Jude the Obscure

he seventy young women, of ages varying in the main from nineteen to
one-and-twenty, though several were older, who at this date filled the
species of nunnery known as the Training-School at Melchester, formed a
very mixed community, which included the daughters of mechanics,
curates, surgeons, shopkeepers, farmers, dairy-men, soldiers, sailors,
and villagers. They sat in the large school-room of the establishment
on the evening previously described, and word was passed round that Sue
Bridehead had not come in at closing-time.

“She went out with her young man,” said a second-year’s student, who
knew about young men. “And Miss Traceley saw her at the station with
him. She’ll have it hot when she does come.”

“She said he was her cousin,” observed a youthful new girl.

“That excuse has been made a little too often in this school to be
effectual in saving our souls,” said the head girl of the year, drily.

The fact was that, only twelve months before, there had occurred a
lamentable seduction of one of the pupils who had made the same
statement in order to gain meetings with her lover. The affair had
created a scandal, and the management had consequently been rough on
cousins ever since.

At nine o’clock the names were called, Sue’s being pronounced three
times sonorously by Miss Traceley without eliciting an answer.

At a quarter past nine the seventy stood up to sing the “Evening Hymn,”
and then knelt down to prayers. After prayers they went in to supper,
and every girl’s thought was, Where is Sue Bridehead? Some of the
students, who had seen Jude from the window, felt that they would not
mind risking her punishment for the pleasure of being kissed by such a
kindly-faced young man. Hardly one among them believed in the
cousinship.

Half an hour later they all lay in their cubicles, their tender
feminine faces upturned to the flaring gas-jets which at intervals
stretched down the long dormitories, every face bearing the legend “The
Weaker” upon it, as the penalty of the sex wherein they were moulded,
which by no possible exertion of their willing hearts and abilities
could be made strong while the inexorable laws of nature remain what
they are. They formed a pretty, suggestive, pathetic sight, of whose
pathos and beauty they were themselves unconscious, and would not
discover till, amid the storms and strains of after-years, with their
injustice, loneliness, child-bearing, and bereavement, their minds
would revert to this experience as to something which had been allowed
to slip past them insufficiently regarded.

One of the mistresses came in to turn out the lights, and before doing
so gave a final glance at Sue’s cot, which remained empty, and at her
little dressing-table at the foot, which, like all the rest, was
ornamented with various girlish trifles, framed photographs being not
the least conspicuous among them. Sue’s table had a moderate show, two
men in their filigree and velvet frames standing together beside her
looking-glass.

“Who are these men—did she ever say?” asked the mistress. “Strictly
speaking, relations’ portraits only are allowed on these tables, you
know.”

“One—the middle-aged man,” said a student in the next bed—“is the
schoolmaster she served under—Mr. Phillotson.”

“And the other—this undergraduate in cap and gown—who is he?”

“He is a friend, or was. She has never told his name.”

“Was it either of these two who came for her?”

“No.”

“You are sure ’twas not the undergraduate?”

“Quite. He was a young man with a black beard.”

The lights were promptly extinguished, and till they fell asleep the
girls indulged in conjectures about Sue, and wondered what games she
had carried on in London and at Christminster before she came here,
some of the more restless ones getting out of bed and looking from the
mullioned windows at the vast west front of the cathedral opposite, and
the spire rising behind it.

When they awoke the next morning they glanced into Sue’s nook, to find
it still without a tenant. After the early lessons by gas-light, in
half-toilet, and when they had come up to dress for breakfast, the bell
of the entrance gate was heard to ring loudly. The mistress of the
dormitory went away, and presently came back to say that the
principal’s orders were that nobody was to speak to Bridehead without
permission.

When, accordingly, Sue came into the dormitory to hastily tidy herself,
looking flushed and tired, she went to her cubicle in silence, none of
them coming out to greet her or to make inquiry. When they had gone
downstairs they found that she did not follow them into the dining-hall
to breakfast, and they then learnt that she had been severely
reprimanded, and ordered to a solitary room for a week, there to be
confined, and take her meals, and do all her reading.

At this the seventy murmured, the sentence being, they thought, too
severe. A round robin was prepared and sent in to the principal, asking
for a remission of Sue’s punishment. No notice was taken. Towards
evening, when the geography mistress began dictating her subject, the
girls in the class sat with folded arms.

“You mean that you are not going to work?” said the mistress at last.
“I may as well tell you that it has been ascertained that the young man
Bridehead stayed out with was not her cousin, for the very good reason
that she has no such relative. We have written to Christminster to
ascertain.”

“We are willing to take her word,” said the head girl.

“This young man was discharged from his work at Christminster for
drunkenness and blasphemy in public-houses, and he has come here to
live, entirely to be near her.”

However, they remained stolid and motionless, and the mistress left the
room to inquire from her superiors what was to be done.

Presently, towards dusk, the pupils, as they sat, heard exclamations
from the first-year’s girls in an adjoining classroom, and one rushed
in to say that Sue Bridehead had got out of the back window of the room
in which she had been confined, escaped in the dark across the lawn,
and disappeared. How she had managed to get out of the garden nobody
could tell, as it was bounded by the river at the bottom, and the side
door was locked.

