Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure


---

the school-house. The hour was too early; the pupils were still in
school, humming small, like a swarm of gnats; and he withdrew a
few steps along Abbey Walk, whence he regarded the spot which fate
had made the home of all he loved best in the world. In front of the
schools, which were extensive and stone-built, grew two enormous
beeches with smooth mouse-coloured trunks, as such trees will only
grow on chalk uplands. Within the mullioned and transomed win-
dows he could see the black, brown and 
flaxen crowns of the scholars
over the sills, and to pass the time away he walked down to the
level terrace where the Abbey gardens once had spread, his heart
throbbing in spite of him.
Unwilling to enter till the children were dismissed he remained
here till young voices could be heard in the open air, and girls in
white pinafores over red and blue frocks appeared dancing along the
paths which the abbess, prioress, sub-prioress, and 
fifty nuns had
demurely paced three centuries earlier. Retracing his steps he found
that he had waited too long, and that Sue had gone out into the town
at the heels of the last scholar, Mr. Phillotson having been absent all
the afternoon at a teachers’ meeting at Shottsford.
Jude went into the empty schoolroom and sat down, the girl who
was sweeping the 
floor having informed him that Mrs. Phillotson
would be back again in a few minutes. A piano stood near––
actually the old piano that Phillotson had possessed at
Marygreen––and though the dark afternoon almost prevented him
seeing the notes Jude touched them in his humble way, and could
not help modulating into the hymn which had so a
ffected him in
the previous week.
A 
figure moved behind him, and thinking it was still the girl with
the broom Jude took no notice, till the person came close and laid her
fingers lightly upon his bass hand. The imposed hand was a little one
he seemed to know, and he turned.
‘Don’t stop,’ said Sue. ‘I like it. I learnt it before I left Melchester.
They used to play it in the Training School.’
‘I can’t strum before you! Play it for me.’
‘O well––I don’t mind.’
Sue sat down, and her rendering of the piece, though not remark-
able, seemed divine as compared with his own. She, like him, was
evidently touched––to her own surprise––by the recalled air; and
when she had 
finished, and he moved his hand towards hers, it met
At Shaston


---

his own half-way. Jude grasped it––just as he had done before her
marriage.
‘It is odd,’ she said, in a voice quite changed, ‘that I should care
about that air; because——’
‘Because what?’
‘I am not that sort––quite.’
‘Not easily moved?’
‘I didn’t quite mean that.’
‘O, but you are one of that sort, for you are just like me at heart!’
‘But not at head.’
She played on, and suddenly turned round; and by an
unpremeditated instinct each clasped the other’s hand again.
She uttered a forced little laugh as she relinquished his quickly.
‘How funny,’ she said. ‘I wonder what we both did that for!’
‘I suppose because we are both alike, as I said before.’
‘Not in our thoughts! Perhaps a little in our feelings.’
‘And they rule thoughts. . . . Isn’t it enough to make one blas-
pheme that the composer of that hymn is one of the most common-
place men I ever met!’
‘What––you know him?’
‘I went to see him.’
‘O you goose––to do just what I should have done! Why did you?’
‘Because we are not alike,’ he said drily.
‘Now we’ll have some tea,’ said Sue. ‘Shall we have it here instead
of in my house? It is no trouble to get the kettle and things brought
in. We don’t live at the school, you know, but in that ancient dwelling
across the way called Old-Grove Place. It is so antique and dismal
that it depresses me dreadfully. Such houses are very well to visit,
but not to live in––I feel crushed into the earth by the weight of so
many previous lives there spent. In a new place like these schools
there is only your own life to support. Sit down, and I’ll tell Ada to
bring the tea-things across.’
He waited in the light of the stove, the door of which she 
flung
open before going out, and when she returned followed by the
maiden with tea, they sat down by the same light, assisted by the blue
rays of a spirit-lamp under the brass kettle on the stand.
‘This is one of your wedding-presents to me,’ she said, signifying
the latter.
‘Yes,’ said Jude.