Jude the Obscure

Chapter 6

A glance at the place and its accessories was almost enough to reveal

that the schoolmaster's plans and dreams so long indulged in had

been abandoned for some new dream with which neither the Church nor

literature had much in common. Essentially an unpractical man, he

was now bent on making and saving money for a practical purpose--that

of keeping a wife, who, if she chose, might conduct one of the girls'

schools adjoining his own; for which purpose he had advised her to go

into training, since she would not marry him offhand.

About the time that Jude was removing from Marygreen to Melchester,

and entering on adventures at the latter place with Sue, the

schoolmaster was settling down in the new school-house at Shaston.

All the furniture being fixed, the books shelved, and the nails

driven, he had begun to sit in his parlour during the dark winter

nights and re-attempt some of his old studies--one branch of

which had included Roman-Britannic antiquities--an unremunerative

labour for a national school-master but a subject, that, after his

abandonment of the university scheme, had interested him as being a

comparatively unworked mine; practicable to those who, like himself,

had lived in lonely spots where these remains were abundant, and were

seen to compel inferences in startling contrast to accepted views on

the civilization of that time.

A resumption of this investigation was the outward and apparent hobby

of Phillotson at present--his ostensible reason for going alone into

fields where causeways, dykes, and tumuli abounded, or shutting

himself up in his house with a few urns, tiles, and mosaics he had

collected, instead of calling round upon his new neighbours, who for

their part had showed themselves willing enough to be friendly with

him. But it was not the real, or the whole, reason, after all.

Thus on a particular evening in the month, when it had grown quite

late--to near midnight, indeed--and the light of his lamp, shining

from his window at a salient angle of the hill-top town over infinite

miles of valley westward, announced as by words a place and person

given over to study, he was not exactly studying.

The interior of the room--the books, the furniture, the

schoolmaster's loose coat, his attitude at the table, even the

flickering of the fire, bespoke the same dignified tale of

undistracted research--more than creditable to a man who had had no

advantages beyond those of his own making. And yet the tale, true

enough till latterly, was not true now. What he was regarding was

not history. They were historic notes, written in a bold womanly

hand at his dictation some months before, and it was the clerical

rendering of word after word that absorbed him.

He presently took from a drawer a carefully tied bundle of letters,

few, very few, as correspondence counts nowadays. Each was in its

envelope just as it had arrived, and the handwriting was of the same

womanly character as the historic notes. He unfolded them one by

one and read them musingly. At first sight there seemed in these

small documents to be absolutely nothing to muse over. They were

straightforward, frank letters, signed "Sue B--"; just such ones as

would be written during short absences, with no other thought than

their speedy destruction, and chiefly concerning books in reading

and other experiences of a training school, forgotten doubtless by

the writer with the passing of the day of their inditing. In one of

them--quite a recent note--the young woman said that she had received

his considerate letter, and that it was honourable and generous of

him to say he would not come to see her oftener than she desired (the

school being such an awkward place for callers, and because of her

strong wish that her engagement to him should not be known, which it

would infallibly be if he visited her often). Over these phrases the

school-master pored. What precise shade of satisfaction was to be

gathered from a woman's gratitude that the man who loved her had not

been often to see her? The problem occupied him, distracted him.

He opened another drawer, and found therein an envelope, from which

he drew a photograph of Sue as a child, long before he had known her,

standing under trellis-work with a little basket in her hand. There

was another of her as a young woman, her dark eyes and hair making a

very distinct and attractive picture of her, which just disclosed,

too, the thoughtfulness that lay behind her lighter moods. It was

a duplicate of the one she had given Jude, and would have given to

any man. Phillotson brought it half-way to his lips, but withdrew

it in doubt at her perplexing phrases: ultimately kissing the

dead pasteboard with all the passionateness, and more than all the

devotion, of a young man of eighteen.

The schoolmaster's was an unhealthy-looking, old-fashioned face,

rendered more old-fashioned by his style of shaving. A certain

gentlemanliness had been imparted to it by nature, suggesting an

inherent wish to do rightly by all. His speech was a little slow,

but his tones were sincere enough to make his hesitation no defect.

