Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure


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II.–iii.
B
 under the various deterrent influences Jude’s instinct was to
approach her timidly, and the next Sunday he went to the morning
service in the Cathedral-church of Cardinal College* to gain a further
view of her, for he had found that she frequently attended there.
She did not come, and he awaited her in the afternoon, which was
finer. He knew that if she came at all she would approach the build-
ing along the eastern side of the great green quadrangle from which
it was accessible, and he stood in a corner while the bell was going. A
few minutes before the hour for service she appeared as one of the
figures walking along under the College walls, and at sight of her he
advanced up the side opposite, and followed her into the building,
more than ever glad that he had not as yet revealed himself. To see
her, and to be himself unseen and unknown, was enough for him at
present.
He lingered awhile in the vestibule, and the service was some way
advanced when he was put into a seat. It was a louring, mournful still
afternoon, when a religion of some sort seems a necessity to ordinary
practical men and not only a luxury of the emotional and leisured
classes. In the dim light, and the ba
ffling glare of the clerestory
windows, he could discern the opposite worshippers indistinctly
only, but he saw that Sue was among them. He had not long dis-
covered the exact seat that she occupied when the chanting of the
th Psalm in which the choir was engaged reached its second part,
In quo corriget
, the organ changing to a pathetic Gregorian tune as
the singers gave forth:
‘Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?’
It was the very question that was engaging Jude’s attention at this
moment. What a wicked worthless fellow he had been to give vent as
he had done to an animal passion for a woman and allow it to lead to
such disastrous consequences; then to think of putting an end to
himself; then to go recklessly and get drunk. The great waves of
pedal music tumbled round the choir, and nursed on the super-
natural as he had been, it is not wonderful that he could hardly
believe that the psalm was not specially set by some regardful

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Providence for this moment of his 
first entry into the solemn build-
ing. And yet it was the ordinary psalm for the twenty-fourth evening
of the month.
The girl for whom he was beginning to nourish an extraordinary
tenderness, was at this time ensphered by the same harmonies as
those which 
floated into his ears; and the thought was a delight to
him. She was probably a frequenter of this place and, steeped body
and soul in church sentiment as she must be by occupation and habit,
had, no doubt, much in common with him. To an impressionable and
lonely young man the consciousness of having at last found anchor-
age for his thoughts which promised to supply both social and spirit-
ual possibilities, was like the dew of Hermon,* and he remained
throughout the service in a sustaining atmosphere of ecstasy. Though
he was loth to suspect it, some people might have said to him that the
atmosphere blew as distinctly from Cyprus as from Galilee.
Jude waited till she had left her seat and passed under the screen
before the himself moved. She did not look towards him, and by the
time he reached the door she was half way down the broad path.
Being dressed up in his Sunday suit he was inclined to follow her
and reveal himself. But he was not quite ready; and, alas, ought he to
do so with the kind of feeling that was awakening in him?
For though it had seemed to have an ecclesiastical basis during the
service, and he had persuaded himself that such was the case, he
could not altogether be blind to the real nature of the magnetism.
She was such a stranger that the kinship was a
ffectation, and he said,
‘It can’t be! I, a man with a wife, must not know her!’ Still Sue was
his own kin, and the fact of his having a wife, even though she was
not in evidence in this hemisphere, might be a help in one sense. It
would put all thought of a tender wish on his part out of Sue’s mind,
and make her intercourse with him free and fearless. It was with
some heartache that he saw how little he cared for the freedom and
fearlessness that would result in her from such knowledge.
Some little time before the date of this service in the cathedral the
pretty, liquid-eyed, light-footed young woman Sue Bridehead had an
afternoon’s holiday, and leaving the ecclesiastical establishment in
which she not only assisted but lodged, took a walk into the country
with a book in her hand. It was one of those cloudless days which
sometimes occur in Wessex and elsewhere between days of cold and