Jude the Obscure

e was a handy man at his trade, an all-round man, as artizans in
country-towns are apt to be. In London the man who carves the boss or
knob of leafage declines to cut the fragment of moulding which merges
in that leafage, as if it were a degradation to do the second half of
one whole. When there was not much Gothic moulding for Jude to run, or
much window-tracery on the bankers, he would go out lettering monuments
or tombstones, and take a pleasure in the change of handiwork.

The next time that he saw her was when he was on a ladder executing a
job of this sort inside one of the churches. There was a short morning
service, and when the parson entered Jude came down from his ladder,
and sat with the half-dozen people forming the congregation, till the
prayer should be ended, and he could resume his tapping. He did not
observe till the service was half over that one of the women was Sue,
who had perforce accompanied the elderly Miss Fontover thither.

Jude sat watching her pretty shoulders, her easy, curiously nonchalant
risings and sittings, and her perfunctory genuflexions, and thought
what a help such an Anglican would have been to him in happier
circumstances. It was not so much his anxiety to get on with his work
that made him go up to it immediately the worshipers began to take
their leave: it was that he dared not, in this holy spot, confront the
woman who was beginning to influence him in such an indescribable
manner. Those three enormous reasons why he must not attempt intimate
acquaintance with Sue Bridehead, now that his interest in her had shown
itself to be unmistakably of a sexual kind, loomed as stubbornly as
ever. But it was also obvious that man could not live by work alone;
that the particular man Jude, at any rate, wanted something to love.
Some men would have rushed incontinently to her, snatched the pleasure
of easy friendship which she could hardly refuse, and have left the
rest to chance. Not so Jude—at first.

But as the days, and still more particularly the lonely evenings,
dragged along, he found himself, to his moral consternation, to be
thinking more of her instead of thinking less of her, and experiencing
a fearful bliss in doing what was erratic, informal, and unexpected.
Surrounded by her influence all day, walking past the spots she
frequented, he was always thinking of her, and was obliged to own to
himself that his conscience was likely to be the loser in this battle.

To be sure she was almost an ideality to him still. Perhaps to know her
would be to cure himself of this unexpected and unauthorized passion. A
voice whispered that, though he desired to know her, he did not desire
to be cured.

There was not the least doubt that from his own orthodox point of view
the situation was growing immoral. For Sue to be the loved one of a man
who was licensed by the laws of his country to love Arabella and none
other unto his life’s end, was a pretty bad second beginning when the
man was bent on such a course as Jude purposed. This conviction was so
real with him that one day when, as was frequent, he was at work in a
neighbouring village church alone, he felt it to be his duty to pray
against his weakness. But much as he wished to be an exemplar in these
things he could not get on. It was quite impossible, he found, to ask
to be delivered from temptation when your heart’s desire was to be
tempted unto seventy times seven. So he excused himself. “After all,”
he said, “it is not altogether an erotolepsy that is the matter with
me, as at that first time. I can see that she is exceptionally bright;
and it is partly a wish for intellectual sympathy, and a craving for
loving-kindness in my solitude.” Thus he went on adoring her, fearing
to realize that it was human perversity. For whatever Sue’s virtues,
talents, or ecclesiastical saturation, it was certain that those items
were not at all the cause of his affection for her.

On an afternoon at this time a young girl entered the stone-mason’s
yard with some hesitation, and, lifting her skirts to avoid draggling
them in the white dust, crossed towards the office.

“That’s a nice girl,” said one of the men known as Uncle Joe.

“Who is she?” asked another.

“I don’t know—I’ve seen her about here and there. Why, yes, she’s the
daughter of that clever chap Bridehead who did all the wrought ironwork
at St. Silas’ ten years ago, and went away to London afterwards. I
don’t know what he’s doing now—not much I fancy—as she’s come back
here.”

Meanwhile the young woman had knocked at the office door and asked if
Mr. Jude Fawley was at work in the yard. It so happened that Jude had
gone out somewhere or other that afternoon, which information she
received with a look of disappointment, and went away immediately. When
Jude returned they told him, and described her, whereupon he exclaimed,
“Why—that’s my cousin Sue!”

He looked along the street after her, but she was out of sight. He had
no longer any thought of a conscientious avoidance of her, and resolved
to call upon her that very evening. And when he reached his lodging he
found a note from her—a first note—one of those documents which, simple
and commonplace in themselves, are seen retrospectively to have been
pregnant with impassioned consequences. The very unconsciousness of a
looming drama which is shown in such innocent first epistles from women
to men, or vice versa, makes them, when such a drama follows, and
they are read over by the purple or lurid light of it, all the more
impressive, solemn, and in cases, terrible.

