Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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were inside. . . . It was so kind and tender of you to give up half a
day’s work to come to see me! . . . You are Joseph* the dreamer of
dreams, dear Jude. And a tragic Don Quixote.* And sometimes you
are St. Stephen,* who, while they were stoning him, could see Heaven
opened. O my poor friend and comrade, you’ll su
ffer yet!’
Now that the high window-sill was between them, so that he could
not get at her, she seemed not to mind indulging in a frankness she
had feared at close quarters. ‘I have been thinking,’ she continued,
still in the tone of one brimful of feeling, ‘that the social moulds
civilization 
fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes
than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the
real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a
calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not
really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone,
with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies. . . . Now you
mustn’t wait longer, or you will lose the coach. Come and see me
again. You must come to the house then.’
‘Yes!’ said Jude. ‘When shall it be?’
‘To-morrow week. Good-bye––good-bye!’ She stretched out her
hand and stroked his forehead pitifully––just once. Jude said good-
bye, and went away into the darkness.
Passing along Bimport Street he thought he heard the wheels of
the coach departing––and truly enough, when he reached the
Duke’s Arms in the Market Place the coach had gone. It was impos-
sible for him to get to the station on foot in time for this train, and he
settled himself perforce to wait for the next––the last to Melchester
that night.
He wandered about awhile, obtained something to eat; and then,
having another half-hour on his hands, his feet involuntarily took
him through the venerable graveyard of Trinity Church, with its
avenues of limes, in the direction of the schools again. They were
entirely in darkness. She had said she lived over the way at Old-Grove
Place, a house which he soon discovered from her description of its
antiquity.
A glimmering candle-light shone from a front window, the shut-
ters being yet unclosed. He could see the interior clearly––the 
floor
sinking a couple of steps below the road without, which had become
raised during the centuries since the house was built. Sue, evidently
just come in, was standing with her hat on in this front parlour or
At Shaston
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sitting-room, whose walls were lined with wainscoting of panelled
oak reaching from 
floor to ceiling, the latter being crossed by huge
moulded beams only a little way above her head. The mantelpiece
was of the same heavy description, carved with Jacobean pilasters
and scroll-work. The centuries did, indeed, ponderously overhang a
young wife who passed her time here.
She had opened a rosewood work-box, and was looking at a
photograph. Having contemplated it a little while she pressed it
against her bosom, and put it again in its place.
Then becoming aware that she had not obscured the windows she
came forward to do so, candle in hand. It was too dark for her to see
Jude without, but he could see her face distinctly, and there was an
unmistakable tearfulness about the dark, long-lashed eyes.
She closed the shutters, and Jude turned away to pursue his soli-
tary journey home. ‘Whose photograph was she looking at?’ he said.
He had once given her his; but she had others, he knew. Yet it was
his, surely?
He knew he should go to see her again, according to her invitation.
Those earnest men he read of, the saints, whom Sue, with gentle
irreverence, called his demi-gods would have shunned such
encounters if they doubted their own strength. But he could not. He
might fast and pray during the whole interval, but the human was
more powerful in him than the Divine.