His greying hair was curly, and radiated from a point in the middle

of his crown. There were four lines across his forehead, and he only

wore spectacles when reading at night. It was almost certainly a

renunciation forced upon him by his academic purpose, rather than a

distaste for women, which had hitherto kept him from closing with one

of the s*x in matrimony.

Such silent proceedings as those of this evening were repeated many

and oft times when he was not under the eye of the boys, whose quick

and penetrating regard would frequently become almost intolerable to

the self-conscious master in his present anxious care for Sue, making

him, in the grey hours of morning, dread to meet anew the gimlet

glances, lest they should read what the dream within him was.

He had honourably acquiesced in Sue's announced wish that he was

not often to visit her at the training school; but at length, his

patience being sorely tried, he set out one Saturday afternoon to pay

her an unexpected call. There the news of her departure--expulsion

as it might almost have been considered--was flashed upon him without

warning or mitigation as he stood at the door expecting in a few

minutes to behold her face; and when he turned away he could hardly

see the road before him.

Sue had, in fact, never written a line to her suitor on the subject,

although it was fourteen days old. A short reflection told him that

this proved nothing, a natural delicacy being as ample a reason for

silence as any degree of blameworthiness.

They had informed him at the school where she was living, and having

no immediate anxiety about her comfort his thoughts took the

direction of a burning indignation against the training school

committee. In his bewilderment Phillotson entered the adjacent

cathedral, just now in a direly dismantled state by reason of

the repairs. He sat down on a block of freestone, regardless of

the dusty imprint it made on his breeches; and his listless eyes

following the movements of the workmen he presently became aware

that the reputed culprit, Sue's lover Jude, was one amongst them.

Jude had never spoken to his former hero since the meeting by the

model of Jerusalem. Having inadvertently witnessed Phillotson's

tentative courtship of Sue in the lane there had grown up in the

younger man's mind a curious dislike to think of the elder, to meet

him, to communicate in any way with him; and since Phillotson's

success in obtaining at least her promise had become known to Jude,

he had frankly recognized that he did not wish to see or hear of his

senior any more, learn anything of his pursuits, or even imagine

again what excellencies might appertain to his character. On this

very day of the schoolmaster's visit Jude was expecting Sue, as she

had promised; and when therefore he saw the schoolmaster in the nave

of the building, saw, moreover, that he was coming to speak to him,

he felt no little embarrassment; which Phillotson's own embarrassment

prevented his observing.

Jude joined him, and they both withdrew from the other workmen to the

spot where Phillotson had been sitting. Jude offered him a piece of

sackcloth for a cushion, and told him it was dangerous to sit on the

bare block.

"Yes; yes," said Phillotson abstractedly, as he reseated himself, his

eyes resting on the ground as if he were trying to remember where he

was. "I won't keep you long. It was merely that I have heard that

you have seen my little friend Sue recently. It occurred to me to

speak to you on that account. I merely want to ask--about her."

"I think I know what!" Jude hurriedly said. "About her escaping

from the training school, and her coming to me?"

"Yes."

"Well"--Jude for a moment felt an unprincipled and fiendish wish to

annihilate his rival at all cost. By the exercise of that treachery

which love for the same woman renders possible to men the most

honourable in every other relation of life, he could send off

Phillotson in agony and defeat by saying that the scandal was true,

and that Sue had irretrievably committed herself with him. But his

action did not respond for a moment to his animal instinct; and what

he said was, "I am glad of your kindness in coming to talk plainly to

me about it. You know what they say?--that I ought to marry her."

"What!"

"And I wish with all my soul I could!"

Phillotson trembled, and his naturally pale face acquired a

corpselike sharpness in its lines. "I had no idea that it was of

this nature! God forbid!"

"No, no!" said Jude aghast. "I thought you understood? I mean that

were I in a position to marry her, or someone, and settle down,

instead of living in lodgings here and there, I should be glad!"

What he had really meant was simply that he loved her.

"But--since this painful matter has been opened up--what really

happened?" asked Phillotson, with the firmness of a man who felt that

a sharp smart now was better than a long agony of suspense hereafter.

