Jude the Obscure
class at the other end of the room, all day under his eye. She
certainly was an excellent teacher.
It was part of his duty to give her private lessons in the evening, and
some article in the Code made it necessary that a respectable, elderly
woman should be present at these lessons when the teacher and the
taught were of different sexes. Richard Phillotson thought of the
absurdity of the regulation in this case, when he was old enough to be
the girl’s father; but he faithfully acted up to it; and sat down with
her in a room where Mrs. Hawes, the widow at whose house Sue lodged,
occupied herself with sewing. The regulation was, indeed, not easy to
evade, for there was no other sitting-room in the dwelling.
Sometimes as she figured—it was arithmetic that they were working
at—she would involuntarily glance up with a little inquiring smile at
him, as if she assumed that, being the master, he must perceive all
that was passing in her brain, as right or wrong. Phillotson was not
really thinking of the arithmetic at all, but of her, in a novel way
which somehow seemed strange to him as preceptor. Perhaps she knew that
he was thinking of her thus.
For a few weeks their work had gone on with a monotony which in itself
was a delight to him. Then it happened that the children were to be
taken to Christminster to see an itinerant exhibition, in the shape of
a model of Jerusalem, to which schools were admitted at a penny a head
in the interests of education. They marched along the road two and two,
she beside her class with her simple cotton sunshade, her little thumb
cocked up against its stem; and Phillotson behind in his long dangling
coat, handling his walking-stick genteelly, in the musing mood which
had come over him since her arrival. The afternoon was one of sun and
dust, and when they entered the exhibition room few people were present
but themselves. The model of the ancient city stood in the middle of
the apartment, and the proprietor, with a fine religious philanthropy
written on his features, walked round it with a pointer in his hand,
showing the young people the various quarters and places known to them
by name from reading their Bibles; Mount Moriah, the Valley of
Jehoshaphat, the City of Zion, the walls and the gates, outside one of
which there was a large mound like a tumulus, and on the mound a little
white cross. The spot, he said, was Calvary.
“I think,” said Sue to the schoolmaster, as she stood with him a little
in the background, “that this model, elaborate as it is, is a very
imaginary production. How does anybody know that Jerusalem was like
this in the time of Christ? I am sure this man doesn’t.”
“It is made after the best conjectural maps, based on actual visits to
the city as it now exists.”
“I fancy we have had enough of Jerusalem,” she said, “considering we
are not descended from the Jews. There was nothing first-rate about the
place, or people, after all—as there was about Athens, Rome,
Alexandria, and other old cities.”
“But my dear girl, consider what it is to us!”
She was silent, for she was easily repressed; and then perceived behind
the group of children clustered round the model a young man in a white
flannel jacket, his form being bent so low in his intent inspection of
the Valley of Jehoshaphat that his face was almost hidden from view by
the Mount of Olives. “Look at your cousin Jude,” continued the
schoolmaster. “He doesn’t think we have had enough of Jerusalem!”
“Ah—I didn’t see him!” she cried in her quick, light voice. “Jude—how
seriously you are going into it!”
Jude started up from his reverie, and saw her. “Oh—Sue!” he said, with
a glad flush of embarrassment. “These are your school-children, of
course! I saw that schools were admitted in the afternoons, and thought
you might come; but I got so deeply interested that I didn’t remember
where I was. How it carries one back, doesn’t it! I could examine it
for hours, but I have only a few minutes, unfortunately; for I am in
the middle of a job out here.”
“Your cousin is so terribly clever that she criticizes it
unmercifully,” said Phillotson, with good-humoured satire. “She is
quite sceptical as to its correctness.”
“No, Mr. Phillotson, I am not—altogether! I hate to be what is called a
clever girl—there are too many of that sort now!” answered Sue
sensitively. “I only meant—I don’t know what I meant—except that it was
what you don’t understand!”
“_I_ know your meaning,” said Jude ardently (although he did not). “And
I think you are quite right.”
“That’s a good Jude—I know _you_ believe in me!” She impulsively seized
his hand, and leaving a reproachful look on the schoolmaster turned
away to Jude, her voice revealing a tremor which she herself felt to be
absurdly uncalled for by sarcasm so gentle. She had not the least
conception how the hearts of the twain went out to her at this
momentary revelation of feeling, and what a complication she was
building up thereby in the futures of both.
The model wore too much of an educational aspect for the children not
to tire of it soon, and a little later in the afternoon they were all
marched back to Lumsdon, Jude returning to his work. He watched the
juvenile flock in their clean frocks and pinafores, filing down the
street towards the country beside Phillotson and Sue, and a sad,
dissatisfied sense of being out of the scheme of the latters’ lives had
possession of him. Phillotson had invited him to walk out and see them
on Friday evening, when there would be no lessons to give to Sue, and
Jude had eagerly promised to avail himself of the opportunity.
Meanwhile the scholars and teachers moved homewards, and the next day,
on looking on the blackboard in Sue’s class, Phillotson was surprised
to find upon it, skilfully drawn in chalk, a perspective view of
Jerusalem, with every building shown in its place.
