Jude the Obscure

Chapter 1

"For there was no other girl, O bridegroom,

like her!"--SAPPHO (H. T. Wharton).

I

It was a new idea--the ecclesiastical and altruistic life as distinct

from the intellectual and emulative life. A man could preach and

do good to his fellow-creatures without taking double-firsts in the

schools of Christminster, or having anything but ordinary knowledge.

The old fancy which had led on to the culminating vision of the

bishopric had not been an ethical or theological enthusiasm at all,

but a mundane ambition masquerading in a surplice. He feared that

his whole scheme had degenerated to, even though it might not have

originated in, a social unrest which had no foundation in the nobler

instincts; which was purely an artificial product of civilization.

There were thousands of young men on the same self-seeking track

at the present moment. The sensual hind who ate, drank, and lived

carelessly with his wife through the days of his vanity was a more

likable being than he.

But to enter the Church in such an unscholarly way that he could not

in any probability rise to a higher grade through all his career than

that of the humble curate wearing his life out in an obscure village

or city slum--that might have a touch of goodness and greatness in

it; that might be true religion, and a purgatorial course worthy of

being followed by a remorseful man.

The favourable light in which this new thought showed itself by

contrast with his foregone intentions cheered Jude, as he sat there,

shabby and lonely; and it may be said to have given, during the next

few days, the _coup de gr ce_ to his intellectual career--a career

which had extended over the greater part of a dozen years. He did

nothing, however, for some long stagnant time to advance his new

desire, occupying himself with little local jobs in putting up and

lettering headstones about the neighbouring villages, and submitting

to be regarded as a social failure, a returned purchase, by the

half-dozen or so of farmers and other country-people who condescended

to nod to him.

The human interest of the new intention--and a human interest is

indispensable to the most spiritual and self-sacrificing--was created

by a letter from Sue, bearing a fresh postmark. She evidently

wrote with anxiety, and told very little about her own doings, more

than that she had passed some sort of examination for a Queen's

Scholarship, and was going to enter a training college at Melchester

to complete herself for the vocation she had chosen, partly by his

influence. There was a theological college at Melchester; Melchester

was a quiet and soothing place, almost entirely ecclesiastical in its

tone; a spot where worldly learning and intellectual smartness had no

establishment; where the altruistic feeling that he did possess would

perhaps be more highly estimated than a brilliancy which he did not.

As it would be necessary that he should continue for a time to work

at his trade while reading up Divinity, which he had neglected at

Christminster for the ordinary classical grind, what better course

for him than to get employment at the further city, and pursue this

plan of reading? That his excessive human interest in the new place

was entirely of Sue's making, while at the same time Sue was to be

regarded even less than formerly as proper to create it, had an

ethical contradictoriness to which he was not blind. But that much

he conceded to human frailty, and hoped to learn to love her only as

a friend and kinswoman.

He considered that he might so mark out his coming years as to begin

his ministry at the age of thirty--an age which much attracted him as

being that of his exemplar when he first began to teach in Galilee.

This would allow him plenty of time for deliberate study, and for

acquiring capital by his trade to help his aftercourse of keeping the

necessary terms at a theological college.

Christmas had come and passed, and Sue had gone to the Melchester

Normal School. The time was just the worst in the year for Jude to

get into new employment, and he had written suggesting to her that

he should postpone his arrival for a month or so, till the days had

lengthened. She had acquiesced so readily that he wished he had not

proposed it--she evidently did not much care about him, though she

had never once reproached him for his strange conduct in coming to

her that night, and his silent disappearance. Neither had she ever

said a word about her relations with Mr. Phillotson.

Suddenly, however, quite a passionate letter arrived from Sue.

She was quite lonely and miserable, she told him. She hated the

place she was in; it was worse than the ecclesiastical designer's;

worse than anywhere. She felt utterly friendless; could he come

immediately?--though when he did come she would only be able to

see him at limited times, the rules of the establishment she found

herself in being strict to a degree. It was Mr. Phillotson who had

advised her to come there, and she wished she had never listened to

him.

Phillotson's suit was not exactly prospering, evidently; and Jude

felt unreasonably glad. He packed up his things and went to

Melchester with a lighter heart than he had known for months.

