Jude the Obsure

They could hear from this chamber the people moving about above, and

she implored to be allowed to go back, and was only kept from doing

so by the assurance that, if there were any hope, her presence might

do harm, and the reminder that it was necessary to take care of

herself lest she should endanger a coming life. Her inquiries were

incessant, and at last Jude came down and told her there was no hope.

As soon as she could speak she informed him what she had said to the

boy, and how she thought herself the cause of this.

"No," said Jude. "It was in his nature to do it. The doctor says

there are such boys springing up amongst us--boys of a sort unknown

in the last generation--the outcome of new views of life. They seem

to see all its terrors before they are old enough to have staying

power to resist them. He says it is the beginning of the coming

universal wish not to live. He's an advanced man, the doctor: but

he can give no consolation to--"

Jude had kept back his own grief on account of her; but he now

broke down; and this stimulated Sue to efforts of sympathy which in

some degree distracted her from her poignant self-reproach. When

everybody was gone, she was allowed to see the children.

The boy's face expressed the whole tale of their situation. On

that little shape had converged all the inauspiciousness and shadow

which had darkened the first union of Jude, and all the accidents,

mistakes, fears, errors of the last. He was their nodal point, their

focus, their expression in a single term. For the rashness of those

parents he had groaned, for their ill assortment he had quaked, and

for the misfortunes of these he had died.

When the house was silent, and they could do nothing but await the

coroner's inquest, a subdued, large, low voice spread into the air of

the room from behind the heavy walls at the back.

"What is it?" said Sue, her spasmodic breathing suspended.

"The organ of the college chapel. The organist practising I suppose.

It's the anthem from the seventy-third Psalm; 'Truly God is loving

unto Israel.'"

She sobbed again. "Oh, oh my babies! They had done no harm! Why

should they have been taken away, and not I!"

There was another stillness--broken at last by two persons in

conversation somewhere without.

"They are talking about us, no doubt!" moaned Sue. "'We are made a

spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men!'"