All Withered in a Few Days — Jude the Obscure

Early June, the shilling day of the Great Wessex Agricultural Show at Stoke-Barehills. From the London train Arabella glistens in beads like chain-mail beside Cartlett of the Three Horns. From the Aldbrickham train Sue, Jude, and the child step out just ahead. Arabella regulates their pace to keep in the rear. Cartlett still thinks her boy is at the Antipodes. She will not correct him. She parts from her husband at the refreshment tent so she can follow.

Anny of her girlhood and Dr. Vilbert cross her path. Vilbert sold her the dead languages once; now he sells two-and-threepenny pills and a phial he calls a love-philtre, a distillation of doves' hearts. She slips it into her bosom for some friend to try. At the band-stand Jude's hand seeks Sue's. Silly fools, she whispers, like two children. Cartlett she finds on a stool talking to a maid, and they leave the tent in the ordinary recriminatory mood of the average husband and wife of Christendom.

In the flower pavilion Sue puts her face an inch from the roses. Jude pushes her nose among the petals. She says she will tell the policeman it was her husband's fault. They have returned to Greek joyousness, she tells him, and have forgotten twenty-five centuries. There is one immediate shadow. The child knows what they are thinking. He would like the flowers very much, if he did not keep on thinking they would be all withered in a few days.