Jude the Obsure

The small child squared its mouth and cried silently, with an

instinct that trouble loomed. The boy sighed. "I don't like

Christminster!" he said. "Are the great old houses gaols?"

"No; colleges," said Jude; "which perhaps you'll study in some day."

"I'd rather not!" the boy rejoined.

"Now we'll try again," said Sue. "I'll pull my cloak more round

me... Leaving Kennetbridge for this place is like coming from

Caiaphas to Pilate! ... How do I look now, dear?"

"Nobody would notice it now," said Jude.

There was one other house, and they tried a third time. The woman

here was more amiable; but she had little room to spare, and could

only agree to take in Sue and the children if her husband could go

elsewhere. This arrangement they perforce adopted, in the stress

from delaying their search till so late. They came to terms with

her, though her price was rather high for their pockets. But they

could not afford to be critical till Jude had time to get a more

permanent abode; and in this house Sue took possession of a back room

on the second floor with an inner closet-room for the children. Jude

stayed and had a cup of tea; and was pleased to find that the window

commanded the back of another of the colleges. Kissing all four he

went to get a few necessaries and look for lodgings for himself.

When he was gone the landlady came up to talk a little with Sue, and

gather something of the circumstances of the family she had taken in.

Sue had not the art of prevarication, and, after admitting several

facts as to their late difficulties and wanderings, she was startled

by the landlady saying suddenly: "Are you really a married woman?"

Sue hesitated; and then impulsively told the woman that her husband

and herself had each been unhappy in their first marriages, after

which, terrified at the thought of a second irrevocable union, and

lest the conditions of the contract should kill their love, yet

wishing to be together, they had literally not found the courage

to repeat it, though they had attempted it two or three times.

Therefore, though in her own sense of the words she was a married

woman, in the landlady's sense she was not.

The housewife looked embarrassed, and went downstairs. Sue sat by

the window in a reverie, watching the rain. Her quiet was broken by

the noise of someone entering the house, and then the voices of a

man and woman in conversation in the passage below. The landlady's

husband had arrived, and she was explaining to him the incoming of

the lodgers during his absence.