Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

partners whom I serve, is o
ffended with me, and I with her; and it is
best to go.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘She broke some statuary of mine.’
‘Oh? Wilfully?’
Jude the Obscure


---

‘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
di
fferently.’
‘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 e
ffects of a note
only. The schoolmaster 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. O––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 in
fluenced 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
At Christminster


---

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 school-
master 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.
Jude the Obscure


---

II.–v.
T
 schoolmaster sat in his homely dwelling attached to the school,
both being modern erections; and he looked across the way at the old
house in which his teacher Sue had a lodging. The arrangement had
been concluded very quickly. A pupil-teacher who was to have been
transferred to Mr. Phillotson’s school had failed him, and Sue had
been taken as stop-gap. All such provisional arrangements as these
could only last till the next annual visit of H.M. inspector, whose
approval was necessary to make them permanent. Having taught for
some two years in London, though she had abandoned that vocation
of late, Miss Bridehead was not exactly a novice, and Phillotson
thought there would be no di
fficulty in retaining her services, which
he already wished to do, though she had only been with him three or
four weeks. He had found her quite as bright as Jude had described
her; and what master-tradesman does not wish to keep an apprentice
who saves him half his labour?
It was a little over half-past eight o’clock in the morning, and he
was waiting to see her cross the road to the school, when he would
follow. At twenty minutes to nine she did cross, a light hat tossed on
her head, and he watched her as a curiosity. A new emanation, which
had nothing to do with her skill as a teacher, seemed to surround her
this morning. He went to the school also, and Sue remained govern-
ing her class at the other end of the room, all day under his eye. She
certainly was an excellent teacher.
It was part of his duty to give her private lessons in the evening,
and some article in the Code made it necessary that a respectable,
elderly woman should be present at these lessons, when the teacher
and the taught were of di
fferent sexes. Richard Phillotson thought of
the absurdity of the regulation in this case, when he was old enough
to be the girl’s father: but he faithfully acted up to it; and sat down
with her in a room where Mrs. Hawes, the widow at whose house
Sue lodged, occupied herself with sewing. The regulation was,
indeed, not easy to evade, for there was no other sitting-room in the
dwelling.
Sometimes as she 
figured––it was arithmetic that they were work-
ing at––she would involuntarily glance up with a little inquiring

---

smile at him, as if she assumed that, being the master, he must
perceive all that was passing in her brain, as right or wrong.
Phillotson was not really thinking of the arithmetic at all, but of her,
in a novel way which somehow seemed strange to him as preceptor.
Perhaps she knew that he was thinking of her thus.
For a few weeks their work had gone on with a monotony which in
itself was a delight to him. Then it happened that the children were
to be taken to Christminster to see an itinerant exhibition, in the
shape of a model of Jerusalem, to which schools were admitted at a
penny a head in the interests of education. They marched along the
road two and two, she beside her class with her simple cotton sun-
shade, her little thumb cocked up against its stem; and Phillotson
behind in his long dangling coat, handling his walking-stick gen-
teelly, in the musing mood which had come over him since her
arrival. The afternoon was one of sun and dust, and when they
entered the exhibition room few people were present but themselves.
The model of the ancient city stood in the middle of the apart-
ment and the proprietor with a 
fine religious philanthropy written on
his features, walked round it with a pointer in his hand, showing the
young people the various quarters and places known to them by
name from reading their bibles; Mount Moriah, the Valley of
Jehoshaphat, the City of Zion, the walls and the gates, outside one of
which there was a large mound like a tumulus and on the mound a
little white cross. The spot, he said, was Calvary.
‘I think,’ said Sue to the schoolmaster, as she stood with him a
little in the background, ‘that this model, elaborate as it is, is a very
imaginary production. How does anybody know that Jerusalem was
like this in the time of Christ? I am sure this man doesn’t.’
‘It is made after the best conjectural maps, based on actual visits to
the city as it now exists.’
‘I fancy we have had enough of Jerusalem,’ she said, ‘considering
we are not descended from the Jews. There was nothing 
first-rate
about the place, or people, after all––as there was about Athens,
Rome, Alexandria, and other old cities.’
‘But my dear girl, consider what it is to us!’
She was silent, for she was easily repressed; and then perceived
among the group of children clustered round the model a young
man in a white 
flannel jacket, his form being bent so low in his intent
inspection of the Valley of Jehoshaphat that his face was almost