Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure


---

hidden from view by the Mount of Olives.* ‘Look at your cousin
Jude,’ continued the schoolmaster. ‘He doesn’t think we have had
enough of Jerusalem!’
‘Ah––I didn’t see him!’ she cried in her quick light voice. ‘Jude––
how seriously you are going into it!’
Jude started up from his reverie, and saw her. ‘O––Sue!’ he said
with a glad 
flush of embarrassment. ‘These are your school-children,
of course. I saw that schools were admitted in the afternoons––and
thought you might come; but I got so deeply interested that I didn’t
remember where I was. How it carries one back, doesn’t it! I could
examine it for hours, but I have only a few minutes, unfortunately;
for I am in the middle of a job out here.’
‘Your cousin is so terribly clever that she criticizes it unmerci-
fully,’ said Phillotson, with good-humoured satire. ‘She is quite
sceptical as to its correctness.’
‘No Mr. Phillotson, I am not––altogether. I hate to be what is
called a clever girl––there are too many of that sort now!’ answered
Sue sensitively. ‘I only meant––I don’t know what I meant––except
that it was what you don’t understand.’
‘I know your meaning,’ said Jude ardently (although he did not).
‘And I think you are quite right.’
‘That’s a good Jude––I know you believe in me!’ She impulsively
seized his hand, and leaving a reproachful look on the schoolmaster
turned away to Jude, her voice revealing a tremor which she herself
felt to be absurdly uncalled for by sarcasm so gentle. She had not the
least conception how the hearts of the twain went out to her at this
momentary revelation of feeling, and what a complication she was
building up thereby in the futures of both.
The model wore too much of an educational aspect for the chil-
dren not to tire of it soon, and a little later in the afternoon they were
all marched back to Lumsdon, Jude returning to his work. He
watched the juvenile 
flock in their clean frocks and pinafores, filing
down the street towards the country beside Phillotson and Sue, and a
sad, dissatis
fied sense of being out of the scheme of the latters’ lives
had possession of him. Phillotson had invited him to walk out and
see them on Friday evening, when there would be no lesson to give to
Sue, and Jude had eagerly promised to avail himself of the
opportunity.
Meanwhile the scholars and teachers moved homewards, and the
At Christminster


---

next day on looking on the black-board in Sue’s class Phillotson was
surprised to 
find upon it, skilfully drawn in chalk a perspective view
of Jerusalem, with every building shown in its place.
‘I thought you took no interest in the model, and hardly looked at
it?’ he said.
‘I hardly did,’ said she, ‘but I remembered that much of it.’
‘It is more than I had remembered myself.’
Her Majesty’s school-inspector was at that time paying ‘surprise-
visits’ in this neighbourhood to test the teaching unawares; and two
days later, in the middle of the morning lessons, the latch of the door
was softly lifted, and in walked my gentleman, the king of terrors––
to pupil-teachers.
To Mr. Phillotson the surprise was not great; like the lady in the
story, he had been played that trick too many times to be unprepared.
But Sue’s class was at the further end of the room, and her back was
towards the entrance: the inspector therefore came and stood behind
her and watched her teaching some half-minute before she became
aware of his presence. She turned, and realized that an oft-dreaded
moment had come. The e
ffect upon her timidity was such that she
uttered a cry of fright. Phillotson, with a strange instinct of solici-
tude quite beyond his control was at her side just in time to prevent
her falling from faintness. She soon recovered herself, and laughed;
but when the inspector had gone there was a reaction, and she was so
white that Phillotson took her into his room, and gave her some
brandy to bring her round. She found him holding her hand.
‘You ought to have told me,’ she gasped petulantly, ‘that one of the
Inspector’s surprise-visits was imminent! O what shall I do! Now
he’ll write and tell the managers that I am no good, and I shall be
disgraced for ever!’
‘He won’t do that, my dear little girl! You are the best teacher ever
I had.’
He looked so gently at her that she was moved, and regretted that
she had upbraided him. When she was better she went home.
Jude in the meantime had been waiting impatiently for Friday. On
both Wednesday and Thursday he had been so much under the
in
fluence of his desire to see her that he walked after dark some
distance along the road in the direction of the village, and on return-
ing to his room to read, found himself quite unable to concentrate
his mind on the page. On Friday, as soon as he had got himself up as