Jude the Obscure
white-aproned woman who cleaned the church. Sue recognized her as one
who had friends in Spring Street, whom she visited. The church-cleaner
looked at Sue, gaped, and lifted her hands; she had evidently
recognized Jude’s companion as the latter had recognized her. Next came
two ladies, and after talking to the charwoman they also moved forward,
and as Sue stood reaching upward, watched her hand tracing the letters,
and critically regarded her person in relief against the white wall,
till she grew so nervous that she trembled visibly.
They went back to where the others were standing, talking in
undertones: and one said—Sue could not hear which—“She’s his wife, I
suppose?”
“Some say Yes: some say No,” was the reply from the charwoman.
“Not? Then she ought to be, or somebody’s—that’s very clear!”
“They’ve only been married a very few weeks, whether or no.”
“A strange pair to be painting the Two Tables! I wonder Biles and
Willis could think of such a thing as hiring those!”
The churchwarden supposed that Biles and Willis knew of nothing wrong,
and then the other, who had been talking to the old woman, explained
what she meant by calling them strange people.
The probable drift of the subdued conversation which followed was made
plain by the churchwarden breaking into an anecdote, in a voice that
everybody in the church could hear, though obviously suggested by the
present situation:
“Well, now, it is a curious thing, but my grandfather told me a strange
tale of a most immoral case that happened at the painting of the
Commandments in a church out by Gaymead—which is quite within a walk of
this one. In them days Commandments were mostly done in gilt letters on
a black ground, and that’s how they were out where I say, before the
owld church was rebuilded. It must have been somewhere about a hundred
years ago that them Commandments wanted doing up just as ours do here,
and they had to get men from Aldbrickham to do ’em. Now they wished to
get the job finished by a particular Sunday, so the men had to work
late Saturday night, against their will, for overtime was not paid then
as ’tis now. There was no true religion in the country at that date,
neither among pa’sons, clerks, nor people, and to keep the men up to
their work the vicar had to let ’em have plenty of drink during the
afternoon. As evening drawed on they sent for some more themselves;
rum, by all account. It got later and later, and they got more and more
fuddled, till at last they went a-putting their rum-bottle and rummers
upon the communion table, and drawed up a trestle or two, and sate
round comfortable and poured out again right hearty bumpers. No sooner
had they tossed off their glasses than, so the story goes, they fell
down senseless, one and all. How long they bode so they didn’t know,
but when they came to themselves there was a terrible thunder-storm
a-raging, and they seemed to see in the gloom a dark figure with very
thin legs and a curious voot, a-standing on the ladder, and finishing
their work. When it got daylight they could see that the work was
really finished, and couldn’t at all mind finishing it themselves. They
went home, and the next thing they heard was that a great scandal had
been caused in the church that Sunday morning, for when the people came
and service began, all saw that the Ten Commandments wez painted with
the ‘nots’ left out. Decent people wouldn’t attend service there for a
long time, and the Bishop had to be sent for to reconsecrate the
church. That’s the tradition as I used to hear it as a child. You must
take it for what it is wo’th, but this case to-day has reminded me o’t,
as I say.”
The visitors gave one more glance, as if to see whether Jude and Sue
had left the “nots” out likewise, and then severally left the church,
even the old woman at last. Sue and Jude, who had not stopped working,
sent back the child to school, and remained without speaking; till,
looking at her narrowly, he found she had been crying silently.
“Never mind, comrade!” he said. “I know what it is!”
“I can’t _bear_ that they, and everybody, should think people wicked
because they may have chosen to live their own way! It is really these
opinions that make the best intentioned people reckless, and actually
become immoral!”
“Never be cast down! It was only a funny story.”
“Ah, but we suggested it! I am afraid I have done you mischief, Jude,
instead of helping you by coming!”
To have suggested such a story was certainly not very exhilarating, in
a serious view of their position. However, in a few minutes Sue seemed
to see that their position this morning had a ludicrous side, and
wiping her eyes she laughed.
“It is droll, after all,” she said, “that we two, of all people, with
our queer history, should happen to be here painting the Ten
Commandments! You a reprobate, and I—in my condition… O dear!” … And
with her hand over her eyes she laughed again silently and
intermittently, till she was quite weak.
“That’s better,” said Jude gaily. “Now we are right again, aren’t we,
little girl!”
“Oh but it is serious, all the same!” she sighed as she took up the
brush and righted herself. “But do you see they don’t think we are
married? They _won’t_ believe it! It is extraordinary!”
“I don’t care whether they think so or not,” said Jude. “I shan’t take
any more trouble to make them.”
They sat down to lunch—which they had brought with them not to hinder
time—and having eaten it, were about to set to work anew when a man
entered the church, and Jude recognized in him the contractor Willis.
He beckoned to Jude, and spoke to him apart.
“Here—I’ve just had a complaint about this,” he said, with rather
breathless awkwardness. “I don’t wish to go into the matter—as of
course I didn’t know what was going on—but I am afraid I must ask you
and her to leave off, and let somebody else finish this! It is best, to
avoid all unpleasantness. I’ll pay you for the week, all the same.”
