Jude the Obsure

His voice rose in sudden anger. "Now who wants such a woman here?

and perhaps a confinement! ... Besides, didn't I say I wouldn't have

children? The hall and stairs fresh painted, to be kicked about by

them! You must have known all was not straight with 'em--coming like

that. Taking in a family when I said a single man."

The wife expostulated, but, as it seemed, the husband insisted on

his point; for presently a tap came to Sue's door, and the woman

appeared.

"I am sorry to tell you, ma'am," she said, "that I can't let you have

the room for the week after all. My husband objects; and therefore

I must ask you to go. I don't mind your staying over to-night, as

it is getting late in the afternoon; but I shall be glad if you can

leave early in the morning."

Though she knew that she was entitled to the lodging for a week, Sue

did not wish to create a disturbance between the wife and husband,

and she said she would leave as requested. When the landlady had

gone Sue looked out of the window again. Finding that the rain had

ceased she proposed to the boy that, after putting the little ones

to bed, they should go out and search about for another place, and

bespeak it for the morrow, so as not to be so hard-driven then as

they had been that day.

Therefore, instead of unpacking her boxes, which had just been sent

on from the station by Jude, they sallied out into the damp though

not unpleasant streets, Sue resolving not to disturb her husband

with the news of her notice to quit while he was perhaps worried

in obtaining a lodging for himself. In the company of the boy she

wandered into this street and into that; but though she tried a dozen

different houses she fared far worse alone than she had fared in

Jude's company, and could get nobody to promise her a room for the

following day. Every householder looked askance at such a woman and

child inquiring for accommodation in the gloom.

"I ought not to be born, ought I?" said the boy with misgiving.

Thoroughly tired at last Sue returned to the place where she was

not welcome, but where at least she had temporary shelter. In her

absence Jude had left his address; but knowing how weak he still was

she adhered to her determination not to disturb him till the next

day.

II

Sue sat looking at the bare floor of the room, the house being little

more than an old intramural cottage, and then she regarded the scene

outside the uncurtained window. At some distance opposite, the outer

walls of Sarcophagus College--silent, black, and windowless--threw

their four centuries of gloom, bigotry, and decay into the little

room she occupied, shutting out the moonlight by night and the sun by

day. The outlines of Rubric College also were discernible beyond the

other, and the tower of a third farther off still. She thought of

the strange operation of a simple-minded man's ruling passion, that

it should have led Jude, who loved her and the children so tenderly,

to place them here in this depressing purlieu, because he was still

haunted by his dream. Even now he did not distinctly hear the

freezing negative that those scholared walls had echoed to his

desire.