Jude the Obscure

Chapter 4

The next time that he saw her was when he was on a ladder executing

a job of this sort inside one of the churches. There was a short

morning service, and when the parson entered Jude came down from his

ladder, and sat with the half-dozen people forming the congregation,

till the prayer should be ended, and he could resume his tapping. He

did not observe till the service was half over that one of the women

was Sue, who had perforce accompanied the elderly Miss Fontover

thither.

Jude sat watching her pretty shoulders, her easy, curiously

nonchalant risings and sittings, and her perfunctory genuflexions,

and thought what a help such an Anglican would have been to him in

happier circumstances. It was not so much his anxiety to get on with

his work that made him go up to it immediately the worshipers began

to take their leave: it was that he dared not, in this holy spot,

confront the woman who was beginning to influence him in such an

indescribable manner. Those three enormous reasons why he must

not attempt intimate acquaintance with Sue Bridehead, now that his

interest in her had shown itself to be unmistakably of a s****l kind,

loomed as stubbornly as ever. But it was also obvious that man could

not live by work alone; that the particular man Jude, at any rate,

wanted something to love. Some men would have rushed incontinently

to her, snatched the pleasure of easy friendship which she could

hardly refuse, and have left the rest to chance. Not so Jude--at

first.

But as the days, and still more particularly the lonely evenings,

dragged along, he found himself, to his moral consternation,

to be thinking more of her instead of thinking less of her, and

experiencing a fearful bliss in doing what was erratic, informal, and

unexpected. Surrounded by her influence all day, walking past the

spots she frequented, he was always thinking of her, and was obliged

to own to himself that his conscience was likely to be the loser in

this battle.

To be sure she was almost an ideality to him still. Perhaps to know

her would be to cure himself of this unexpected and unauthorized

passion. A voice whispered that, though he desired to know her, he

did not desire to be cured.

There was not the least doubt that from his own orthodox point of

view the situation was growing immoral. For Sue to be the loved one

of a man who was licensed by the laws of his country to love Arabella

and none other unto his life's end, was a pretty bad second beginning

when the man was bent on such a course as Jude purposed. This

conviction was so real with him that one day when, as was frequent,

he was at work in a neighbouring village church alone, he felt it to

be his duty to pray against his weakness. But much as he wished to

be an exemplar in these things he could not get on. It was quite

impossible, he found, to ask to be delivered from temptation when

your heart's desire was to be tempted unto seventy times seven. So

he excused himself. "After all," he said, "it is not altogether

an _erotolepsy_ that is the matter with me, as at that first time.

I can see that she is exceptionally bright; and it is partly a wish

for intellectual sympathy, and a craving for loving-kindness in my

solitude." Thus he went on adoring her, fearing to realize that

it was human perversity. For whatever Sue's virtues, talents, or

ecclesiastical saturation, it was certain that those items were not

at all the cause of his affection for her.

On an afternoon at this time a young girl entered the stone-mason's

yard with some hesitation, and, lifting her skirts to avoid draggling

them in the white dust, crossed towards the office.

"That's a nice girl," said one of the men known as Uncle Joe.

"Who is she?" asked another.

"I don't know--I've seen her about here and there. Why, yes, she's

the daughter of that clever chap Bridehead who did all the wrought

ironwork at St. Silas' ten years ago, and went away to London

afterwards. I don't know what he's doing now--not much I fancy--as

she's come back here."

Meanwhile the young woman had knocked at the office door and asked if

Mr. Jude Fawley was at work in the yard. It so happened that Jude

had gone out somewhere or other that afternoon, which information she

received with a look of disappointment, and went away immediately.

When Jude returned they told him, and described her, whereupon he

exclaimed, "Why--that's my cousin Sue!"

He looked along the street after her, but she was out of sight. He

had no longer any thought of a conscientious avoidance of her, and

resolved to call upon her that very evening. And when he reached

his lodging he found a note from her--a first note--one of those

documents which, simple and commonplace in themselves, are seen

retrospectively to have been pregnant with impassioned consequences.

The very unconsciousness of a looming drama which is shown in such

innocent first epistles from women to men, or _vice versa_, makes

them, when such a drama follows, and they are read over by the purple

or lurid light of it, all the more impressive, solemn, and in cases,

terrible.

Sue's was of the most artless and natural kind. She addressed him

as her dear cousin Jude; said she had only just learnt by the merest

accident that he was living in Christminster, and reproached him with

not letting her know. They might have had such nice times together,

she said, for she was thrown much upon herself, and had hardly any

congenial friend. But now there was every probability of her soon

going away, so that the chance of companionship would be lost perhaps

for ever.

