is an answer

to, I told him I had almost made it up with Jude; and that frightened

him, I expect! Perhaps I should quite have done it if it hadn't been

for you," she said laughing; "and then how different our histories

might have been from to-day! Never such a tender fool as Jude is if

a woman seems in trouble, and coaxes him a bit! Just as he used to

be about birds and things. However, as it happens, it is just as

well as if I had made it up, and I forgive you. And, as I say, I'd

advise you to get the business legally done as soon as possible.

You'll find it an awful bother later on if you don't."