This being the turning over a new leaf he duly looked about for

a temperance hotel, and found a little establishment of that

description in the street leading from the station. When he had

had something to eat he walked out into the dull winter light over

the town bridge, and turned the corner towards the Close. The

day was foggy, and standing under the walls of the most graceful

architectural pile in England he paused and looked up. The lofty

building was visible as far as the roofridge; above, the dwindling

spire rose more and more remotely, till its apex was quite lost in

the mist drifting across it.

The lamps now began to be lighted, and turning to the west front

he walked round. He took it as a good omen that numerous blocks

of stone were lying about, which signified that the cathedral was

undergoing restoration or repair to a considerable extent. It seemed

to him, full of the superstitions of his beliefs, that this was an

exercise of forethought on the part of a ruling Power, that he might

find plenty to do in the art he practised while waiting for a call to

higher labours.

Then a wave of warmth came over him as he thought how near he now

stood to the bright-eyed vivacious girl with the broad forehead

and pile of dark hair above it; the girl with the kindling glance,

daringly soft at times--something like that of the girls he had

seen in engravings from paintings of the Spanish school. She was

here--actually in this Close--in one of the houses confronting this

very west fa ade.

He went down the broad gravel path towards the building. It was

an ancient edifice of the fifteenth century, once a palace, now

a training-school, with mullioned and transomed windows, and a

courtyard in front shut in from the road by a wall. Jude opened the

gate and went up to the door through which, on inquiring for his

cousin, he was gingerly admitted to a waiting-room, and in a few

minutes she came.

Though she had been here such a short while, she was not as he had

seen her last. All her bounding manner was gone; her curves of

motion had become subdued lines. The screens and subtleties of

convention had likewise disappeared. Yet neither was she quite the

woman who had written the letter that summoned him. That had plainly

been dashed off in an impulse which second thoughts had somewhat

regretted; thoughts that were possibly of his recent self-disgrace.

Jude was quite overcome with emotion.

"You don't--think me a demoralized wretch--for coming to you as I

was--and going so shamefully, Sue?"

"Oh, I have tried not to! You said enough to let me know what had

caused it. I hope I shall never have any doubt of your worthiness,

my poor Jude! And I am glad you have come!"

She wore a murrey-coloured gown with a little lace collar. It was

made quite plain, and hung about her slight figure with clinging

gracefulness. Her hair, which formerly she had worn according to the

custom of the day was now twisted up tightly, and she had altogether

the air of a woman clipped and pruned by severe discipline,

an under-brightness shining through from the depths which that

discipline had not yet been able to reach.

She had come forward prettily, but Jude felt that she had hardly

expected him to kiss her, as he was burning to do, under other

colours than those of cousinship. He could not perceive the least

sign that Sue regarded him as a lover, or ever would do so, now that

she knew the worst of him, even if he had the right to behave as one;

and this helped on his growing resolve to tell her of his matrimonial

entanglement, which he had put off doing from time to time in sheer

dread of losing the bliss of her company.

Sue came out into the town with him, and they walked and talked with

tongues centred only on the passing moments. Jude said he would like

to buy her a little present of some sort, and then she confessed,

with something of shame, that she was dreadfully hungry. They were

kept on very short allowances in the college, and a dinner, tea, and

supper all in one was the present she most desired in the world.

Jude thereupon took her to an inn and ordered whatever the house

afforded, which was not much. The place, however, gave them a

delightful opportunity for a _t te- -t te_, nobody else being in the

room, and they talked freely.

She told him about the school as it was at that date, and the rough

living, and the mixed character of her fellow-students, gathered

together from all parts of the diocese, and how she had to get up and

work by gas-light in the early morning, with all the bitterness of

a young person to whom restraint was new. To all this he listened;

but it was not what he wanted especially to know--her relations with

Phillotson. That was what she did not tell. When they had sat and

eaten, Jude impulsively placed his hand upon hers; she looked up

and smiled, and took his quite freely into her own little soft one,

dividing his fingers and coolly examining them, as if they were the

fingers of a glove she was purchasing.

"Your hands are rather rough, Jude, aren't they?" she said.

