Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

part of his history which had resulted in his becoming enchained to
one of her own sex whom she would certainly not admire.
Thus he kept watch over her, and liked to feel she was there. The
consciousness of her living presence stimulated him. But she
remained more or less an ideal character, about whose form he began
to weave curious and fantastic day-dreams.
Between two and three weeks afterwards Jude was engaged with
some more men, outside Crozier College in Old-time Street, in get-
ting a block of worked freestone from a waggon across the pavement,
before hoisting it to the parapet which they were repairing. Standing
in position the head man said, ‘Spaik when ye heave! He-ho!’ And
they heaved.
All of a sudden, as he lifted, his cousin stood close to his elbow,
pausing a moment on the bend of her foot till the obstructing object
should have been removed. She looked right into his face with liquid,
untranslatable eyes, that combined, or seemed to him to combine,
keenness with tenderness, and mystery with both, their expression,
as well as that of her lips, taking its life from some words just spoken
to a companion, and being carried on into his face quite
unconsciously. She no more observed his presence than that of the
dust-motes which his manipulations raised into the sunbeams.
His closeness to her was so suggestive that he trembled, and
turned his face away with a shy instinct to prevent her recognizing
him, though as she had never once seen him she could not possibly
At Christminster


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do so; and might very well never have heard even his name. He could
perceive that though Sue was a country-girl at bottom, a latter girl-
hood of some years in London, and a womanhood here, had taken all
rawness out of her.
When she was gone he continued his work, re
flecting on her. He
had been so caught by her in
fluence that he had taken no count of
her general mould and build. He remembered now that she was not a
large 
figure, that she was light and slight, of the type dubbed elegant.
That was about all he had seen. There was nothing statuesque in her;
all was nervous motion. She was mobile, living, yet a painter might
not have called her handsome or beautiful. But the much that
she was surprised him. She was quite a long way removed from
the rusticity that was his. How could one of his cross-grained,
unfortunate, almost accursed stock, have contrived to reach this
pitch of niceness? London had done it, he supposed.
From this moment the emotion which had been accumulating in
his breast as the bottled-up e
ffect of solitude and the poetized local-
ity he dwelt in, insensibly began to precipitate itself on this half-
visionary form; and he perceived that, whatever his obedient wish in
a contrary direction, he would soon be unable to resist the desire to
make himself known to her.
He a
ffected to think of her quite in a family way, since there were
crushing reasons why he should not and could not think of her in any
other.
The 
first reason was that he was married, and it would be wrong.
The second was that they were cousins. It was not well for cousins to
fall in love even when circumstances seemed to favour the passion.
The third: even were he free, in a family like his own where marriage
usually meant a tragic sadness, marriage with a blood-relation would
duplicate the adverse conditions, and a tragic sadness might be
intensi
fied to a tragic horror.
Therefore, again, he would have to think of Sue with only a rela-
tion’s natural interest in one belonging to him; regard her in a prac-
tical way as some one to be proud of, to talk and nod to; later on, to
be invited to tea by, the emotion spent on her being rigorously that of
a kinsman and well-wisher. So would she be to him a kindly star, an
elevating power, a companion in Anglican worship, a tender friend.