I Am Going Back to Richard — Jude the Obscure

Phillotson still lives at Marygreen. On the day before the children's deaths he saw Sue and Jude in the rain at the Christminster procession and said nothing to Gillingham. After his friend leaves he reads at Alfredston market of the strange suicide of a stone-mason's children. Their cup of sorrow is now full, he says, and wonders what Sue gained by leaving him. A few weeks later Arabella meets him on the old road. She has seen Jude. Sue does not live with him any longer. She has never really married him, and now she is in a queer religious way, saying she is Phillotson's wife in the eye of Heaven and the Church. He turns back for their address.

At the schoolhouse he pictures Sue coming out of the door. Charity has cost him the Shaston school and nearly starved him. He still thinks he was right to let her go, and he still wants her if she comes willingly. Remarriage on the plea that the divorce was wrongful might restore comfort, perhaps even a church licence. Gillingham says leave her; she is the wife of the man who had three children by her. They will not, Phillotson tells himself. He will use her new views on the indissolubility of marriage. He writes a careful letter, hides his heterodox feeling, and asks her to come to Marygreen.

A timid knock in the Beersheba fog. Sue will not come in. She is going back to Richard, who has agreed to forgive all, and they will remarry for form's sake. Jude says she is his wife: they closed with each other, and that made the marriage. She tells him to take back Arabella. She does not love Richard, but she will try to learn by obeying. She asks him to send her boxes. They part beside the children's graves. Charity seeketh not her own, she says. Good-bye, my mistaken wife.