"Cases arise, and this is one, when even ungenerous questions must be

put to make false assumptions impossible, and to kill scandal."

Jude explained readily; giving the whole series of adventures,

including the night at the shepherd's, her wet arrival at his

lodging, her indisposition from her immersion, their vigil of

discussion, and his seeing her off next morning.

"Well now," said Phillotson at the conclusion, "I take it as your

final word, and I know I can believe you, that the suspicion which

led to her rustication is an absolutely baseless one?"

"It is," said Jude solemnly. "Absolutely. So help me God!"

The schoolmaster rose. Each of the twain felt that the interview

could not comfortably merge in a friendly discussion of their recent

experiences, after the manner of friends; and when Jude had taken him

round, and shown him some features of the renovation which the old

cathedral was undergoing, Phillotson bade the young man good-day and

went away.

This visit took place about eleven o'clock in the morning; but no Sue

appeared. When Jude went to his dinner at one he saw his beloved

ahead of him in the street leading up from the North Gate, walking

as if no way looking for him. Speedily overtaking her he remarked

that he had asked her to come to him at the cathedral, and she had

promised.

"I have been to get my things from the college," she said--an

observation which he was expected to take as an answer, though it was

not one. Finding her to be in this evasive mood he felt inclined to

give her the information so long withheld.

"You have not seen Mr. Phillotson to-day?" he ventured to inquire.

"I have not. But I am not going to be cross-examined about him; and

if you ask anything more I won't answer!"

"It is very odd that--" He stopped, regarding her.

"What?"

"That you are often not so nice in your real presence as you are in

your letters!"

"Does it really seem so to you?" said she, smiling with quick

curiosity. "Well, that's strange; but I feel just the same about

you, Jude. When you are gone away I seem such a coldhearted--"

As she knew his sentiment towards her Jude saw that they were getting

upon dangerous ground. It was now, he thought, that he must speak as

an honest man.

But he did not speak, and she continued: "It was that which made me

write and say--I didn't mind your loving me--if you wanted to, much!"

The exultation he might have felt at what that implied, or seemed to

imply, was nullified by his intention, and he rested rigid till he

began: "I have never told you--"

"Yes you have," murmured she.

"I mean, I have never told you my history--all of it."

"But I guess it. I know nearly."

Jude looked up. Could she possibly know of that morning performance

of his with Arabella; which in a few months had ceased to be a

marriage more completely than by death? He saw that she did not.

"I can't quite tell you here in the street," he went on with a gloomy

tongue. "And you had better not come to my lodgings. Let us go in

here."

The building by which they stood was the market-house; it was the

only place available; and they entered, the market being over, and

the stalls and areas empty. He would have preferred a more congenial

spot, but, as usually happens, in place of a romantic field or solemn

aisle for his tale, it was told while they walked up and down over a

floor littered with rotten cabbage-leaves, and amid all the usual

squalors of decayed vegetable matter and unsaleable refuse. He

began and finished his brief narrative, which merely led up to the

information that he had married a wife some years earlier, and that

his wife was living still. Almost before her countenance had time to

change she hurried out the words,

"Why didn't you tell me before!"

"I couldn't. It seemed so cruel to tell it."

"To yourself, Jude. So it was better to be cruel to me!"

"No, dear darling!" cried Jude passionately. He tried to take her

hand, but she withdrew it. Their old relations of confidence seemed

suddenly to have ended, and the antagonisms of s*x to s*x were left

without any counter-poising predilections. She was his comrade,

friend, unconscious sweetheart no longer; and her eyes regarded him

in estranged silence.

"I was ashamed of the episode in my life which brought about the

marriage," he continued. "I can't explain it precisely now. I could

have done it if you had taken it differently!"

"But how can I?" she burst out. "Here I have been saying, or

writing, that--that you might love me, or something of the

sort!--just out of charity--and all the time--oh, it is perfectly

damnable how things are!" she said, stamping her foot in a nervous

quiver.

