"I have only been married a month or two!" she went on, still
remaining bent upon the table, and sobbing into her hands. "And it
is said that what a woman shrinks from--in the early days of her
marriage--she shakes down to with comfortable indifference in half a
dozen years. But that is much like saying that the amputation of a
limb is no affliction, since a person gets comfortably accustomed to
the use of a wooden leg or arm in the course of time!"
Jude could hardly speak, but he said, "I thought there was something
wrong, Sue! Oh, I thought there was!"
"But it is not as you think!--there is nothing wrong except my own
wickedness, I suppose you'd call it--a repugnance on my part, for a
reason I cannot disclose, and what would not be admitted as one by
the world in general! ... What tortures me so much is the necessity
of being responsive to this man whenever he wishes, good as he is
morally!--the dreadful contract to feel in a particular way in a
matter whose essence is its voluntariness! ... I wish he would beat
me, or be faithless to me, or do some open thing that I could talk
about as a justification for feeling as I do! But he does nothing,
except that he has grown a little cold since he has found out how I
feel. That's why he didn't come to the funeral... Oh, I am very
miserable--I don't know what to do! ... Don't come near me, Jude,
because you mustn't. Don't--don't!"
But he had jumped up and put his face against hers--or rather against
her ear, her face being inaccessible.
"I told you not to, Jude!"
"I know you did--I only wish to--console you! It all arose through
my being married before we met, didn't it? You would have been my
wife, Sue, wouldn't you, if it hadn't been for that?"
Instead of replying she rose quickly, and saying she was going to
walk to her aunt's grave in the churchyard to recover herself, went
out of the house. Jude did not follow her. Twenty minutes later he
saw her cross the village green towards Mrs. Edlin's, and soon she
sent a little girl to fetch her bag, and tell him she was too tired
to see him again that night.
In the lonely room of his aunt's house, Jude sat watching the
cottage of the Widow Edlin as it disappeared behind the night shade.
He knew that Sue was sitting within its walls equally lonely and
disheartened; and again questioned his devotional motto that all was
for the best.