Jude the Obscure

he schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.
The miller at Cresscombe lent him the small white tilted cart and horse
to carry his goods to the city of his destination, about twenty miles
off, such a vehicle proving of quite sufficient size for the departing
teacher’s effects. For the schoolhouse had been partly furnished by the
managers, and the only cumbersome article possessed by the master, in
addition to the packing-case of books, was a cottage piano that he had
bought at an auction during the year in which he thought of learning
instrumental music. But the enthusiasm having waned he had never
acquired any skill in playing, and the purchased article had been a
perpetual trouble to him ever since in moving house.

The rector had gone away for the day, being a man who disliked the
sight of changes. He did not mean to return till the evening, when the
new school-teacher would have arrived and settled in, and everything
would be smooth again.

The blacksmith, the farm bailiff, and the schoolmaster himself were
standing in perplexed attitudes in the parlour before the instrument.
The master had remarked that even if he got it into the cart he should
not know what to do with it on his arrival at Christminster, the city
he was bound for, since he was only going into temporary lodgings just
at first.

A little boy of eleven, who had been thoughtfully assisting in the
packing, joined the group of men, and as they rubbed their chins he
spoke up, blushing at the sound of his own voice: “Aunt have got a
great fuel-house, and it could be put there, perhaps, till you’ve found
a place to settle in, sir.”

“A proper good notion,” said the blacksmith.

It was decided that a deputation should wait on the boy’s aunt—an old
maiden resident—and ask her if she would house the piano till Mr.
Phillotson should send for it. The smith and the bailiff started to see
about the practicability of the suggested shelter, and the boy and the
schoolmaster were left standing alone.

“Sorry I am going, Jude?” asked the latter kindly.

Tears rose into the boy’s eyes, for he was not among the regular day
scholars, who came unromantically close to the schoolmaster’s life, but
one who had attended the night school only during the present teacher’s
term of office. The regular scholars, if the truth must be told, stood
at the present moment afar off, like certain historic disciples,
indisposed to any enthusiastic volunteering of aid.

The boy awkwardly opened the book he held in his hand, which Mr.
Phillotson had bestowed on him as a parting gift, and admitted that he
was sorry.

“So am I,” said Mr. Phillotson.

“Why do you go, sir?” asked the boy.

“Ah—that would be a long story. You wouldn’t understand my reasons,
Jude. You will, perhaps, when you are older.”

“I think I should now, sir.”

“Well—don’t speak of this everywhere. You know what a university is,
and a university degree? It is the necessary hallmark of a man who
wants to do anything in teaching. My scheme, or dream, is to be a
university graduate, and then to be ordained. By going to live at
Christminster, or near it, I shall be at headquarters, so to speak, and
if my scheme is practicable at all, I consider that being on the spot
will afford me a better chance of carrying it out than I should have
elsewhere.”

The smith and his companion returned. Old Miss Fawley’s fuel-house was
dry, and eminently practicable; and she seemed willing to give the
instrument standing-room there. It was accordingly left in the school
till the evening, when more hands would be available for removing it;
and the schoolmaster gave a final glance round.

The boy Jude assisted in loading some small articles, and at nine
o’clock Mr. Phillotson mounted beside his box of books and other
impedimenta, and bade his friends good-bye.

“I shan’t forget you, Jude,” he said, smiling, as the cart moved off.
“Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read
all you can. And if ever you come to Christminster remember you hunt me
out for old acquaintance’ sake.”

The cart creaked across the green, and disappeared round the corner by
the rectory-house. The boy returned to the draw-well at the edge of the
greensward, where he had left his buckets when he went to help his
patron and teacher in the loading. There was a quiver in his lip now
and after opening the well-cover to begin lowering the bucket he paused
and leant with his forehead and arms against the framework, his face
wearing the fixity of a thoughtful child’s who has felt the pricks of
life somewhat before his time. The well into which he was looking was
as ancient as the village itself, and from his present position
appeared as a long circular perspective ending in a shining disk of
quivering water at a distance of a hundred feet down. There was a
lining of green moss near the top, and nearer still the hart’s-tongue
fern.

He said to himself, in the melodramatic tones of a whimsical boy, that
the schoolmaster had drawn at that well scores of times on a morning
like this, and would never draw there any more. “I’ve seen him look
down into it, when he was tired with his drawing, just as I do now, and
when he rested a bit before carrying the buckets home! But he was too
clever to bide here any longer—a small sleepy place like this!”

A tear rolled from his eye into the depths of the well. The morning was
a little foggy, and the boy’s breathing unfurled itself as a thicker
fog upon the still and heavy air. His thoughts were interrupted by a
sudden outcry:

“Bring on that water, will ye, you idle young harlican!”

It came from an old woman who had emerged from her door towards the
garden gate of a green-thatched cottage not far off. The boy quickly
waved a signal of assent, drew the water with what was a great effort
for one of his stature, landed and emptied the big bucket into his own
pair of smaller ones, and pausing a moment for breath, started with
them across the patch of clammy greensward whereon the well
stood—nearly in the centre of the little village, or rather hamlet of
Marygreen.

It was as old-fashioned as it was small, and it rested in the lap of an
undulating upland adjoining the North Wessex downs. Old as it was,
however, the well-shaft was probably the only relic of the local
history that remained absolutely unchanged. Many of the thatched and
dormered dwelling-houses had been pulled down of late years, and many
trees felled on the green. Above all, the original church, hump-backed,
wood-turreted, and quaintly hipped, had been taken down, and either
cracked up into heaps of road-metal in the lane, or utilized as pig-sty
walls, garden seats, guard-stones to fences, and rockeries in the
flower-beds of the neighbourhood. In place of it a tall new building of
modern Gothic design, unfamiliar to English eyes, had been erected on a
new piece of ground by a certain obliterator of historic records who
had run down from London and back in a day. The site whereon so long
had stood the ancient temple to the Christian divinities was not even
recorded on the green and level grass-plot that had immemorially been
the churchyard, the obliterated graves being commemorated by
eighteen-penny cast-iron crosses warranted to last five years.