Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Melchester


---

‘And what a literary enormity this is,’ she said, as she glanced into
the pages of Solomon’s Song. ‘I mean the synopsis at the head of
each chapter, explaining away the real nature of that rhapsody. You
needn’t be alarmed: nobody claims inspiration for the chapter head-
ings. Indeed, many divines treat them with contempt. It seems the
drollest thing to think of the four-and-twenty elders, or bishops, or
whatever number they were, sitting with long faces and writing
down such stu
ff.’
Jude looked pained. ‘You are quite Voltairean!’ he murmured.
‘Indeed? Then I won’t say any more, except that people have no
right to falsify the Bible! I hate such humbug as could attempt to
plaster over with ecclesiastical abstractions such ecstatic, natural,
human love as lies in that great and passionate song!’ Her speech had
grown spirited, and almost petulant, at his rebuke, and her eyes
moist. ‘I wish I had a friend here to support me; but nobody is ever
on my side!’
‘But, my dear Sue, my very dear Sue, I am not against you!’ he
said, taking her hand, and surprised at her introducing personal
feeling into mere argument.
‘Yes you are, yes you are!’ she cried, turning away her face that he
might not see her brimming eyes. ‘You are on the side of the people
in the Training School––at least you seem almost to be! What I insist
on is, that to explain such verses as this: “Whither is thy beloved
gone, O thou fairest among women?” by the note: “The Church
professeth her faith
” is supremely ridiculous!’
‘Well then, let it be! You make such a personal matter of every-
thing. I am––only too inclined just now to apply the words profanely.
You know you are fairest among women to me, come to that!’
‘But you are not to say it now!’ Sue replied, her voice changing to
its softest note of severity. Then their eyes met, and they shook
hands, like cronies in a tavern, and Jude saw the absurdity of quarrel-
ling on such a hypothetical subject, and she the silliness of crying
about what was written in an old book like the bible.
‘I won’t disturb your convictions––I really won’t!’ she went on
soothingly, for now he was rather more ru
ffled than she. ‘But I did
want and long to ennoble some man to high aims; and when I saw
you, and knew you wanted to be my comrade, I––shall I confess it?––
thought that man might be you. But you take so much tradition on
trust that I don’t know what to say.’
Jude the Obscure


---

‘Well, dear; I suppose one must take some things on trust. Life
isn’t long enough to work out everything in Euclid problems before
you believe it. I take Christianity.’
‘Well, perhaps you might take something worse.’
‘Indeed I might. Perhaps I have done so.’ He thought of Arabella.
‘I won’t ask what, because we are going to be very nice with each
other aren’t we, and never never, vex each other any more?’ She
looked up trustfully,* and her voice seemed trying to nestle in his
breast.
‘I shall always care for you!’ said Jude.
‘And I for you. Because you are single-hearted, and forgiving to
your faulty and tiresome little Sue.’
He looked away, for that epicene tenderness of hers was too har-
rowing. Was it that which had broken the heart of the poor leader-
writer; and was he to be the next one? . . . But Sue was so dear! . . . If
he could only get over the sense of her sex, as she seemed to be able
to do so easily of his, what a comrade she would make; for their
di
fference of opinion on conjectural subjects only drew them closer
together on matters of daily human experience. She was nearer to
him than any other woman he had ever met, and he could scarcely
believe that time, creed, or absence, would ever divide him from her.
But his grief at her incredulities returned. They sat on till she fell
asleep again, and he nodded in his chair likewise. Whenever he
aroused himself he turned her things, and made up the 
fire anew.
About six o’clock he awoke completely and lighting a candle found
that her clothes were dry. Her chair being a far more comfortable one
than his she still slept on inside his great-coat, looking warm as a
new bun and boyish as a Ganymedes.* Placing the garments by her
and touching her on the shoulder he went downstairs and washed
himself by starlight in the yard.
At Melchester


---

III.–v.
W
 he returned she was dressed as usual.
‘Now could I get out without anybody seeing me?’ she asked. ‘The
town is not yet astir.’
‘But you have had no breakfast.’
‘O, I don’t want any! I fear I ought not to have run away from that
School! Things seem so di
fferent in the cold light of morning, don’t
they? What Mr. Phillotson will say I don’t know. It was quite by his
wish that I went there. He is the only man in the world for whom I
have any respect or fear. I hope he’ll forgive me; but he’ll scold me
dreadfully, I expect!’
‘I’ll go to him and explain––’ began Jude.
‘O no, you shan’t. I don’t care for him. He may think what he
likes––I shall do just as I choose!’
‘But you just this moment said——’
‘Well, if I did, I shall do as I like for all him! I have thought of
what I shall do––go to the sister of one of my fellow-students in the
Training School, who has asked me to visit her. She has a school near
Shaston, about eighteen miles from here––and I shall stay there till
this has blown over, and I get back to the Training School again.’
At the last moment he persuaded her to let him make her a cup of
co
ffee, in a portable apparatus he kept in his room for use on rising to
go to his work every day before the household was astir.
‘Now a dew-bit* to eat with it,’ he said; ‘and o
ff we go. You can
have a regular breakfast when you get there.’
They went quietly out of the house, Jude accompanying her to the
station. As they departed along the street a head was thrust out of an
upper window of his lodging, and quickly withdrawn. Sue still
seemed sorry for her rashness, and to wish she had not rebelled;
telling him at parting that she would let him know as soon as she got
re-admitted to the Training School. They stood rather miserably
together on the platform; and it was apparent that he wanted to say
more.
‘I want to tell you something––two things,’ he said hurriedly as
the train came up. ‘One is a warm one––the other a cold one.’
‘Jude,’ she said. ‘I know one of them. And you mustn’t!’

---

‘What?’
‘You mustn’t love me. You are to like me––that’s all!’
Jude’s face became so full of complicated glooms that hers was
agitated in sympathy as she bade him adieu through the carriage
window. And then the train moved on, and waving her pretty hand
to him she vanished away.
Melchester was a dismal place enough for Jude that Sunday of her
departure, and the Close so hateful that he did not go once to the
Cathedral services. The next morning there came a letter from her,
which, with her usual promptitude, she had written directly she had
reached her friend’s house. She told him of her safe arrival and
comfortable quarters, and then added:––
‘What I really write about, dear Jude, is something I said to you at