Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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‘Is Mr. Fawley at home? . . . Biles and Willis the building con-
tractors sent me to know if you’ll undertake the relettering of the
Ten Commandments in a little church they’ve been restoring lately
in the country near here.’
Jude re
flected, and said he could undertake it.
‘It is not a very artistic job,’ continued the messenger. ‘The cler-
gyman is a very old-fashioned chap, and he has refused to let any-
thing more be done to the church than cleaning and repairing.’
‘Excellent old man!’ said Sue to herself, who was sentimentally
opposed to the horrors of over-restoration.
‘The Ten Commandments are 
fixed to the east end,’ the messen-
ger went on, ‘and they want doing up with the rest of the wall there,
since he won’t have them carted o
ff as old materials belonging to the
contractor, in the usual way of the trade.’
A bargain as to terms was struck, and Jude came indoors. ‘There,
you see,’ he said cheerfully. ‘One more job yet, at any rate, and you
can help in it––at least you can try. We shall have all the church to
ourselves, as the rest of the work is 
finished.’
Next day Jude went out to the church, which was only two miles
o
ff. He found that what the contractor’s clerk had said was true. The
tables of the Jewish law towered sternly over the utensils of Christian
grace, as the chief ornament of the chancel end, in the 
fine dry style
of the last century. And as their framework was constructed of
ornamental plaster they could not be taken down for repair. A por-
tion, crumbled by damp, required renewal; and when this had been
done, and the whole cleansed, he began to renew the lettering. On
the second morning Sue came to see what assistance she could
render, and also because they liked to be together.
The silence and emptiness of the building gave her con
fidence,
and, standing on a safe low platform erected by Jude, which she was
nevertheless timid at mounting, she began painting in the letters of
the 
first table while he set about mending a portion of the second.
She was quite pleased at her powers; she had acquired them in the
days she painted illumined texts for the church-
fitting shop at
Christminster. Nobody seemed likely to disturb them; and the pleas-
ant twitter of birds, and rustle of October leafage, came in through
an open window, and mingled with their talk.
They were not, however, to be left thus snug and peaceful for long.
About half-past twelve there came footsteps on the gravel without.
At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere
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The old vicar and his churchwarden entered, and, coming up to see
what was being done, seemed surprised to discover that a young
woman was assisting. They passed on into an aisle, at which time the
door again opened, and another 
figure entered––a small one, that of
little Time, who was crying. Sue had told him where he might 
find
her between school-hours, if he wished. She came down from her
perch, and said, ‘What’s the matter, my dear?’
‘I couldn’t stay to eat my dinner in school, because they said––’
He described how some boys had taunted him about his nominal
mother, and Sue, grieved, expressed her indignation to Jude aloft.
The child went into the churchyard, and Sue returned to her work.
Meanwhile the door had opened again, and there shu
ffled in with a
business-like air the white-aproned woman who cleaned the church.
Sue recognized her as one who had friends in Spring Street whom
she visited. The church-cleaner looked at Sue, gaped, and lifted her
hands: she had evidently recognized Jude’s companion as the latter
had recognized her. Next came two ladies, and after talking to the
charwoman they also moved forward, and as Sue stood reaching
upward, watched her hand tracing the letters, and critically regarded
her person in relief against the white wall, till she grew so nervous
that she trembled visibly.
They went back to where the others were standing, talking in
undertones: and one said––Sue could not hear which––‘She’s his
wife, I suppose?’
‘Some say Yes: some say No,’ was the reply from the charwoman.
‘Not? Then she ought to be, or somebody’s––that’s very clear!’
‘They’ve only been married a very few weeks, whether or no.’
‘A strange pair to be painting the Two Tables! I wonder Biles and
Willis could think of such a thing as hiring those!’
The churchwarden supposed that Biles and Willis knew of noth-
ing wrong, and then the other, who had been talking to the old
woman, explained what she meant by calling them strange people.
The probable drift of the subdued conversation which followed
was made plain by the churchwarden breaking into an anecdote, in a
voice that everybody in the church could hear, though obviously
suggested by the present situation.
‘Well, now, it is a curious thing, but my grandfather told me a
strange tale of a most immoral case that happened at the painting of
the Commandments in a church out by Gaymead––which is quite
Jude the Obscure
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within a walk of this one. In them days Commandments were mostly
done in gilt letters on a black ground, and that’s how they were out
where I say, before the owld church was rebuilded. It must have been
somewhere about a hundred years ago that them Commandments
wanted doing up, just as ours do here, and they had to get men from
Aldbrickham to do ’em. Now they wished to get the job 
finished by a