Jude was too independent to make any fuss; and the contractor paid him,
and left. Jude picked up his tools, and Sue cleansed her brush. Then
their eyes met.
“How could we be so simple as to suppose we might do this!” said she,
dropping to her tragic note. “Of course we ought not—I ought not—to
have come!”
“I had no idea that anybody was going to intrude into such a lonely
place and see us!” Jude returned. “Well, it can’t be helped, dear; and
of course I wouldn’t wish to injure Willis’s trade-connection by
staying.” They sat down passively for a few minutes, proceeded out of
the church, and overtaking the boy pursued their thoughtful way to
Aldbrickham.
Fawley had still a pretty zeal in the cause of education, and, as was
natural with his experiences, he was active in furthering “equality of
opportunity” by any humble means open to him. He had joined an
Artizans’ Mutual Improvement Society established in the town about the
time of his arrival there; its members being young men of all creeds
and denominations, including Churchmen, Congregationalists, Baptists,
Unitarians, Positivists, and others—Agnostics had scarcely been heard
of at this time—their one common wish to enlarge their minds forming a
sufficiently close bond of union. The subscription was small, and the
room homely; and Jude’s activity, uncustomary acquirements, and, above
all, singular intuition on what to read and how to set about
it—begotten of his years of struggle against malignant stars—had led to
his being placed on the committee.
A few evenings after his dismissal from the church repairs, and before
he had obtained any more work to do, he went to attend a meeting of the
aforesaid committee. It was late when he arrived: all the others had
come, and as he entered they looked dubiously at him, and hardly
uttered a word of greeting. He guessed that something bearing on
himself had been either discussed or mooted. Some ordinary business was
transacted, and it was disclosed that the number of subscriptions had
shown a sudden falling off for that quarter. One member—a really
well-meaning and upright man—began speaking in enigmas about certain
possible causes: that it behoved them to look well into their
constitution; for if the committee were not respected, and had not at
least, in their differences, a common standard of _conduct_, they would
bring the institution to the ground. Nothing further was said in Jude’s
presence, but he knew what this meant; and turning to the table wrote a
note resigning his office there and then.
Thus the supersensitive couple were more and more impelled to go away.
And then bills were sent in, and the question arose, what could Jude do
with his great-aunt’s heavy old furniture, if he left the town to
travel he knew not whither? This, and the necessity of ready money,
compelled him to decide on an auction, much as he would have preferred
to keep the venerable goods.
The day of the sale came on; and Sue for the last time cooked her own,
the child’s, and Jude’s breakfast in the little house he had furnished.
It chanced to be a wet day; moreover Sue was unwell, and not wishing to
desert her poor Jude in such gloomy circumstances, for he was compelled
to stay awhile, she acted on the suggestion of the auctioneer’s man,
and ensconced herself in an upper room, which could be emptied of its
effects, and so kept closed to the bidders. Here Jude discovered her;
and with the child, and their few trunks, baskets, and bundles, and two
chairs and a table that were not in the sale, the two sat in meditative
talk.
Footsteps began stamping up and down the bare stairs, the comers
inspecting the goods, some of which were of so quaint and ancient a
make as to acquire an adventitious value as art. Their door was tried
once or twice, and to guard themselves against intrusion Jude wrote
“Private” on a scrap of paper, and stuck it upon the panel.
They soon found that, instead of the furniture, their own personal
histories and past conduct began to be discussed to an unexpected and
intolerable extent by the intending bidders. It was not till now that
they really discovered what a fools’ paradise of supposed unrecognition
they had been living in of late. Sue silently took her companion’s
hand, and with eyes on each other they heard these passing remarks—the
quaint and mysterious personality of Father Time being a subject which
formed a large ingredient in the hints and innuendoes. At length the
auction began in the room below, whence they could hear each familiar
article knocked down, the highly prized ones cheaply, the unconsidered
at an unexpected price.
“People don’t understand us,” he sighed heavily. “I am glad we have
decided to go.”
“The question is, where to?”
“It ought to be to London. There one can live as one chooses.”
“No—not London, dear! I know it well. We should be unhappy there.”
“Why?”
“Can’t you think?”
“Because Arabella is there?”
“That’s the chief reason.”
“But in the country I shall always be uneasy lest there should be some
more of our late experience. And I don’t care to lessen it by
explaining, for one thing, all about the boy’s history. To cut him off
from his past I have determined to keep silence. I am sickened of
ecclesiastical work now; and I shouldn’t like to accept it, if offered
me!”
“You ought to have learnt classic. Gothic is barbaric art, after all.
Pugin was wrong, and Wren was right. Remember the interior of
Christminster Cathedral—almost the first place in which we looked in
each other’s faces. Under the picturesqueness of those Norman details
one can see the grotesque childishness of uncouth people trying to
imitate the vanished Roman forms, remembered by dim tradition only.”
“Yes—you have half-converted me to that view by what you have said