Jude the Obscure

Chapter 10

The night had seemed strangely silent. Jude looked out of the window

long before dawn, and perceived that the ground was covered with

snow--snow rather deep for the season, it seemed, a few flakes still

falling.

"I'm afraid the pig-killer won't be able to come," he said to

Arabella.

"Oh, he'll come. You must get up and make the water hot, if you want

Challow to scald him. Though I like singeing best."

"I'll get up," said Jude. "I like the way of my own county."

He went downstairs, lit the fire under the copper, and began feeding

it with bean-stalks, all the time without a candle, the blaze

flinging a cheerful shine into the room; though for him the sense of

cheerfulness was lessened by thoughts on the reason of that blaze--to

heat water to scald the bristles from the body of an animal that as

yet lived, and whose voice could be continually heard from a corner

of the garden. At half-past six, the time of appointment with the

butcher, the water boiled, and Jude's wife came downstairs.

"Is Challow come?" she asked.

"No."

They waited, and it grew lighter, with the dreary light of a snowy

dawn. She went out, gazed along the road, and returning said, "He's

not coming. Drunk last night, I expect. The snow is not enough to

hinder him, surely!"

"Then we must put it off. It is only the water boiled for nothing.

The snow may be deep in the valley."

"Can't be put off. There's no more victuals for the pig. He ate the

last mixing o' barleymeal yesterday morning."

"Yesterday morning? What has he lived on since?"

"Nothing."

"What--he has been starving?"

"Yes. We always do it the last day or two, to save bother with the

innerds. What ignorance, not to know that!"

"That accounts for his crying so. Poor creature!"

"Well--you must do the sticking--there's no help for it. I'll show

you how. Or I'll do it myself--I think I could. Though as it is

such a big pig I had rather Challow had done it. However, his basket

o' knives and things have been already sent on here, and we can use

'em."

"Of course you shan't do it," said Jude. "I'll do it, since it must

be done."

He went out to the sty, shovelled away the snow for the space of a

couple of yards or more, and placed the stool in front, with the

knives and ropes at hand. A robin peered down at the preparations

from the nearest tree, and, not liking the sinister look of the

scene, flew away, though hungry. By this time Arabella had joined

her husband, and Jude, rope in hand, got into the sty, and noosed the

affrighted animal, who, beginning with a squeak of surprise, rose to

repeated cries of rage. Arabella opened the sty-door, and together

they hoisted the victim on to the stool, legs upward, and while Jude

held him Arabella bound him down, looping the cord over his legs to

keep him from struggling.

The animal's note changed its quality. It was not now rage, but the

cry of despair; long-drawn, slow and hopeless.

"Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have had

this to do!" said Jude. "A creature I have fed with my own hands."

"Don't be such a tender-hearted fool! There's the sticking-knife--

the one with the point. Now whatever you do, don't stick un too

deep."

"I'll stick him effectually, so as to make short work of it. That's

the chief thing."

"You must not!" she cried. "The meat must be well bled, and to do

that he must die slow. We shall lose a shilling a score if the meat

is red and bloody! Just touch the vein, that's all. I was brought

up to it, and I know. Every good butcher keeps un bleeding long.

He ought to be eight or ten minutes dying, at least."

"He shall not be half a minute if I can help it, however the meat may

look," said Jude determinedly. Scraping the bristles from the pig's

upturned throat, as he had seen the butchers do, he slit the fat;

then plunged in the knife with all his might.

"'Od damn it all!" she cried, "that ever I should say it! You've

over-stuck un! And I telling you all the time--"

"Do be quiet, Arabella, and have a little pity on the creature!"

"Hold up the pail to catch the blood, and don't talk!"

However unworkmanlike the deed, it had been mercifully done. The

blood flowed out in a torrent instead of in the trickling stream she

had desired. The dying animal's cry assumed its third and final

tone, the shriek of agony; his glazing eyes riveting themselves on

Arabella with the eloquently keen reproach of a creature recognizing

at last the treachery of those who had seemed his only friends.

"Make un stop that!" said Arabella. "Such a noise will bring

somebody or other up here, and I don't want people to know we are

doing it ourselves." Picking up the knife from the ground whereon

Jude had flung it, she slipped it into the gash, and slit the

windpipe. The pig was instantly silent, his dying breath coming

through the hole.

"That's better," she said.

"It is a hateful business!" said he.

"Pigs must be killed."

The animal heaved in a final convulsion, and, despite the rope,

kicked out with all his last strength. A tablespoonful of black

clot came forth, the trickling of red blood having ceased for some

seconds.

"That's it; now he'll go," said she. "Artful creatures--they always

keep back a drop like that as long as they can!"

The last plunge had come so unexpectedly as to make Jude stagger, and

in recovering himself he kicked over the vessel in which the blood

had been caught.

"There!" she cried, thoroughly in a passion. "Now I can't make any

blackpot. There's a waste, all through you!"