“I thought you took no interest in the model, and hardly looked at it?”
he said.
“I hardly did,” said she, “but I remembered that much of it.”
“It is more than I had remembered myself.”
Her Majesty’s school-inspector was at that time paying
“surprise-visits” in this neighbourhood to test the teaching unawares;
and two days later, in the middle of the morning lessons, the latch of
the door was softly lifted, and in walked my gentleman, the king of
terrors—to pupil-teachers.
To Mr. Phillotson the surprise was not great; like the lady in the
story, he had been played that trick too many times to be unprepared.
But Sue’s class was at the further end of the room, and her back was
towards the entrance; the inspector therefore came and stood behind her
and watched her teaching some half-minute before she became aware of
his presence. She turned, and realized that an oft-dreaded moment had
come. The effect upon her timidity was such that she uttered a cry of
fright. Phillotson, with a strange instinct of solicitude quite beyond
his control, was at her side just in time to prevent her falling from
faintness. She soon recovered herself, and laughed; but when the
inspector had gone there was a reaction, and she was so white that
Phillotson took her into his room, and gave her some brandy to bring
her round. She found him holding her hand.
“You ought to have told me,” she gasped petulantly, “that one of the
inspector’s surprise-visits was imminent! Oh, what shall I do! Now
he’ll write and tell the managers that I am no good, and I shall be
disgraced for ever!”
“He won’t do that, my dear little girl. You are the best teacher ever I
had!”
He looked so gently at her that she was moved, and regretted that she
had upbraided him. When she was better she went home.
Jude in the meantime had been waiting impatiently for Friday. On both
Wednesday and Thursday he had been so much under the influence of his
desire to see her that he walked after dark some distance along the
road in the direction of the village, and, on returning to his room to
read, found himself quite unable to concentrate his mind on the page.
On Friday, as soon as he had got himself up as he thought Sue would
like to see him, and made a hasty tea, he set out, notwithstanding that
the evening was wet. The trees overhead deepened the gloom of the hour,
and they dripped sadly upon him, impressing him with
forebodings—illogical forebodings; for though he knew that he loved her
he also knew that he could not be more to her than he was.
On turning the corner and entering the village the first sight that
greeted his eyes was that of two figures under one umbrella coming out
of the vicarage gate. He was too far back for them to notice him, but
he knew in a moment that they were Sue and Phillotson. The latter was
holding the umbrella over her head, and they had evidently been paying
a visit to the vicar—probably on some business connected with the
school work. And as they walked along the wet and deserted lane Jude
saw Phillotson place his arm round the girl’s waist; whereupon she
gently removed it; but he replaced it; and she let it remain, looking
quickly round her with an air of misgiving. She did not look absolutely
behind her, and therefore did not see Jude, who sank into the hedge
like one struck with a blight. There he remained hidden till they had
reached Sue’s cottage and she had passed in, Phillotson going on to the
school hard by.
“Oh, he’s too old for her—too old!” cried Jude in all the terrible
sickness of hopeless, handicapped love.
He could not interfere. Was he not Arabella’s? He was unable to go on
further, and retraced his steps towards Christminster. Every tread of
his feet seemed to say to him that he must on no account stand in the
schoolmaster’s way with Sue. Phillotson was perhaps twenty years her
senior, but many a happy marriage had been made in such conditions of
age. The ironical clinch to his sorrow was given by the thought that
the intimacy between his cousin and the schoolmaster had been brought
about entirely by himself.
VI
Jude’s old and embittered aunt lay unwell at Marygreen, and on the
following Sunday he went to see her—a visit which was the result of a
victorious struggle against his inclination to turn aside to the
village of Lumsdon and obtain a miserable interview with his cousin, in
which the word nearest his heart could not be spoken, and the sight
which had tortured him could not be revealed.
His aunt was now unable to leave her bed, and a great part of Jude’s
short day was occupied in making arrangements for her comfort. The
little bakery business had been sold to a neighbour, and with the
proceeds of this and her savings she was comfortably supplied with
necessaries and more, a widow of the same village living with her and
ministering to her wants. It was not till the time had nearly come for
him to leave that he obtained a quiet talk with her, and his words
tended insensibly towards his cousin.
“Was Sue born here?”
“She was—in this room. They were living here at that time. What made
’ee ask that?”
“Oh—I wanted to know.”
“Now you’ve been seeing her!” said the harsh old woman. “And what did I
tell ’ee?”
“Well—that I was not to see her.”
“Have you gossiped with her?”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t keep it up. She was brought up by her father to hate her
mother’s family; and she’ll look with no favour upon a working chap
like you—a townish girl as she’s become by now. I never cared much
about her. A pert little thing, that’s what she was too often, with her
tight-strained nerves. Many’s the time I’ve smacked her for her
impertinence. Why, one day when she was walking into the pond with her
shoes and stockings off, and her petticoats pulled above her knees,
afore I could cry out for shame, she said: ‘Move on, Aunty! This is no
sight for modest eyes!’”
“She was a little child then.”
“She was twelve if a day.”