Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Melchester


---

‘To be ordained, I think you said?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you haven’t given up the idea?––I thought that perhaps you
had by this time.’
‘Of course not. I fondly thought at 
first that you felt as I do about
that, as you were so mixed up in Christminster Anglicanism. And
Mr. Phillotson——’
‘I have no respect for Christminster whatever, except, in a quali-
fied degree, on its intellectual side,’ said Sue Bridehead earnestly,
‘My friend I spoke of took that out of me. He was the most
irreligious man I ever knew; and the most moral. And intellect at
Christminster is new wine in old bottles. The mediævalism of
Christminster must go, be sloughed o
ff, or Christminster itself will
have to go. To be sure, at times one couldn’t help having a sneaking
liking for the traditions of the old faith as preserved by a section of
the thinkers there in touching and simple sincerity; but when I was
in my saddest, rightest mind I always felt,
“O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!” ’*
‘Sue, you are not a good friend of mine to talk like that!’
‘Then I won’t, dear Jude!’ The emotional throat-note had come
back, and she turned her face away.
‘I still think Christminster has much that is glorious; though I was
resentful because I couldn’t get there.’ He spoke gently, and resisted
his impulse to pique her on to tears.
‘It is an ignorant place, except as to the townspeople, artizans,
drunkards and paupers,’ she said, perverse still at his di
ffering from
her. ‘They see life as it is, of course; but few of the people in the
colleges do. You prove it in your own person. You are one of the very
men Christminster was intended for when the colleges were
founded; a man with a passion for learning, but no money, or
opportunities, or friends. But you were elbowed o
ff the pavement by
the millionaires’ sons.’
‘Well, I can do without what it confers. I care for something
higher.’
‘And I for something broader, truer,’ she insisted. ‘At present
intellect in Christminster is pushing one way, and religion the other;
and so they stand stockstill, like two rams butting each other.’
‘What would Mr. Phillotson——’
Jude the Obscure


---

‘It is a place full of fetichists and ghost-seers.’
He noticed that whenever he tried to speak of the schoolmaster
she turned the conversation to some generalizations about the
o
ffending University. Jude was extremely, morbidly, curious about
her life as Phillotson’s protégée and betrothed; yet she would not
enlighten him.
‘Well, that’s just what I am, too,’ he said. ‘I am fearful of life,
spectre-seeing always.’
‘But you are good and dear,’ she murmured.
His heart bumped, and he made no reply.
‘You are in the Tractarian stage just now, are you not?’ she added,
putting on 
flippancy to hide real feeling, a common trick with her.
‘Let me see––when was I there?––In the year eighteen hundred
and——’
‘There’s a sarcasm in that which is rather unpleasant to me, Sue.
Now will you do what I want you to? At this time I read a chapter,
and then say prayers, as I told you. Now will you concentrate your
attention on any book of these you like, and sit with your back to me,
and leave me to my custom? You are sure you won’t join me?’
‘I’ll look at you.’
‘No. Don’t tease, Sue.’
‘Very well––I’ll do just as you bid me, and I won’t vex you, Jude,’
she replied, in the tone of a child who was going to be good for ever
after, turning her back upon him accordingly. A small bible other
than the one he was using lay near her, and during his retreat she
took it up and turned over the leaves.
‘Jude,’ she said brightly, when he had 
finished and come back to
her; ‘will you let me make you a new New Testament––like the one I
made for myself at Christminster?’
‘O yes. How was that made?’
‘I altered my old one by cutting up all the Epistles and Gospels
into separate brochures, and re-arranging them in chronological order
as written, beginning the book with Thessalonians, following on
with the Epistles, and putting the Gospels much further on. Then I
had the volume rebound. My University friend Mr.—— ––but never
mind his name, poor boy––said it was an excellent idea. I know that
reading it afterwards made it twice as interesting as before, and twice
as understandable.’
‘H’m,’ said Jude, with a sense of sacrilege.