"Yes. So would yours be if they held a mallet and chisel all day."

"I don't dislike it, you know. I think it is noble to see a man's

hands subdued to what he works in... Well, I'm rather glad I came

to this training-school, after all. See how independent I shall be

after the two years' training! I shall pass pretty high, I expect,

and Mr. Phillotson will use his influence to get me a big school."

She had touched the subject at last. "I had a suspicion, a fear,"

said Jude, "that he--cared about you rather warmly, and perhaps

wanted to marry you."

"Now don't be such a silly boy!"

"He has said something about it, I expect."

"If he had, what would it matter? An old man like him!"

"Oh, come, Sue; he's not so very old. And I know what I saw him

doing--"

"Not kissing me--that I'm certain!"

"No. But putting his arm round your waist."

"Ah--I remember. But I didn't know he was going to."

"You are wriggling out if it, Sue, and it isn't quite kind!"

Her ever-sensitive lip began to quiver, and her eye to blink, at

something this reproof was deciding her to say.

"I know you'll be angry if I tell you everything, and that's why I

don't want to!"

"Very well, then, dear," he said soothingly. "I have no real right

to ask you, and I don't wish to know."

"I shall tell you!" said she, with the perverseness that was

part of her. "This is what I have done: I have promised--I

have promised--that I will marry him when I come out of the

training-school two years hence, and have got my certificate; his

plan being that we shall then take a large double school in a great

town--he the boys' and I the girls'--as married school-teachers often

do, and make a good income between us."

"Oh, Sue! ... But of course it is right--you couldn't have done

better!"

He glanced at her and their eyes met, the reproach in his own belying

his words. Then he drew his hand quite away from hers, and turned

his face in estrangement from her to the window. Sue regarded him

passively without moving.

"I knew you would be angry!" she said with an air of no emotion

whatever. "Very well--I am wrong, I suppose! I ought not to have

let you come to see me! We had better not meet again; and we'll only

correspond at long intervals, on purely business matters!"

This was just the one thing he would not be able to bear, as she

probably knew, and it brought him round at once. "Oh yes, we will,"

he said quickly. "Your being engaged can make no difference to me

whatever. I have a perfect right to see you when I want to; and I

shall!"

"Then don't let us talk of it any more. It is quite spoiling our

evening together. What does it matter about what one is going to do

two years hence!"

She was something of a riddle to him, and he let the subject drift

away. "Shall we go and sit in the cathedral?" he asked, when their

meal was finished.

"Cathedral? Yes. Though I think I'd rather sit in the railway

station," she answered, a remnant of vexation still in her voice.

"That's the centre of the town life now. The cathedral has had its

day!"

"How modern you are!"

"So would you be if you had lived so much in the Middle Ages as I

have done these last few years! The cathedral was a very good place

four or five centuries ago; but it is played out now... I am not

modern, either. I am more ancient than medi valism, if you only

knew."

Jude looked distressed.

"There--I won't say any more of that!" she cried. "Only you don't

know how bad I am, from your point of view, or you wouldn't think so

much of me, or care whether I was engaged or not. Now there's just

time for us to walk round the Close, then I must go in, or I shall be

locked out for the night."

He took her to the gate and they parted. Jude had a conviction that

his unhappy visit to her on that sad night had precipitated this

marriage engagement, and it did anything but add to his happiness.

Her reproach had taken that shape, then, and not the shape of words.

However, next day he set about seeking employment, which it was not

so easy to get as at Christminster, there being, as a rule, less

stone-cutting in progress in this quiet city, and hands being mostly

permanent. But he edged himself in by degrees. His first work was

some carving at the cemetery on the hill; and ultimately he became

engaged on the labour he most desired--the cathedral repairs, which

were very extensive, the whole interior stonework having been

overhauled, to be largely replaced by new. It might be a labour of

years to get it all done, and he had confidence enough in his own

skill with the mallet and chisel to feel that it would be a matter of

choice with himself how long he would stay.

The lodgings he took near the Close Gate would not have disgraced a

curate, the rent representing a higher percentage on his wages than

mechanics of any sort usually care to pay. His combined bed and

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.