Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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wet, as if intercalated by caprice of the weather-god. She went along
for a mile or two until she came to much higher ground than that of
the city she had left behind her. The road passed between green
fields, and coming to a stile Sue paused there, to finish the page she
was reading, and then looked back at the towers and domes and
pinnacles new and old.
On the other side of the stile, in the footpath, she beheld a for-
eigner with black hair and a sallow face, sitting on the grass beside a
large square board whereon were 
fixed, as closely as they could
stand, a number of plaster statuettes, some of them bronzed, which
he was re-arranging before proceeding with them on his way. They
were in the main reduced copies of ancient marbles, and comprised
divinities of a very di
fferent character from those the girl was accus-
tomed to see portrayed, among them being a Venus of standard
pattern, a Diana, and, of the other sex, Apollo, Bacchus and Mars.
Though the 
figures were many yards away from her, the south-west
sun brought them out so brilliantly against the green herbage that
she could discern their contours with luminous distinctness; and
being almost in a line between herself and the church towers of the
city they awoke in her an oddly foreign and contrasting set of ideas
by comparison. The man rose, and, seeing her, politely took o
ff his
cap, and cried ‘I-i-i-mages!’ in an accent that agreed with his appear-
ance. In a moment he dexterously lifted upon his knee the great
board with its assembled notabilities divine and human, and raised it
to the top of his head, bringing them on to her and resting the board
on the stile. First he o
ffered her his smaller wares––the busts of
kings and queens, then a minstrel, then a winged Cupid. She shook
her head.
‘How much are these two?’ she said, touching with her 
finger the
Venus and the Apollo*––the largest 
figures on the tray.
He said she should have them for ten shillings.
‘I cannot a
fford that,’ said Sue. She offered considerably less, and
to her surprise the image-man drew them from their wire stay and
handed them over the stile. She clasped them as treasures.
When they were paid for, and the man had gone, she began to be
concerned as to what she should do with them. They seemed so very
large now that they were in her possession, and so very naked. Being
of a nervous temperament she trembled at her enterprise. When she
handled them the white pipeclay came o
ff on her gloves and jacket.
At Christminster
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After carrying them along a little way openly an idea came to her,
and, pulling some huge burdock leaves, parsley, and other rank
growths from the hedge, she wrapped up her burden as well as she
could in these, so that what she carried appeared to be an enormous
armful of green stu
ff, gathered by a zealous lover of nature.
‘Well, anything is better than those everlasting church fal-lals!’ she
said. But she was still in a trembling state, and seemed almost to wish
she had not bought the 
figures.
Occasionally peeping inside the leaves to see that Venus’s arm was
not broken she entered with her heathen load into the most Christian
city in the country by an obscure street running parallel to the main
one, and round a corner to the side door of the establishment to
which she was attached. Her purchases were taken straight up to her
own chamber, and she at once attempted to lock them in a box that
was her very own property; but 
finding them too cumbersome she
wrapped them in large sheets of brown paper, and stood them on the
floor in a corner.
The mistress of the house, Miss Fontover, was an elderly lady in
spectacles, dressed almost like an abbess; a dab at Ritual, as became
one of her business, and a worshipper at the ceremonial church of
St. Silas, in the suburb of Beersheba before-mentioned, which Jude
also had begun to attend. She was the daughter of a clergyman in
reduced circumstances, and at his death, which had occurred several
years before this date, she boldly avoided penury by taking over a
little shop of church requisites and developing it to its present cred-
itable proportions. She wore a cross and beads round her neck as her
only ornament, and knew the Christian Year by heart.
She now came to call Sue to tea, and, 
finding that the girl did not
respond for a moment, entered the room just as the other was hastily
putting a string round each parcel.
‘Something you have been buying, Miss Bridehead?’ she asked,
regarding the enwrapped objects.
‘Yes––just something to ornament my room,’ said Sue.
‘Well, I should have thought I had put enough here already,’ said
Miss Fontover, looking round at the Gothic-framed prints of saints,
the Church-text scrolls, and other articles which, having become too
stale to sell, had been used to furnish this obscure chamber. ‘What is
it? How bulky!’ She tore a little hole, about as big as a wafer, in the
brown paper, and tried to peep in. ‘Why, statuary? Two 
figures?