A cold sweat overspread Jude at the news that she was going away.

That was a contingency he had never thought of, and it spurred him

to write all the more quickly to her. He would meet her that very

evening, he said, one hour from the time of writing, at the cross in

the pavement which marked the spot of the Martyrdoms.

When he had despatched the note by a boy he regretted that in his

hurry he should have suggested to her to meet him out of doors, when

he might have said he would call upon her. It was, in fact, the

country custom to meet thus, and nothing else had occurred to him.

Arabella had been met in the same way, unfortunately, and it might

not seem respectable to a dear girl like Sue. However, it could not

be helped now, and he moved towards the point a few minutes before

the hour, under the glimmer of the newly lighted lamps.

The broad street was silent, and almost deserted, although it was

not late. He saw a figure on the other side, which turned out to

be hers, and they both converged towards the crossmark at the same

moment. Before either had reached it she called out to him:

"I am not going to meet you just there, for the first time in my

life! Come further on."

The voice, though positive and silvery, had been tremulous. They

walked on in parallel lines, and, waiting her pleasure, Jude watched

till she showed signs of closing in, when he did likewise, the place

being where the carriers' carts stood in the daytime, though there

was none on the spot then.

"I am sorry that I asked you to meet me, and didn't call," began Jude

with the bashfulness of a lover. "But I thought it would save time

if we were going to walk."

"Oh--I don't mind that," she said with the freedom of a friend. "I

have really no place to ask anybody in to. What I meant was that the

place you chose was so horrid--I suppose I ought not to say horrid--I

mean gloomy and inauspicious in its associations... But isn't it

funny to begin like this, when I don't know you yet?" She looked him

up and down curiously, though Jude did not look much at her.

"You seem to know me more than I know you," she added.

"Yes--I have seen you now and then."

"And you knew who I was, and didn't speak? And now I am going away!"

"Yes. That's unfortunate. I have hardly any other friend. I have,

indeed, one very old friend here somewhere, but I don't quite like

to call on him just yet. I wonder if you know anything of him--Mr.

Phillotson? A parson somewhere about the county I think he is."

"No--I only know of one Mr. Phillotson. He lives a little way out in

the country, at Lumsdon. He's a village schoolmaster."

"Ah! I wonder if he's the same. Surely it is impossible! Only a

schoolmaster still! Do you know his Christian name--is it Richard?"

"Yes--it is; I've directed books to him, though I've never seen him."

"Then he couldn't do it!"

Jude's countenance fell, for how could he succeed in an enterprise

wherein the great Phillotson had failed? He would have had a day of

despair if the news had not arrived during his sweet Sue's presence,

but even at this moment he had visions of how Phillotson's failure in

the grand university scheme would depress him when she had gone.

"As we are going to take a walk, suppose we go and call upon him?"

said Jude suddenly. "It is not late."

She agreed, and they went along up a hill, and through some prettily

wooded country. Presently the embattled tower and square turret

of the church rose into the sky, and then the school-house. They

inquired of a person in the street if Mr. Phillotson was likely to

be at home, and were informed that he was always at home. A knock

brought him to the school-house door, with a candle in his hand and a

look of inquiry on his face, which had grown thin and careworn since

Jude last set eyes on him.

That after all these years the meeting with Mr. Phillotson should be

of this homely complexion destroyed at one stroke the halo which had

surrounded the school-master's figure in Jude's imagination ever

since their parting. It created in him at the same time a sympathy

with Phillotson as an obviously much chastened and disappointed man.

Jude told him his name, and said he had come to see him as an old

friend who had been kind to him in his youthful days.

"I don't remember you in the least," said the school-master

thoughtfully. "You were one of my pupils, you say? Yes, no doubt;

but they number so many thousands by this time of my life, and have

naturally changed so much, that I remember very few except the quite

recent ones."

"It was out at Marygreen," said Jude, wishing he had not come.

"Yes. I was there a short time. And is this an old pupil, too?"

"No--that's my cousin... I wrote to you for some grammars, if you

recollect, and you sent them?"

"Ah--yes!--I do dimly recall that incident."

"It was very kind of you to do it. And it was you who first started

me on that course. On the morning you left Marygreen, when your

goods were on the waggon, you wished me good-bye, and said your

scheme was to be a university man and enter the Church--that a degree

was the necessary hall-mark of one who wanted to do anything as a

theologian or teacher."

"I remember I thought all that privately; but I wonder I did not keep

my own counsel. The idea was given up years ago."

