Jude the Obsure

It was curious, he thought. What was he reserved for? He supposed

he was not a sufficiently dignified person for suicide. Peaceful

death abhorred him as a subject, and would not take him.

What could he do of a lower kind than self-extermination; what was

there less noble, more in keeping with his present degraded position?

He could get drunk. Of course that was it; he had forgotten.

Drinking was the regular, stereotyped resource of the despairing

worthless. He began to see now why some men boozed at inns. He

struck down the hill northwards and came to an obscure public-house.

On entering and sitting down the sight of the picture of Samson and

Delilah on the wall caused him to recognize the place as that he

had visited with Arabella on that first Sunday evening of their

courtship. He called for liquor and drank briskly for an hour or

more.

Staggering homeward late that night, with all his sense of

depression gone, and his head fairly clear still, he began to laugh

boisterously, and to wonder how Arabella would receive him in his

new aspect. The house was in darkness when he entered, and in

his stumbling state it was some time before he could get a light.

Then he found that, though the marks of pig-dressing, of fats and

scallops, were visible, the materials themselves had been taken away.

A line written by his wife on the inside of an old envelope was

pinned to the cotton blower of the fireplace: "_Have gone to my friends. Shall not return._"

All the next day he remained at home, and sent off the carcase of the

pig to Alfredston. He then cleaned up the premises, locked the door,

put the key in a place she would know if she came back, and returned

to his masonry at Alfredston.

At night when he again plodded home he found she had not visited the

house. The next day went in the same way, and the next. Then there

came a letter from her.

That she had gone tired of him she frankly admitted. He was such

a slow old coach, and she did not care for the sort of life he

led. There was no prospect of his ever bettering himself or her.

She further went on to say that her parents had, as he knew, for

some time considered the question of emigrating to Australia, the

pig-jobbing business being a poor one nowadays. They had at last

decided to go, and she proposed to go with them, if he had no

objection. A woman of her sort would have more chance over there

than in this stupid country.