A Queer Elopement — Jude the Obscure

Sue writes that she arrives at Melchester a little to seven and is frightened. The up-train stops by signal for a fugitive from her lawful home. Jude enters in his Sunday suit with a black bag. They are not staying. He has booked Aldbrickham, a town of sixty or seventy thousand who know nothing of them, and given up the cathedral work. He kisses her. Only once now, she says. Then he tells her Arabella has written for a divorce so she may honestly marry the Australian. He has agreed. He wired for one room at the Temperance Hotel. One? She bends her forehead to the corner. I didn't mean that.

She puts it down to timidity. If there had been a rope-ladder and pistols it would have seemed different. Phillotson's note makes one condition: be tender and kind. She was never so near being in love with him as when he arranged her comfort, and she does not love him. Jude fears she loves nobody. This is a queer elopement, he murmurs. She will not discuss it further.

They will not go to the Temperance after that telegram. A youth wheels them to the George, the inn of Jude's night with Arabella. He does not recognise the other door. The waiting-maid does. Sue cannot bear the place and will not take the room. He is not to approach her, nor anybody else. Friends can be jealous. When he says Arabella has already married another man, she gentles, still refuses the Temperance, and asks him to say Shelley's lines mean her. He may kiss the tip of her finger. Yes, sweet, he says, and bids her good-night.