"I have never forgotten it. It was that which brought me to this

part of the country, and out here to see you to-night."

"Come in," said Phillotson. "And your cousin, too."

They entered the parlour of the school-house, where there was a lamp

with a paper shade, which threw the light down on three or four

books. Phillotson took it off, so that they could see each other

better, and the rays fell on the nervous little face and vivacious

dark eyes and hair of Sue, on the earnest features of her cousin,

and on the schoolmaster's own maturer face and figure, showing him

to be a spare and thoughtful personage of five-and-forty, with a

thin-lipped, somewhat refined mouth, a slightly stooping habit, and

a black frock coat, which from continued frictions shone a little at

the shoulder-blades, the middle of the back, and the elbows.

The old friendship was imperceptibly renewed, the schoolmaster

speaking of his experiences, and the cousins of theirs. He told them

that he still thought of the Church sometimes, and that though he

could not enter it as he had intended to do in former years he might

enter it as a licentiate. Meanwhile, he said, he was comfortable in

his present position, though he was in want of a pupil-teacher.

They did not stay to supper, Sue having to be indoors before it grew

late, and the road was retraced to Christminster. Though they had

talked of nothing more than general subjects, Jude was surprised to

find what a revelation of woman his cousin was to him. She was so

vibrant that everything she did seemed to have its source in feeling.

An exciting thought would make her walk ahead so fast that he could

hardly keep up with her; and her sensitiveness on some points

was such that it might have been misread as vanity. It was with

heart-sickness he perceived that, while her sentiments towards him

were those of the frankest friendliness only, he loved her more than

before becoming acquainted with her; and the gloom of the walk home

lay not in the night overhead, but in the thought of her departure.

"Why must you leave Christminster?" he said regretfully. "How can

you do otherwise than cling to a city in whose history such men as

Newman, Pusey, Ward, Keble, loom so large!"

"Yes--they do. Though how large do they loom in the history of the

world? ... What a funny reason for caring to stay! I should never

have thought of it!" She laughed.

"Well--I must go," she continued. "Miss Fontover, one of the

partners whom I serve, is offended with me, and I with her; and it

is best to go."

"How did that happen?"

"She broke some statuary of mine."

"Oh? Wilfully?"

"Yes. She found it in my room, and though it was my property she

threw it on the floor and stamped on it, because it was not according

to her taste, and ground the arms and the head of one of the figures

all to bits with her heel--a horrid thing!"

"Too Catholic-Apostolic for her, I suppose? No doubt she called them

popish images and talked of the invocation of saints."

"No... No, she didn't do that. She saw the matter quite

differently."

"Ah! Then I am surprised!"

"Yes. It was for quite some other reason that she didn't like my

patron-saints. So I was led to retort upon her; and the end of it

was that I resolved not to stay, but to get into an occupation in

which I shall be more independent."

"Why don't you try teaching again? You once did, I heard."

"I never thought of resuming it; for I was getting on as an

art-designer."

"DO let me ask Mr. Phillotson to let you try your hand in his

school? If you like it, and go to a training college, and become a

first-class certificated mistress, you get twice as large an income

as any designer or church artist, and twice as much freedom."

"Well--ask him. Now I must go in. Good-bye, dear Jude! I am so

glad we have met at last. We needn't quarrel because our parents

did, need we?"

Jude did not like to let her see quite how much he agreed with her,

and went his way to the remote street in which he had his lodging.

To keep Sue Bridehead near him was now a desire which operated

without regard of consequences, and the next evening he again set out

for Lumsdon, fearing to trust to the persuasive effects of a note

only. The school-master was unprepared for such a proposal.

"What I rather wanted was a second year's transfer, as it is called,"

he said. "Of course your cousin would do, personally; but she has

had no experience. Oh--she has, has she? Does she really think of

adopting teaching as a profession?"

Jude said she was disposed to do so, he thought, and his ingenious

arguments on her natural fitness for assisting Mr. Phillotson, of

which Jude knew nothing whatever, so influenced the schoolmaster that

he said he would engage her, assuring Jude as a friend that unless

his cousin really meant to follow on in the same course, and regarded

this step as the first stage of an apprenticeship, of which her

training in a normal school would be the second stage, her time would

be wasted quite, the salary being merely nominal.

The day after this visit Phillotson received a letter from Jude,

containing the information that he had again consulted his cousin,

who took more and more warmly to the idea of tuition; and that

she had agreed to come. It did not occur for a moment to the

schoolmaster and recluse that Jude's ardour in promoting the

arrangement arose from any other feelings towards Sue than the

instinct of co-operation common among members of the same family.