Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/248

 "I don't think anything against him—to you, dear."

"And you won't say things to distress me, will you?"

"I will not."

He said no more, but he knew that, from some cause or other, in taking Phillotson as a husband, Sue felt that she had done what she ought not to have done.

They plunged into the concave field, on the other side of which rose the village—the field wherein Jude had received a thrashing from the farmer many years earlier. On ascending to the village and approaching the house they found Mrs. Edlin standing at the door, who at sight of them lifted her hands deprecatingly. "She's downstairs, if you'll believe me!" cried the widow. "Out o' bed she got, and nothing could turn her. What will come o't I do not know!"

On entering, there indeed by the fireplace sat the old woman, wrapped in blankets, and turning upon them a countenance like that of Sebastiano's Lazarus. They must have looked their amazement, for she said, in a hollow voice:

"Ah—sceered ye, have I! I wasn't going to bide up there no longer, to please nobody! 'Tis more than flesh and blood can bear, to be ordered to do this and that by a feller that don't know half as well as you do yourself!... Ah—you'll rue this marrying as well as he!" she added, turning to Sue. "All our family do—and nearly all everybody else's. You should have done as I did, you simpleton! And Phillotson, the school-master, of all men! What made 'ee marry him?"

"What makes most women marry, aunt?"

"Ah! You mean to say you loved the man!"

"I don't mean to say anything definite."

"Do ye love un?"

"Don't ask me, aunt."

"I can mind the man very well. A very civil, honorable liver; but Lord!—I don't want to wownd your feelings, but—there be certain men here and there that no