Sue’s was of the most artless and natural kind. She addressed him as
her dear cousin Jude; said she had only just learnt by the merest
accident that he was living in Christminster, and reproached him with
not letting her know. They might have had such nice times together, she
said, for she was thrown much upon herself, and had hardly any
congenial friend. But now there was every probability of her soon going
away, so that the chance of companionship would be lost perhaps for
ever.

A cold sweat overspread Jude at the news that she was going away. That
was a contingency he had never thought of, and it spurred him to write
all the more quickly to her. He would meet her that very evening, he
said, one hour from the time of writing, at the cross in the pavement
which marked the spot of the Martyrdoms.

When he had despatched the note by a boy he regretted that in his hurry
he should have suggested to her to meet him out of doors, when he might
have said he would call upon her. It was, in fact, the country custom
to meet thus, and nothing else had occurred to him. Arabella had been
met in the same way, unfortunately, and it might not seem respectable
to a dear girl like Sue. However, it could not be helped now, and he
moved towards the point a few minutes before the hour, under the
glimmer of the newly lighted lamps.

The broad street was silent, and almost deserted, although it was not
late. He saw a figure on the other side, which turned out to be hers,
and they both converged towards the crossmark at the same moment.
Before either had reached it she called out to him:

“I am not going to meet you just there, for the first time in my life!
Come further on.”

The voice, though positive and silvery, had been tremulous. They walked
on in parallel lines, and, waiting her pleasure, Jude watched till she
showed signs of closing in, when he did likewise, the place being where
the carriers’ carts stood in the daytime, though there was none on the
spot then.

“I am sorry that I asked you to meet me, and didn’t call,” began Jude
with the bashfulness of a lover. “But I thought it would save time if
we were going to walk.”

“Oh—I don’t mind that,” she said with the freedom of a friend. “I have
really no place to ask anybody in to. What I meant was that the place
you chose was so horrid—I suppose I ought not to say horrid—I mean
gloomy and inauspicious in its associations… But isn’t it funny to
begin like this, when I don’t know you yet?” She looked him up and down
curiously, though Jude did not look much at her.

“You seem to know me more than I know you,” she added.

“Yes—I have seen you now and then.”

“And you knew who I was, and didn’t speak? And now I am going away!”

“Yes. That’s unfortunate. I have hardly any other friend. I have,
indeed, one very old friend here somewhere, but I don’t quite like to
call on him just yet. I wonder if you know anything of him—Mr.
Phillotson? A parson somewhere about the county I think he is.”

“No—I only know of one Mr. Phillotson. He lives a little way out in the
country, at Lumsdon. He’s a village schoolmaster.”

“Ah! I wonder if he’s the same. Surely it is impossible! Only a
schoolmaster still! Do you know his Christian name—is it Richard?”

“Yes—it is; I’ve directed books to him, though I’ve never seen him.”

“Then he couldn’t do it!”

Jude’s countenance fell, for how could he succeed in an enterprise
wherein the great Phillotson had failed? He would have had a day of
despair if the news had not arrived during his sweet Sue’s presence,
but even at this moment he had visions of how Phillotson’s failure in
the grand university scheme would depress him when she had gone.

“As we are going to take a walk, suppose we go and call upon him?” said
Jude suddenly. “It is not late.”

She agreed, and they went along up a hill, and through some prettily
wooded country. Presently the embattled tower and square turret of the
church rose into the sky, and then the school-house. They inquired of a
person in the street if Mr. Phillotson was likely to be at home, and
were informed that he was always at home. A knock brought him to the
school-house door, with a candle in his hand and a look of inquiry on
his face, which had grown thin and careworn since Jude last set eyes on
him.

That after all these years the meeting with Mr. Phillotson should be of
this homely complexion destroyed at one stroke the halo which had
surrounded the school-master’s figure in Jude’s imagination ever since
their parting. It created in him at the same time a sympathy with
Phillotson as an obviously much chastened and disappointed man. Jude
told him his name, and said he had come to see him as an old friend who
had been kind to him in his youthful days.

“I don’t remember you in the least,” said the school-master
thoughtfully. “You were one of my pupils, you say? Yes, no doubt; but
they number so many thousands by this time of my life, and have
naturally changed so much, that I remember very few except the quite
recent ones.”

“It was out at Marygreen,” said Jude, wishing he had not come.

“Yes. I was there a short time. And is this an old pupil, too?”

“No—that’s my cousin… I wrote to you for some grammars, if you
recollect, and you sent them?”

“Ah—yes!—I do dimly recall that incident.”

“It was very kind of you to do it. And it was you who first started me
on that course. On the morning you left Marygreen, when your goods were
on the waggon, you wished me good-bye, and said your scheme was to be a
university man and enter the Church—that a degree was the necessary
hall-mark of one who wanted to do anything as a theologian or teacher.”

