Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Melchester


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They sat resting, and the shepherd came in. ‘Don’t ’ee mind I,’ he
said with a deprecating wave of the hand; ‘bide here as long as ye
will. But mid you be thinking o’ getting back to Melchester to-night
by train? Because you’ll never do it in this world, since you don’t
know the lie of the country. I don’t mind going with ye some o’ the
ways; but even then the train mid be gone.’
They started up.
‘You can bide here, you know, over the night––can’t ’em, mother?
The place is welcome to ye. ’Tis hard lying, rather, but volk may do
worse.’ He turned to Jude and asked privately ‘Be you a married
couple?’
‘Hsh––no!’ said Jude.
‘O––I meant nothing ba’dy––not I! Well then, she can go into
mother’s room, and you and I can lie in the outer chimmer after
they’ve gone through. I can call ye soon enough to catch the 
first
train back. You’ve lost this one now.’
On consideration they decided to close with this o
ffer; and drew
up and shared with the shepherd and his mother the boiled bacon
and greens for supper.
‘I rather like this,’ said Sue, while their entertainers were clearing
away the dishes. ‘Outside all laws except gravitation and germination.’
‘You only think you like it; you don’t. You are quite a product of
civilization,’ said Jude, a recollection of her engagement reviving his
soreness a little.
‘Indeed I am not, Jude. I like reading and all that; but I crave to get
back to the life of my infancy, and its freedom.’
‘Do you remember it so well? You seem to me to have nothing
unconventional at all about you.’
‘O, haven’t I! You don’t know what’s inside me!’
‘What?’
‘The Ishmaelite.’*
‘An urban miss is what you are.’
She looked severe disagreement and turned away.
The shepherd aroused them the next morning, as he had said. It
was bright and clear, and the four miles to the train were accom-
plished pleasantly. When they had reached Melchester, and walked
to the Close, and the gables of the old building in which she was
again to be immured rose before Sue’s eyes, she looked a little scared.
‘I expect I shall catch it!’ she murmured.
Jude the Obscure


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They rang the great bell and waited.
‘O––I bought something for you, which I had nearly forgotten,’
she said quickly, searching her pocket. ‘It is a new little photograph
of me. Would you like it?’
‘Would I!’ He took it gladly, and the porter came. There seemed to
be an ominous glance on his face when he opened the gate. She
passed in, looking back at Jude, and waving her hand.
At Melchester


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III.–iii.
T
 seventy young women, of ages varying in the main from nine-
teen to one-and-twenty, though several were older, who at this date
filled the species of nunnery known as the Training-School* at
Melchester, formed a very mixed community which included the
daughters of mechanics, curates, surgeons, shopkeepers, farmers,
dairymen, soldiers, sailors, and villagers. They sat in the large
school-room of the establishment on the evening previously
described, and word was passed round that Sue Bridehead had not
come in at closing-time.
‘She went out with her young man,’ said a second-year’s student,
who knew about young men. ‘And Miss Traceley saw her at the
station with him. She’ll have it hot when she does come.’
‘She said he was her cousin,’ observed a youthful new girl.
‘That excuse has been made a little too often in this school to be
e
ffectual in saving our souls,’ said the head girl of the year drily.
The fact was that only twelve months before, there had occurred a
lamentable seduction of one of the pupils, who had made the same
statement in order to gain meetings with her lover. The a
ffair had
created a scandal, and the management had consequently been rough
on cousins ever since.
At nine o’clock the names were called, Sue’s being pronounced
three times sonorously by Miss Traceley without eliciting an answer.
At a quarter past nïne the seventy stood up to sing the evening
hymn, and then knelt down to prayers. After prayers they went in to
supper, and every girl’s thought was, Where is Sue Bridehead? Some
of the students, who had seen Jude from the window, felt that they
would not mind risking her punishment for the pleasure of being
kissed by such a kindly-faced young man. Hardly one among them
believed in the cousinship.
Half-an-hour later they all lay in their cubicles, their tender femi-
nine faces upturned to the 
flaring gas-jets which at intervals
stretched down the long dormitories, every face bearing the legend
The Weaker upon it, as the penalty of the sex wherein they were
moulded, which by no possible exertion of their willing hearts and
abilities could be made strong while the inexorable laws of nature

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remain what they are. They formed a pretty, suggestive, pathetic
sight, of whose pathos and beauty they were themselves
unconscious, and would not discover till, amid the storms and
strains of after-years, with their injustice, loneliness, child-bearing,
and bereavement, their minds would revert to this experience as to
something which had been allowed to slip past them insu
fficiently
regarded.
One of the mistresses came in to turn out the lights, and before
doing so gave a 
final glance at Sue’s cot which remained empty, and
at her little dressing-table at the foot, which, like all the rest, was
ornamented with various girlish tri
fles, framed photographs being
not the least conspicuous among them. Sue’s table had a moderate
show, two men in their 
filigree and velvet frames standing together
beside her looking-glass.
‘Who are these men––did she ever say?’ asked the mistress.
‘Strictly speaking, relations’ portraits only are allowed on these
tables, you know.’
‘One––the middle-aged man,’ said a student in the next bed, ‘is
the schoolmaster she served under––Mr. Phillotson.’
‘And the other––this undergraduate in cap and gown––who is
he?’
‘He is a friend, or was. She has never told his name.’
‘Was it either of these two who came for her?’
‘No.’
‘You are sure ’twas not the undergraduate?’
‘Quite. He was a young man with a black beard.’
The lights were promptly extinguished, and till they fell asleep
the girls indulged in conjectures about Sue, and wondered what
games she had carried on in London and at Christminster before she
came here, some of the more restless ones getting out of bed and
looking from the mullioned windows at the vast west front of the
Cathedral opposite, and the spire rising behind it.
When they awoke the next morning they glanced into Sue’s nook,
to 
find it still without a tenant. After the early lessons by gas-light, in
half-toilet, and when they had come up to dress for breakfast, the
bell of the entrance gate was heard to ring loudly. The mistress of
the dormitory went away, and presently came back to say that the
Principal’s orders were that nobody was to speak to Bridehead
without permission.