Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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Where did you get them?’
‘O––I bought them of a travelling man who sells casts——’
‘Two saints?’
‘Yes.’
‘What ones?’
‘St. Peter and St.––St. Mary Magdalen.’
‘Well––now come down to tea, and go and 
finish that organ-text,
if there’s light enough afterwards.’
These little obstacles to the indulgence of what had been the
merest passing fancy, created in Sue a great zest for unpacking her
objects and looking at them; and at bedtime, when she was sure of
being undisturbed, she unrobed the divinities in comfort. Placing the
pair of 
figures on the chest of drawers, a candle on each side of them,
she withdrew to the bed, 
flung herself down thereon, and began
reading a book she had taken from her box, which Miss Fontover
knew nothing of. It was a volume of Gibbon, and she read the
chapter dealing with the reign of Julian the Apostate.* Occasionally
she looked up at the statuettes, which appeared strange and out of
place, there happening to be a Calvary print hanging between them,
and, as if the scene suggested the action, she at length jumped up
and withdrew another book from her box––a volume of verse and
turned to the familiar poem––
‘Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean:
The world has grown grey from thy breath!’*
which she read to the end. Presently she put out the candles,
undressed, and 
finally extinguished her own light.
She was of an age which usually sleeps soundly, yet to-night she
kept waking up, and every time she opened her eyes there was
enough di
ffused light from the street to show her the white plaster
figures, standing on the chest of drawers in odd contrast to their
environment of text, and martyr, and the Gothic-framed Cruci
fix-
picture that was only discernible now as a Latin cross, the 
figure
thereon being obscured by the shades.
On one of these occasions the church clocks struck some small
hour. It fell upon the ears of another person who sat bending over his
books at a not very distant spot in the same city. Being Saturday
night the morrow was one on which Jude had not set his alarm-clock
to call him at his usually early time, and hence he had stayed up, as
At Christminster
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was his custom, two or three hours later than he could a
fford to do
on any other day of the week. Just then he was earnestly reading
from his Griesbach’s text. At the very time that Sue was tossing and
staring at her 
figures, the policeman and belated citizens passing
along under his window might have heard, if they had stood still,
strange syllables mumbled with fervour within––words that had for
Jude an indescribable enchantment: inexplicable sounds something
like these:––
‘All hemin heis Theos ho Pater, ex hou ta panta, kai hemeis eis
auton:’
Till the sounds rolled with reverent loudness, as a book was heard
to close:––
‘Kai heis Kurios Iesous Christos, di hou ta panta kai hemeis di
autou!’*
Jude the Obscure
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II.–iv.
H
 was a handy man at his trade, an all-round man, as artizans in
country-towns are apt to be. In London the man who carves the boss
or knob of leafage declines to cut the fragment of moulding which
merges in that leafage, as if it were a degradation to do the second
half of one whole. When there was not much Gothic moulding for
Jude to run, or much window-tracery on the bankers, he would go
out lettering monuments or tombstones, and take a pleasure in the
change of handiwork.
The next time that he saw her was when he was on a ladder
executing a job of this sort inside one of the churches. There was a
short morning service, and when the parson entered Jude came
down from his ladder, and sat with the half-dozen people forming
the congregation, till the prayers should be ended, and he could
resume his tapping. He did not observe till the service was half over
that one of the women was Sue, who had perforce accompanied the
elderly Miss Fontover thither.
Jude sat watching her pretty shoulders, her easy, curiously non-
chalant, risings, and sittings, and her perfunctory genu
flexions, and
thought what a help such an Anglican would have been to him in
happier circumstances. It was not so much his anxiety to get on with
his work that made him go up to it immediately the worshippers
began to take their leave: it was that he dared not, in this holy spot,
confront the woman who was beginning to in
fluence him in such an
indescribable manner. Those three enormous reasons why he must
not attempt intimate acquaintance with Sue Bridehead now that his
interest in her had shown itself to be unmistakably of a sexual kind,
loomed as stubbornly as ever. But it was also obvious that man could
not live by work alone; that the particular man Jude, at any rate,
wanted something to love. Some men would have rushed incontin-
ently to her, snatched the pleasure of easy friendship which she
could hardly refuse, and have left the rest to chance. Not so Jude––at
first.
But as the days, and still more particularly the lonely evenings,
dragged along, he found himself, to his moral consternation, to be
thinking more of her instead of thinking less of her, and

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experiencing a fearful bliss in doing what was erratic, informal, and
unexpected. Surrounded by her in
fluence all day, walking past the
spots she frequented, he was always thinking of her, and was obliged
to own to himself that his conscience was likely to be the loser in this
battle.
To be sure she was almost an ideality to him still. Perhaps to know
her would be to cure himself of this unexpected and unauthorized
passion. A voice whispered that, though he desired to know her, he
did not desire to be cured.
There was not the least doubt that from his own orthodox point of
view the situation was growing immoral. For Sue to be the loved one
of a man who was licensed by the laws of his country to love Arabella
and none other unto his life’s end, was a pretty bad second begin-
ning, when the man was bent on such a course as Jude purposed.
This conviction was so real with him that one day when, as was
frequent, he was at work in a neighbouring village church alone, he
felt it to be his duty to pray against his weakness. But much as he
wished to be an exemplar in these things he could not get on. It was
quite impossible, he found, to ask to be delivered from temptation
when your heart’s desire was to be tempted unto seventy times
seven.* So he excused himself. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘it is not altogether
an erotolepsy* that is the matter with me, as at that 
first time. I can see
that she is exceptionally bright; and it is partly a wish for intellectual
sympathy, and a craving for loving-kindness in my solitude.’ Thus he
went on adoring her, fearing to realize that it was human perversity.
For whatever Sue’s virtues, talents, or ecclesiastical saturation, it was
certain that those items were not at all the cause of his a
ffection for
her.
On an afternoon at this time a young girl entered the stone-
mason’s yard with some hesitation, and, lifting her skirts to avoid
draggling them in the white dust, crossed towards the o
ffice.
‘That’s a nice girl,’ said one of the men known as Uncle Joe.
‘Who is she?’ asked another.
‘I don’t know––I’ve seen her about here and there. Why, yes, she’s
the daughter of that clever chap Bridehead who did all the wrought
ironwork at St. Silas’ ten years ago, and went away to London after-
wards. I don’t know what he’s doing now––not much I fancy––as
she’s come back here.’
Meanwhile the young woman had knocked at the o
ffice door and