“I remember I thought all that privately; but I wonder I did not keep
my own counsel. The idea was given up years ago.”

“I have never forgotten it. It was that which brought me to this part
of the country, and out here to see you to-night.”

“Come in,” said Phillotson. “And your cousin, too.”

They entered the parlour of the school-house, where there was a lamp
with a paper shade, which threw the light down on three or four books.
Phillotson took it off, so that they could see each other better, and
the rays fell on the nervous little face and vivacious dark eyes and
hair of Sue, on the earnest features of her cousin, and on the
schoolmaster’s own maturer face and figure, showing him to be a spare
and thoughtful personage of five-and-forty, with a thin-lipped,
somewhat refined mouth, a slightly stooping habit, and a black frock
coat, which from continued frictions shone a little at the
shoulder-blades, the middle of the back, and the elbows.

The old friendship was imperceptibly renewed, the schoolmaster speaking
of his experiences, and the cousins of theirs. He told them that he
still thought of the Church sometimes, and that though he could not
enter it as he had intended to do in former years he might enter it as
a licentiate. Meanwhile, he said, he was comfortable in his present
position, though he was in want of a pupil-teacher.

They did not stay to supper, Sue having to be indoors before it grew
late, and the road was retraced to Christminster. Though they had
talked of nothing more than general subjects, Jude was surprised to
find what a revelation of woman his cousin was to him. She was so
vibrant that everything she did seemed to have its source in feeling.
An exciting thought would make her walk ahead so fast that he could
hardly keep up with her; and her sensitiveness on some points was such
that it might have been misread as vanity. It was with heart-sickness
he perceived that, while her sentiments towards him were those of the
frankest friendliness only, he loved her more than before becoming
acquainted with her; and the gloom of the walk home lay not in the
night overhead, but in the thought of her departure.

“Why must you leave Christminster?” he said regretfully. “How can you
do otherwise than cling to a city in whose history such men as Newman,
Pusey, Ward, Keble, loom so large!”

“Yes—they do. Though how large do they loom in the history of the
world? … What a funny reason for caring to stay! I should never have
thought of it!” She laughed.

“Well—I must go,” she continued. “Miss Fontover, one of the partners
whom I serve, is offended with me, and I with her; and it is best to
go.”

“How did that happen?”

“She broke some statuary of mine.”

“Oh? Wilfully?”

“Yes. She found it in my room, and though it was my property she threw
it on the floor and stamped on it, because it was not according to her
taste, and ground the arms and the head of one of the figures all to
bits with her heel—a horrid thing!”

“Too Catholic-Apostolic for her, I suppose? No doubt she called them
popish images and talked of the invocation of saints.”

“No… No, she didn’t do that. She saw the matter quite differently.”

“Ah! Then I am surprised!”

“Yes. It was for quite some other reason that she didn’t like my
patron-saints. So I was led to retort upon her; and the end of it was
that I resolved not to stay, but to get into an occupation in which I
shall be more independent.”

“Why don’t you try teaching again? You once did, I heard.”

“I never thought of resuming it; for I was getting on as an
art-designer.”

“Do let me ask Mr. Phillotson to let you try your hand in his school?
If you like it, and go to a training college, and become a first-class
certificated mistress, you get twice as large an income as any designer
or church artist, and twice as much freedom.”

“Well—ask him. Now I must go in. Good-bye, dear Jude! I am so glad we
have met at last. We needn’t quarrel because our parents did, need we?”

Jude did not like to let her see quite how much he agreed with her, and
went his way to the remote street in which he had his lodging.

To keep Sue Bridehead near him was now a desire which operated without
regard of consequences, and the next evening he again set out for
Lumsdon, fearing to trust to the persuasive effects of a note only. The
school-master was unprepared for such a proposal.

“What I rather wanted was a second year’s transfer, as it is called,”
he said. “Of course your cousin would do, personally; but she has had
no experience. Oh—she has, has she? Does she really think of adopting
teaching as a profession?”

Jude said she was disposed to do so, he thought, and his ingenious
arguments on her natural fitness for assisting Mr. Phillotson, of which
Jude knew nothing whatever, so influenced the schoolmaster that he said
he would engage her, assuring Jude as a friend that unless his cousin
really meant to follow on in the same course, and regarded this step as
the first stage of an apprenticeship, of which her training in a normal
school would be the second stage, her time would be wasted quite, the
salary being merely nominal.

The day after this visit Phillotson received a letter from Jude,
containing the information that he had again consulted his cousin, who
took more and more warmly to the idea of tuition; and that she had
agreed to come. It did not occur for a moment to the schoolmaster and
recluse that Jude’s ardour in promoting the arrangement arose from any
other feelings towards Sue than the instinct of co-operation common
among members of the same family.