Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Shaston
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‘On the grey-topp’d height
Of Paladore, as pale day wore
Away . . .’ *
The new-lit lights from its windows burnt with a steady shine as if
watching him, one of which windows was his own. Above it he
could just discern the pinnacled tower of Trinity Church. The air
down here, tempered by the thick damp bed of tenacious clay, was
not as it had been above, but soft and relaxing, so that when he had
walked a mile or two he was obliged to wipe his face with his
handkerchief.
Leaving Duncli
ffe Hill on the left he proceeded without hesita-
tion through the shade, as a man goes on, night or day, in a district
over which he has played as a boy. He had walked altogether about
four and a half miles
‘Where Stour receives her strength,
From six cleere fountains fed,’*
when he crossed a tributary of the Stour and reached Leddenton––a
little town of three or four thousand inhabitants––where he went on
to the boys’ school, and knocked at the door of the master’s
residence.
A boy pupil-teacher opened it, and to Phillotson’s inquiry if Mr.
Gillingham was at home replied that he was, going at once o
ff to his
own house, and leaving Phillotson to 
find his way in as he could. He
discovered his friend putting away some books from which he had
been giving evening lessons. The light of the para
ffin lamp fell on
Phillotson’s face––pale and wretched by contrast with his friend’s,
who had a cool, practical look. They had been school-mates in boy-
hood, and fellow-students at Wintoncester Training College, many
years before this time.
‘Glad to see you, Dick! But you don’t look well? Nothing the
matter?’
Phillotson advanced without replying, and Gillingham closed the
cupboard and pulled up beside his visitor.
‘Why you haven’t been here––let me see––since you were mar-
ried? I called, you know, but you were out; and upon my word it is
such a climb after dark, that I have been waiting till the days are
longer before lumpering up again. I am glad you didn’t wait,
however.’
Jude the Obscure
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Though well-trained and even pro
ficient masters, they occasionally
used a dialect-word of their boyhood to each other in private.
‘I’ve come, George, to explain to you my reasons for taking a step
that I am about to take, so that you, at least, will understand my
motives if other people question them anywhen––as they may,
indeed certainly will. . . . But anything is better than the present
condition of things. God forbid that you should ever have such an
experience as mine!’
‘Sit down. You don’t mean––anything wrong between you and
Mrs. Phillotson?’
‘I do. . . . My wretched state is that I’ve a wife I love, who not only
does not love me, but––but——Well, I won’t say. I know her feeling! I
should prefer hatred from her!’
‘Ssh!’
‘And the sad part of it is that she is not so much to blame as I. She
was a pupil-teacher under me, as you know, and I took advantage of
her inexperience, and toled her* out for walks, and got her to agree to
a long engagement before she well knew her own mind. Afterwards
she saw somebody else, but she blindly ful
filled her engagement.’
‘Loving the other?’
‘Yes; with a curious tender solicitude seemingly;* though her exact
feeling for him is a riddle to me––and to him too, I think––possibly
to herself. She is one of the oddest creatures I ever met. However, I
have been struck with these two facts; the extraordinary sympathy, or
similarity, between the pair. He is her cousin, which perhaps
accounts for some of it. They seem to be one person split in two!*
And with her unconquerable aversion to myself as a husband, even
though she may like me as a friend, ’tis too much to bear longer. She
has conscientiously struggled against it, but to no purpose. I cannot
bear it––I cannot! I can’t answer her arguments––she has read ten
times as much as I. Her intellect sparkles like diamonds, while mine
smoulders like brown paper. . . . She’s one too many for me!’
‘She’ll get over it, good-now?’*
‘Never! It is––but I won’t go into it––there are reasons why she
never will. At last she calmly and 
firmly asked if she might leave me
and go to him. The climax came last night, when, owing to my
entering her room by accident, she jumped out of window––so
strong was her dread of me! She pretended it was a dream, but that
was to soothe me. Now when a woman jumps out of window without