Jude the Obscure

ude returned to Melchester, which had the questionable recommendation
of being only a dozen and a half miles from his Sue’s now permanent
residence. At first he felt that this nearness was a distinct reason
for not going southward at all; but Christminster was too sad a place
to bear, while the proximity of Shaston to Melchester might afford him
the glory of worsting the Enemy in a close engagement, such as was
deliberately sought by the priests and virgins of the early Church,
who, disdaining an ignominious flight from temptation, became even
chamber-partners with impunity. Jude did not pause to remember that, in
the laconic words of the historian, “insulted Nature sometimes
vindicated her rights” in such circumstances.

He now returned with feverish desperation to his study for the
priesthood—in the recognition that the single-mindedness of his aims,
and his fidelity to the cause, had been more than questionable of late.
His passion for Sue troubled his soul; yet his lawful abandonment to
the society of Arabella for twelve hours seemed instinctively a worse
thing—even though she had not told him of her Sydney husband till
afterwards. He had, he verily believed, overcome all tendency to fly to
liquor—which, indeed, he had never done from taste, but merely as an
escape from intolerable misery of mind. Yet he perceived with
despondency that, taken all round, he was a man of too many passions to
make a good clergyman; the utmost he could hope for was that in a life
of constant internal warfare between flesh and spirit the former might
not always be victorious.

As a hobby, auxiliary to his readings in Divinity, he developed his
slight skill in church-music and thorough-bass, till he could join in
part-singing from notation with some accuracy. A mile or two from
Melchester there was a restored village church, to which Jude had
originally gone to fix the new columns and capitals. By this means he
had become acquainted with the organist, and the ultimate result was
that he joined the choir as a bass voice.

He walked out to this parish twice every Sunday, and sometimes in the
week. One evening about Easter the choir met for practice, and a new
hymn which Jude had heard of as being by a Wessex composer was to be
tried and prepared for the following week. It turned out to be a
strangely emotional composition. As they all sang it over and over
again its harmonies grew upon Jude, and moved him exceedingly.

When they had finished he went round to the organist to make inquiries.
The score was in manuscript, the name of the composer being at the
head, together with the title of the hymn: “The Foot of the Cross.”

“Yes,” said the organist. “He is a local man. He is a professional
musician at Kennetbridge—between here and Christminster. The vicar
knows him. He was brought up and educated in Christminster traditions,
which accounts for the quality of the piece. I think he plays in the
large church there, and has a surpliced choir. He comes to Melchester
sometimes, and once tried to get the cathedral organ when the post was
vacant. The hymn is getting about everywhere this Easter.”

As he walked humming the air on his way home, Jude fell to musing on
its composer, and the reasons why he composed it. What a man of
sympathies he must be! Perplexed and harassed as he himself was about
Sue and Arabella, and troubled as was his conscience by the
complication of his position, how he would like to know that man! “He
of all men would understand my difficulties,” said the impulsive Jude.
If there were any person in the world to choose as a confidant, this
composer would be the one, for he must have suffered, and throbbed, and
yearned.

In brief, ill as he could afford the time and money for the journey,
Fawley resolved, like the child that he was, to go to Kennetbridge the
very next Sunday. He duly started, early in the morning, for it was
only by a series of crooked railways that he could get to the town.
About mid-day he reached it, and crossing the bridge into the quaint
old borough he inquired for the house of the composer.

They told him it was a red brick building some little way further on.
Also that the gentleman himself had just passed along the street not
five minutes before.

“Which way?” asked Jude with alacrity.

“Straight along homeward from church.”

Jude hastened on, and soon had the pleasure of observing a man in a
black coat and a black slouched felt hat no considerable distance
ahead. Stretching out his legs yet more widely, he stalked after. “A
hungry soul in pursuit of a full soul!” he said. “I must speak to that
man!”

He could not, however, overtake the musician before he had entered his
own house, and then arose the question if this were an expedient time
to call. Whether or not he decided to do so there and then, now that he
had got here, the distance home being too great for him to wait till
late in the afternoon. This man of soul would understand scant
ceremony, and might be quite a perfect adviser in a case in which an
earthly and illegitimate passion had cunningly obtained entrance into
his heart through the opening afforded for religion.

Jude accordingly rang the bell, and was admitted.

The musician came to him in a moment, and being respectably dressed,
good-looking, and frank in manner, Jude obtained a favourable
reception. He was nevertheless conscious that there would be a certain
awkwardness in explaining his errand.

“I have been singing in the choir of a little church near Melchester,”
he said. “And we have this week practised ‘The Foot of the Cross,’
which I understand, sir, that you composed?”

“I did—a year or so ago.”

“I—like it. I think it supremely beautiful!”

“Ah well—other people have said so too. Yes, there’s money in it, if I
could only see about getting it published. I have other compositions to
go with it, too; I wish I could bring them out; for I haven’t made a
five-pound note out of any of them yet. These publishing people—they
want the copyright of an obscure composer’s work, such as mine is, for
almost less than I should have to pay a person for making a fair
manuscript copy of the score. The one you speak of I have lent to
various friends about here and Melchester, and so it has got to be sung
a little. But music is a poor staff to lean on—I am giving it up
entirely. You must go into trade if you want to make money nowadays.
The wine business is what I am thinking of. This is my forthcoming
list—it is not issued yet—but you can take one.”

He handed Jude an advertisement list of several pages in booklet shape,
ornamentally margined with a red line, in which were set forth the
various clarets, champagnes, ports, sherries, and other wines with
which he purposed to initiate his new venture. It took Jude more than
by surprise that the man with the soul was thus and thus; and he felt
that he could not open up his confidences.

They talked a little longer, but constrainedly, for when the musician
found that Jude was a poor man his manner changed from what it had been
while Jude’s appearance and address deceived him as to his position and
pursuits. Jude stammered out something about his feelings in wishing to
congratulate the author on such an exalted composition, and took an
embarrassed leave.

All the way home by the slow Sunday train, sitting in the fireless
waiting-rooms on this cold spring day, he was depressed enough at his
simplicity in taking such a journey. But no sooner did he reach his
Melchester lodging than he found awaiting him a letter which had
arrived that morning a few minutes after he had left the house. It was
a contrite little note from Sue, in which she said, with sweet
humility, that she felt she had been horrid in telling him he was not
to come to see her, that she despised herself for having been so
conventional; and that he was to be sure to come by the
eleven-forty-five train that very Sunday, and have dinner with them at
half-past one.

Jude almost tore his hair at having missed this letter till it was too
late to act upon its contents; but he had chastened himself
considerably of late, and at last his chimerical expedition to
Kennetbridge really did seem to have been another special intervention
of Providence to keep him away from temptation. But a growing
impatience of faith, which he had noticed in himself more than once of
late, made him pass over in ridicule the idea that God sent people on
fools’ errands. He longed to see her; he was angry at having missed
her: and he wrote instantly, telling her what had happened, and saying
he had not enough patience to wait till the following Sunday, but would
come any day in the week that she liked to name.

Since he wrote a little over-ardently, Sue, as her manner was, delayed
her reply till Thursday before Good Friday, when she said he might come
that afternoon if he wished, this being the earliest day on which she
could welcome him, for she was now assistant-teacher in her husband’s
school. Jude therefore got leave from the cathedral works at the
trifling expense of a stoppage of pay, and went.

Part Fourth AT SHASTON

“Whoso prefers either Matrimony or other Ordinance before the Good of
Man and the plain Exigence of Charity, let him profess Papist, or
Protestant, or what he will, he is no better than a Pharisee.”—J.
MILTON.