Jude the Obsure

"No. Be hanged if I can... I don't know what the times be coming

to! Matrimony have growed to be that serious in these days that one

really do feel afeard to move in it at all. In my time we took it

more careless; and I don't know that we was any the worse for it!

When I and my poor man were jined in it we kept up the junketing all

the week, and drunk the parish dry, and had to borrow half a crown

to begin housekeeping!"

When Mrs. Edlin had gone back to her cottage Phillotson spoke

moodily. "I don't know whether I ought to do it--at any rate quite

so rapidly."

"Why?"

"If she is really compelling herself to this against her

instincts--merely from this new sense of duty or religion--I ought

perhaps to let her wait a bit."

"Now you've got so far you ought not to back out of it. That's my

opinion."

"I can't very well put it off now; that's true. But I had a qualm

when she gave that little cry at sight of the licence."

"Now, never you have qualms, old boy. I mean to give her away

to-morrow morning, and you mean to take her. It has always been on

my conscience that I didn't urge more objections to your letting her

go, and now we've got to this stage I shan't be content if I don't

help you to set the matter right."

Phillotson nodded, and seeing how staunch his friend was, became

more frank. "No doubt when it gets known what I've done I shall

be thought a soft fool by many. But they don't know Sue as I do.

Though so elusive, hers is such an honest nature at bottom that I

don't think she has ever done anything against her conscience. The

fact of her having lived with Fawley goes for nothing. At the time

she left me for him she thought she was quite within her right. Now

she thinks otherwise."

The next morning came, and the self-sacrifice of the woman on the

altar of what she was pleased to call her principles was acquiesced

in by these two friends, each from his own point of view. Phillotson

went across to the Widow Edlin's to fetch Sue a few minutes after

eight o'clock. The fog of the previous day or two on the low-lands

had travelled up here by now, and the trees on the green caught

armfuls, and turned them into showers of big drops. The bride was

waiting, ready; bonnet and all on. She had never in her life looked

so much like the lily her name connoted as she did in that pallid

morning light. Chastened, world-weary, remorseful, the strain on her

nerves had preyed upon her flesh and bones, and she appeared smaller

in outline than she had formerly done, though Sue had not been a

large woman in her days of rudest health.