They went and looked at the empty room, the casement between the middle
mullions of which stood open. The lawn was again searched with a
lantern, every bush and shrub being examined, but she was nowhere
hidden. Then the porter of the front gate was interrogated, and on
reflection he said that he remembered hearing a sort of splashing in
the stream at the back, but he had taken no notice, thinking some ducks
had come down the river from above.

“She must have walked through the river!” said a mistress.

“Or drownded herself,” said the porter.

The mind of the matron was horrified—not so much at the possible death
of Sue as at the possible half-column detailing that event in all the
newspapers, which, added to the scandal of the year before, would give
the college an unenviable notoriety for many months to come.

More lanterns were procured, and the river examined; and then, at last,
on the opposite shore, which was open to the fields, some little
boot-tracks were discerned in the mud, which left no doubt that the too
excitable girl had waded through a depth of water reaching nearly to
her shoulders—for this was the chief river of the county, and was
mentioned in all the geography books with respect. As Sue had not
brought disgrace upon the school by drowning herself, the matron began
to speak superciliously of her, and to express gladness that she was
gone.

On the self-same evening Jude sat in his lodgings by the Close Gate.
Often at this hour after dusk he would enter the silent Close, and
stand opposite the house that contained Sue, and watch the shadows of
the girls’ heads passing to and fro upon the blinds, and wish he had
nothing else to do but to sit reading and learning all day what many of
the thoughtless inmates despised. But to-night, having finished tea and
brushed himself up, he was deep in the perusal of the Twenty-ninth
Volume of Pusey’s Library of the Fathers, a set of books which he had
purchased of a second-hand dealer at a price that seemed to him to be
one of miraculous cheapness for that invaluable work. He fancied he
heard something rattle lightly against his window; then he heard it
again. Certainly somebody had thrown gravel. He rose and gently lifted
the sash.

“Jude!” (from below).

“Sue!”

“Yes—it is! Can I come up without being seen?”

“Oh yes!”

“Then don’t come down. Shut the window.”

Jude waited, knowing that she could enter easily enough, the front door
being opened merely by a knob which anybody could turn, as in most old
country towns. He palpitated at the thought that she had fled to him in
her trouble as he had fled to her in his. What counterparts they were!
He unlatched the door of his room, heard a stealthy rustle on the dark
stairs, and in a moment she appeared in the light of his lamp. He went
up to seize her hand, and found she was clammy as a marine deity, and
that her clothes clung to her like the robes upon the figures in the
Parthenon frieze.

“I’m so cold!” she said through her chattering teeth. “Can I come by
your fire, Jude?”

She crossed to his little grate and very little fire, but as the water
dripped from her as she moved, the idea of drying herself was absurd.
“Whatever have you done, darling?” he asked, with alarm, the tender
epithet slipping out unawares.

“Walked through the largest river in the county—that’s what I’ve done!
They locked me up for being out with you; and it seemed so unjust that
I couldn’t bear it, so I got out of the window and escaped across the
stream!” She had begun the explanation in her usual slightly
independent tones, but before she had finished the thin pink lips
trembled, and she could hardly refrain from crying.

“Dear Sue!” he said. “You must take off all your things! And let me
see—you must borrow some from the landlady. I’ll ask her.”

“No, no! Don’t let her know, for God’s sake! We are so near the school
that they’ll come after me!”

“Then you must put on mine. You don’t mind?”

“Oh no.”

“My Sunday suit, you know. It is close here.” In fact, everything was
close and handy in Jude’s single chamber, because there was not room
for it to be otherwise. He opened a drawer, took out his best dark
suit, and giving the garments a shake, said, “Now, how long shall I
give you?”

“Ten minutes.”

Jude left the room and went into the street, where he walked up and
down. A clock struck half-past seven, and he returned. Sitting in his
only arm-chair he saw a slim and fragile being masquerading as himself
on a Sunday, so pathetic in her defencelessness that his heart felt big
with the sense of it. On two other chairs before the fire were her wet
garments. She blushed as he sat down beside her, but only for a moment.

“I suppose, Jude, it is odd that you should see me like this and all my
things hanging there? Yet what nonsense! They are only a woman’s
clothes—sexless cloth and linen… I wish I didn’t feel so ill and sick!
Will you dry my clothes now? Please do, Jude, and I’ll get a lodging by
and by. It is not late yet.”

“No, you shan’t, if you are ill. You must stay here. Dear, dear Sue,
what can I get for you?”

“I don’t know! I can’t help shivering. I wish I could get warm.” Jude
put on her his great-coat in addition, and then ran out to the nearest
public-house, whence he returned with a little bottle in his hand.
“Here’s six of best brandy,” he said. “Now you drink it, dear; all of
it.”

“I can’t out of the bottle, can I?” Jude fetched the glass from the
dressing-table, and administered the spirit in some water. She gasped a
little, but gulped it down, and lay back in the armchair.

She then began to relate circumstantially her experiences since they
had parted; but in the middle of her story her voice faltered, her head
nodded, and she ceased. She was in a sound sleep. Jude, dying of
anxiety lest she should have caught a chill which might permanently
injure her, was glad to hear the regular breathing. He softly went
nearer to her, and observed that a warm flush now rosed her hitherto
blue cheeks, and felt that her hanging hand was no longer cold. Then he
stood with his back to the fire regarding her, and saw in her almost a
divinity.