Chapter: The seventy young women, of ages varying in the main from nineteen to
one-and-twenty, though several were older, who at this date filled
the species of nunnery known as the Training-School at Melchester,
formed a very mixed community, which included the daughters of
mechanics, curates, surgeons, shopkeepers, farmers, dairy-men,
soldiers, sailors, and villagers.  They sat in the large school-room
of the establishment on the evening previously described, and word
was passed round that Sue Bridehead had not come in at closing-time.

"She went out with her young man," said a second-year's student, who
knew about young men.  "And Miss Traceley saw her at the station with
him.  She'll have it hot when she does come."

"She said he was her cousin," observed a youthful new girl.

"That excuse has been made a little too often in this school to be
effectual in saving our souls," said the head girl of the year,
drily.

The fact was that, only twelve months before, there had occurred
a lamentable seduction of one of the pupils who had made the same
statement in order to gain meetings with her lover.  The affair had
created a scandal, and the management had consequently been rough on
cousins ever since.

At nine o'clock the names were called, Sue's being pronounced three
times sonorously by Miss Traceley without eliciting an answer.

At a quarter past nine the seventy stood up to sing the "Evening
Hymn," and then knelt down to prayers.  After prayers they went in to
supper, and every girl's thought was, Where is Sue Bridehead?  Some
of the students, who had seen Jude from the window, felt that they
would not mind risking her punishment for the pleasure of being
kissed by such a kindly-faced young man.  Hardly one among them
believed in the cousinship.

Half an hour later they all lay in their cubicles, their tender
feminine faces upturned to the flaring gas-jets which at intervals
stretched down the long dormitories, every face bearing the legend
"The Weaker" upon it, as the penalty of the sex wherein they were
moulded, which by no possible exertion of their willing hearts and
abilities could be made strong while the inexorable laws of nature
remain what they are.  They formed a pretty, suggestive, pathetic
sight, of whose pathos and beauty they were themselves unconscious,
and would not discover till, amid the storms and strains of
after-years, with their injustice, loneliness, child-bearing, and
bereavement, their minds would revert to this experience as to
something which had been allowed to slip past them insufficiently
regarded.

One of the mistresses came in to turn out the lights, and before
doing so gave a final glance at Sue's cot, which remained empty, and
at her little dressing-table at the foot, which, like all the rest,
was ornamented with various girlish trifles, framed photographs being
not the least conspicuous among them.  Sue's table had a moderate
show, two men in their filigree and velvet frames standing together
beside her looking-glass.

"Who are these men--did she ever say?" asked the mistress.  "Strictly
speaking, relations' portraits only are allowed on these tables, you
know."

"One--the middle-aged man," said a student in the next bed--"is the
schoolmaster she served under--Mr. Phillotson."

"And the other--this undergraduate in cap and gown--who is he?"

"He is a friend, or was.  She has never told his name."

"Was it either of these two who came for her?"

"No."

"You are sure 'twas not the undergraduate?"

"Quite.  He was a young man with a black beard."

The lights were promptly extinguished, and till they fell asleep the
girls indulged in conjectures about Sue, and wondered what games
she had carried on in London and at Christminster before she came
here, some of the more restless ones getting out of bed and looking
from the mullioned windows at the vast west front of the cathedral
opposite, and the spire rising behind it.

When they awoke the next morning they glanced into Sue's nook,
to find it still without a tenant.  After the early lessons by
gas-light, in half-toilet, and when they had come up to dress for
breakfast, the bell of the entrance gate was heard to ring loudly.
The mistress of the dormitory went away, and presently came back to
say that the principal's orders were that nobody was to speak to
Bridehead without permission.

When, accordingly, Sue came into the dormitory to hastily tidy
herself, looking flushed and tired, she went to her cubicle in
silence, none of them coming out to greet her or to make inquiry.
When they had gone downstairs they found that she did not follow them
into the dining-hall to breakfast, and they then learnt that she had
been severely reprimanded, and ordered to a solitary room for a week,
there to be confined, and take her meals, and do all her reading.

At this the seventy murmured, the sentence being, they thought, too
severe.  A round robin was prepared and sent in to the principal,
asking for a remission of Sue's punishment.  No notice was taken.
Towards evening, when the geography mistress began dictating her
subject, the girls in the class sat with folded arms.

"You mean that you are not going to work?" said the mistress at last.
"I may as well tell you that it has been ascertained that the young
man Bridehead stayed out with was not her cousin, for the very
good reason that she has no such relative.  We have written to
Christminster to ascertain."

"We are willing to take her word," said the head girl.

"This young man was discharged from his work at Christminster for
drunkenness and blasphemy in public-houses, and he has come here to
live, entirely to be near her."

However, they remained stolid and motionless, and the mistress left
the room to inquire from her superiors what was to be done.

Presently, towards dusk, the pupils, as they sat, heard exclamations
from the first-year's girls in an adjoining classroom, and one rushed
in to say that Sue Bridehead had got out of the back window of the
room in which she had been confined, escaped in the dark across the
lawn, and disappeared.  How she had managed to get out of the garden
nobody could tell, as it was bounded by the river at the bottom, and
the side door was locked.

They went and looked at the empty room, the casement between the
middle mullions of which stood open.  The lawn was again searched
with a lantern, every bush and shrub being examined, but she was
nowhere hidden.  Then the porter of the front gate was interrogated,
and on reflection he said that he remembered hearing a sort of
splashing in the stream at the back, but he had taken no notice,
thinking some ducks had come down the river from above.