Jude put the pail upright, but only about a third of the whole

steaming liquid was left in it, the main part being splashed over

the snow, and forming a dismal, sordid, ugly spectacle--to those who

saw it as other than an ordinary obtaining of meat. The lips and

nostrils of the animal turned livid, then white, and the muscles of

his limbs relaxed.

"Thank God!" Jude said. "He's dead."

"What's God got to do with such a messy job as a pig-killing, I

should like to know!" she said scornfully. "Poor folks must live."

"I know, I know," said he. "I don't scold you."

Suddenly they became aware of a voice at hand.

"Well done, young married volk! I couldn't have carried it out much

better myself, cuss me if I could!" The voice, which was husky,

came from the garden-gate, and looking up from the scene of slaughter

they saw the burly form of Mr. Challow leaning over the gate,

critically surveying their performance.

"'Tis well for 'ee to stand there and glane!" said Arabella. "Owing

to your being late the meat is blooded and half spoiled! 'Twon't

fetch so much by a shilling a score!"

Challow expressed his contrition. "You should have waited a bit"

he said, shaking his head, "and not have done this--in the delicate

state, too, that you be in at present, ma'am. 'Tis risking yourself

too much."

"You needn't be concerned about that," said Arabella, laughing.

Jude too laughed, but there was a strong flavour of bitterness in

his amusement.

Challow made up for his neglect of the killing by zeal in the

scalding and scraping. Jude felt dissatisfied with himself as a man

at what he had done, though aware of his lack of common sense, and

that the deed would have amounted to the same thing if carried out by

deputy. The white snow, stained with the blood of his fellow-mortal,

wore an illogical look to him as a lover of justice, not to say a

Christian; but he could not see how the matter was to be mended. No

doubt he was, as his wife had called him, a tender-hearted fool.

He did not like the road to Alfredston now. It stared him cynically

in the face. The wayside objects reminded him so much of his

courtship of his wife that, to keep them out of his eyes, he

read whenever he could as he walked to and from his work. Yet

he sometimes felt that by caring for books he was not escaping

common-place nor gaining rare ideas, every working-man being of that

taste now. When passing near the spot by the stream on which he had

first made her acquaintance he one day heard voices just as he had

done at that earlier time. One of the girls who had been Arabella's

companions was talking to a friend in a shed, himself being the

subject of discourse, possibly because they had seen him in the

distance. They were quite unaware that the shed-walls were so thin

that he could hear their words as he passed.

"Howsomever, 'twas I put her up to it! 'Nothing venture nothing

have,' I said. If I hadn't she'd no more have been his mis'ess than

I."

"'Tis my belief she knew there was nothing the matter when she told

him she was..."

What had Arabella been put up to by this woman, so that he should

make her his "mis'ess," otherwise wife? The suggestion was horridly

unpleasant, and it rankled in his mind so much that instead of

entering his own cottage when he reached it he flung his basket

inside the garden-gate and passed on, determined to go and see his

old aunt and get some supper there.

This made his arrival home rather late. Arabella however, was busy

melting down lard from fat of the deceased pig, for she had been out

on a jaunt all day, and so delayed her work. Dreading lest what he

had heard should lead him to say something regrettable to her he

spoke little. But Arabella was very talkative, and said among other

things that she wanted some money. Seeing the book sticking out of

his pocket she added that he ought to earn more.

"An apprentice's wages are not meant to be enough to keep a wife on,

as a rule, my dear."

"Then you shouldn't have had one."

"Come, Arabella! That's too bad, when you know how it came about."

"I'll declare afore Heaven that I thought what I told you was true.

Doctor Vilbert thought so. It was a good job for you that it wasn't

so!"

"I don't mean that," he said hastily. "I mean before that time.

I know it was not your fault; but those women friends of yours gave

you bad advice. If they hadn't, or you hadn't taken it, we should at

this moment have been free from a bond which, not to mince matters,

galls both of us devilishly. It may be very sad, but it is true."

"Who's been telling you about my friends? What advice? I insist

upon you telling me."

"Pooh--I'd rather not."

"But you shall--you ought to. It is mean of 'ee not to!"

"Very well." And he hinted gently what had been revealed to him.

"But I don't wish to dwell upon it. Let us say no more about it."

Her defensive manner collapsed. "That was nothing," she said,

laughing coldly. "Every woman has a right to do such as that. The

risk is hers."

"I quite deny it, Bella. She might if no lifelong penalty attached

to it for the man, or, in his default, for herself; if the weakness

of the moment could end with the moment, or even with the year.

But when effects stretch so far she should not go and do that which

entraps a man if he is honest, or herself if he is otherwise."

"What ought I to have done?"

"Given me time... Why do you fuss yourself about melting down that

pig's fat to-night? Please put it away!"

"Then I must do it to-morrow morning. It won't keep."

"Very well--do."