Jude the Obscure
sitting-room was furnished with framed photographs of the rectories and
deaneries at which his landlady had lived as trusted servant in her
time, and the parlour downstairs bore a clock on the mantelpiece
inscribed to the effect that it was presented to the same
serious-minded woman by her fellow-servants on the occasion of her
marriage. Jude added to the furniture of his room by unpacking
photographs of the ecclesiastical carvings and monuments that he had
executed with his own hands; and he was deemed a satisfactory
acquisition as tenant of the vacant apartment.
He found an ample supply of theological books in the city book-shops,
and with these his studies were recommenced in a different spirit and
direction from his former course. As a relaxation from the Fathers, and
such stock works as Paley and Butler, he read Newman, Pusey, and many
other modern lights. He hired a harmonium, set it up in his lodging,
and practised chants thereon, single and double.
II
“To-morrow is our grand day, you know. Where shall we go?”
“I have leave from three till nine. Wherever we can get to and come
back from in that time. Not ruins, Jude—I don’t care for them.”
“Well—Wardour Castle. And then we can do Fonthill if we like—all in the
same afternoon.”
“Wardour is Gothic ruins—and I hate Gothic!”
“No. Quite otherwise. It is a classic building—Corinthian, I think;
with a lot of pictures.”
“Ah—that will do. I like the sound of Corinthian. We’ll go.”
Their conversation had run thus some few weeks later, and next morning
they prepared to start. Every detail of the outing was a facet
reflecting a sparkle to Jude, and he did not venture to meditate on the
life of inconsistency he was leading. His Sue’s conduct was one lovely
conundrum to him; he could say no more.
There duly came the charm of calling at the college door for her; her
emergence in a nunlike simplicity of costume that was rather enforced
than desired; the traipsing along to the station, the porters’ “B’your
leave!,” the screaming of the trains—everything formed the basis of a
beautiful crystallization. Nobody stared at Sue, because she was so
plainly dressed, which comforted Jude in the thought that only himself
knew the charms those habiliments subdued. A matter of ten pounds spent
in a drapery-shop, which had no connection with her real life or her
real self, would have set all Melchester staring. The guard of the
train thought they were lovers, and put them into a compartment all by
themselves.
“That’s a good intention wasted!” said she.
Jude did not respond. He thought the remark unnecessarily cruel, and
partly untrue.
They reached the park and castle and wandered through the
picture-galleries, Jude stopping by preference in front of the
devotional pictures by Del Sarto, Guido Reni, Spagnoletto,
Sassoferrato, Carlo Dolci, and others. Sue paused patiently beside him,
and stole critical looks into his face as, regarding the Virgins, Holy
Families, and Saints, it grew reverent and abstracted. When she had
thoroughly estimated him at this, she would move on and wait for him
before a Lely or Reynolds. It was evident that her cousin deeply
interested her, as one might be interested in a man puzzling out his
way along a labyrinth from which one had one’s self escaped.
When they came out a long time still remained to them and Jude proposed
that as soon as they had had something to eat they should walk across
the high country to the north of their present position, and intercept
the train of another railway leading back to Melchester, at a station
about seven miles off. Sue, who was inclined for any adventure that
would intensify the sense of her day’s freedom, readily agreed; and
away they went, leaving the adjoining station behind them.
It was indeed open country, wide and high. They talked and bounded on,
Jude cutting from a little covert a long walking-stick for Sue as tall
as herself, with a great crook, which made her look like a shepherdess.
About half-way on their journey they crossed a main road running due
east and west—the old road from London to Land’s End. They paused, and
looked up and down it for a moment, and remarked upon the desolation
which had come over this once lively thoroughfare, while the wind
dipped to earth and scooped straws and hay-stems from the ground.
They crossed the road and passed on, but during the next half-mile Sue
seemed to grow tired, and Jude began to be distressed for her. They had
walked a good distance altogether, and if they could not reach the
other station it would be rather awkward. For a long time there was no
cottage visible on the wide expanse of down and turnip-land; but
presently they came to a sheepfold, and next to the shepherd, pitching
hurdles. He told them that the only house near was his mother’s and
his, pointing to a little dip ahead from which a faint blue smoke
arose, and recommended them to go on and rest there.
This they did, and entered the house, admitted by an old woman without
a single tooth, to whom they were as civil as strangers can be when
their only chance of rest and shelter lies in the favour of the
householder.
“A nice little cottage,” said Jude.
“Oh, I don’t know about the niceness. I shall have to thatch it soon,
and where the thatch is to come from I can’t tell, for straw do get
that dear, that ’twill soon be cheaper to cover your house wi’ chainey
plates than thatch.”
They sat resting, and the shepherd came in. “Don’t ’ee mind I,” he said
with a deprecating wave of the hand; “bide here as long as ye will. But
mid you be thinking o’ getting back to Melchester to-night by train?
Because you’ll never do it in this world, since you don’t know the lie
of the country. I don’t mind going with ye some o’ the ways, but even
then the train mid be gone.”
They started up.
“You can bide here, you know, over the night—can’t ’em, Mother? The
place is welcome to ye. ’Tis hard lying, rather, but volk may do
worse.” He turned to Jude and asked privately: “Be you a married
couple?”
“Hsh—no!” said Jude.
“Oh—I meant nothing ba’dy—not I! Well then, she can go into Mother’s
room, and you and I can lie in the outer chimmer after they’ve gone
through. I can call ye soon enough to catch the first train back.
You’ve lost this one now.”
On consideration they decided to close with this offer, and drew up and
shared with the shepherd and his mother the boiled bacon and greens for
supper.
“I rather like this,” said Sue, while their entertainers were clearing
away the dishes. “Outside all laws except gravitation and germination.”
“You only think you like it; you don’t: you are quite a product of
civilization,” said Jude, a recollection of her engagement reviving his
soreness a little.
“Indeed I am not, Jude. I like reading and all that, but I crave to get
back to the life of my infancy and its freedom.”
“Do you remember it so well? You seem to me to have nothing
unconventional at all about you.”
“Oh, haven’t I! You don’t know what’s inside me.”
“What?”
“The Ishmaelite.”
“An urban miss is what you are.”
She looked severe disagreement, and turned away.
The shepherd aroused them the next morning, as he had said. It was
bright and clear, and the four miles to the train were accomplished
pleasantly. When they had reached Melchester, and walked to the Close,
and the gables of the old building in which she was again to be immured
rose before Sue’s eyes, she looked a little scared. “I expect I shall
catch it!” she murmured.
They rang the great bell and waited.
“Oh, I bought something for you, which I had nearly forgotten,” she
said quickly, searching her pocket. “It is a new little photograph of
me. Would you like it?”
“_Would_ I!” He took it gladly, and the porter came. There seemed to be
an ominous glance on his face when he opened the gate. She passed in,
looking back at Jude, and waving her hand.
III
The 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