"You take me wrong, Sue! I never thought you cared for me at all,

till quite lately; so I felt it did not matter! Do you care for me,

Sue?--you know how I mean?--I don't like 'out of charity' at all!"

It was a question which in the circumstances Sue did not choose to

answer.

"I suppose she--your wife--is--a very pretty woman, even if she's

wicked?" she asked quickly.

"She's pretty enough, as far as that goes."

"Prettier than I am, no doubt!"

"You are not the least alike. And I have never seen her for

years... But she's sure to come back--they always do!"

"How strange of you to stay apart from her like this!" said Sue,

her trembling lip and lumpy throat belying her irony. "You, such a

religious man. How will the demi-gods in your Pantheon--I mean those

legendary persons you call saints--intercede for you after this?

Now if I had done such a thing it would have been different, and not

remarkable, for I at least don't regard marriage as a sacrament.

Your theories are not so advanced as your practice!"

"Sue, you are terribly cutting when you like to be--a perfect

Voltaire! But you must treat me as you will!"

When she saw how wretched he was she softened, and trying to blink

away her sympathetic tears said with all the winning reproachfulness

of a heart-hurt woman: "Ah--you should have told me before you gave

me that idea that you wanted to be allowed to love me! I had no

feeling before that moment at the railway-station, except--" For

once Sue was as miserable as he, in her attempts to keep herself free

from emotion, and her less than half-success.

"Don't cry, dear!" he implored.

"I am--not crying--because I meant to--love you; but because of your

want of--confidence!"

They were quite screened from the market-square without, and he could

not help putting out his arm towards her waist. His momentary desire

was the means of her rallying. "No, no!" she said, drawing back

stringently, and wiping her eyes. "Of course not! It would be

hypocrisy to pretend that it would be meant as from my cousin; and it

can't be in any other way."

They moved on a dozen paces, and she showed herself recovered. It

was distracting to Jude, and his heart would have ached less had she

appeared anyhow but as she did appear; essentially large-minded and

generous on reflection, despite a previous exercise of those narrow

womanly humours on impulse that were necessary to give her s*x.

"I don't blame you for what you couldn't help," she said, smiling.

"How should I be so foolish? I do blame you a little bit for not

telling me before. But, after all, it doesn't matter. We should

have had to keep apart, you see, even if this had not been in your

life."

"No, we shouldn't, Sue! This is the only obstacle."

"You forget that I must have loved you, and wanted to be your

wife, even if there had been no obstacle," said Sue, with a gentle

seriousness which did not reveal her mind. "And then we are cousins,

and it is bad for cousins to marry. And--I am engaged to somebody

else. As to our going on together as we were going, in a sort of

friendly way, the people round us would have made it unable to

continue. Their views of the relations of man and woman are limited,

as is proved by their expelling me from the school. Their philosophy

only recognizes relations based on animal desire. The wide field

of strong attachment where desire plays, at least, only a secondary

part, is ignored by them--the part of--who is it?--Venus Urania."

Her being able to talk learnedly showed that she was mistress of

herself again; and before they parted she had almost regained her

vivacious glance, her reciprocity of tone, her gay manner, and her

second-thought attitude of critical largeness towards others of her

age and s*x.

He could speak more freely now. "There were several reasons against

my telling you rashly. One was what I have said; another, that

it was always impressed upon me that I ought not to marry--that

I belonged to an odd and peculiar family--the wrong breed for

marriage."

"Ah--who used to say that to you?"

"My great-aunt. She said it always ended badly with us Fawleys."

"That's strange. My father used to say the same to me!"

They stood possessed by the same thought, ugly enough, even as an

assumption: that a union between them, had such been possible, would

have meant a terrible intensification of unfitness--two bitters in

one dish.

"Oh, but there can't be anything in it!" she said with nervous

lightness. "Our family have been unlucky of late years in choosing

mates--that's all."

And then they pretended to persuade themselves that all that had

happened was of no consequence, and that they could still be cousins

and friends and warm correspondents, and have happy genial times

when they met, even if they met less frequently than before. Their

parting was in good friendship, and yet Jude's last look into her

eyes was tinged with inquiry, for he felt that he did not even now

quite know her mind.