"She must have walked through the river!" said a mistress.

"Or drownded herself," said the porter.

The mind of the matron was horrified--not so much at the possible
death of Sue as at the possible half-column detailing that event in
all the newspapers, which, added to the scandal of the year before,
would give the college an unenviable notoriety for many months to
come.

More lanterns were procured, and the river examined; and then, at
last, on the opposite shore, which was open to the fields, some
little boot-tracks were discerned in the mud, which left no doubt
that the too excitable girl had waded through a depth of water
reaching nearly to her shoulders--for this was the chief river of the
county, and was mentioned in all the geography books with respect.
As Sue had not brought disgrace upon the school by drowning herself,
the matron began to speak superciliously of her, and to express
gladness that she was gone.

On the self-same evening Jude sat in his lodgings by the Close Gate.
Often at this hour after dusk he would enter the silent Close, and
stand opposite the house that contained Sue, and watch the shadows of
the girls' heads passing to and fro upon the blinds, and wish he had
nothing else to do but to sit reading and learning all day what many
of the thoughtless inmates despised.  But to-night, having finished
tea and brushed himself up, he was deep in the perusal of the
Twenty-ninth Volume of Pusey's Library of the Fathers, a set of books
which he had purchased of a second-hand dealer at a price that seemed
to him to be one of miraculous cheapness for that invaluable work. He
fancied he heard something rattle lightly against his window; then he
heard it again.  Certainly somebody had thrown gravel.  He rose and
gently lifted the sash.

"Jude!" (from below).

"Sue!"

"Yes--it is!  Can I come up without being seen?"

"Oh yes!"

"Then don't come down.  Shut the window."

Jude waited, knowing that she could enter easily enough, the front
door being opened merely by a knob which anybody could turn, as
in most old country towns.  He palpitated at the thought that she
had fled to him in her trouble as he had fled to her in his. What
counterparts they were!  He unlatched the door of his room, heard a
stealthy rustle on the dark stairs, and in a moment she appeared in
the light of his lamp.  He went up to seize her hand, and found she
was clammy as a marine deity, and that her clothes clung to her like
the robes upon the figures in the Parthenon frieze.

"I'm so cold!" she said through her chattering teeth.  "Can I come by
your fire, Jude?"

She crossed to his little grate and very little fire, but as the
water dripped from her as she moved, the idea of drying herself was
absurd.  "Whatever have you done, darling?" he asked, with alarm, the
tender epithet slipping out unawares.

"Walked through the largest river in the county--that's what I've
done!  They locked me up for being out with you; and it seemed so
unjust that I couldn't bear it, so I got out of the window and
escaped across the stream!"  She had begun the explanation in her
usual slightly independent tones, but before she had finished the
thin pink lips trembled, and she could hardly refrain from crying.

"Dear Sue!" he said.  "You must take off all your things!  And let me
see--you must borrow some from the landlady. I'll ask her."

"No, no!  Don't let her know, for God's sake!  We are so near the
school that they'll come after me!"

"Then you must put on mine.  You don't mind?"

"Oh no."

"My Sunday suit, you know.  It is close here."  In fact, everything
was close and handy in Jude's single chamber, because there was not
room for it to be otherwise.  He opened a drawer, took out his best
dark suit, and giving the garments a shake, said, "Now, how long
shall I give you?"

"Ten minutes."

Jude left the room and went into the street, where he walked up and
down.  A clock struck half-past seven, and he returned.  Sitting in
his only arm-chair he saw a slim and fragile being masquerading as
himself on a Sunday, so pathetic in her defencelessness that his
heart felt big with the sense of it.  On two other chairs before the
fire were her wet garments. She blushed as he sat down beside her,
but only for a moment.

"I suppose, Jude, it is odd that you should see me like this and all
my things hanging there?  Yet what nonsense!  They are only a woman's
clothes--sexless cloth and linen...  I wish I didn't feel so ill and
sick!  Will you dry my clothes now?  Please do, Jude, and I'll get a
lodging by and by.  It is not late yet."

"No, you shan't, if you are ill.  You must stay here.  Dear, dear
Sue, what can I get for you?"

"I don't know!  I can't help shivering.  I wish I could get warm."
Jude put on her his great-coat in addition, and then ran out to the
nearest public-house, whence he returned with a little bottle in his
hand.  "Here's six of best brandy," he said.  "Now you drink it,
dear; all of it."

"I can't out of the bottle, can I?"  Jude fetched the glass from the
dressing-table, and administered the spirit in some water.  She
gasped a little, but gulped it down, and lay back in the armchair.

She then began to relate circumstantially her experiences since
they had parted; but in the middle of her story her voice faltered,
her head nodded, and she ceased.  She was in a sound sleep.  Jude,
dying of anxiety lest she should have caught a chill which might
permanently injure her, was glad to hear the regular breathing.  He
softly went nearer to her, and observed that a warm flush now rosed
her hitherto blue cheeks, and felt that her hanging hand was no
longer cold.  Then he stood with his back to the fire regarding her,
and saw in her almost a divinity.




Jude's reverie was interrupted by the creak of footsteps ascending
the stairs.

He whisked Sue's clothing from the chair where it was drying, thrust
it under the bed, and sat down to his book.  Somebody knocked and
opened the door immediately.  It was the landlady.

"Oh, I didn't know whether you was in or not, Mr. Fawley.  I
wanted to know if you would require supper.  I see you've a young
gentleman--"

"Yes, ma'am. But I think I won't come down to-night. Will you bring
supper up on a tray, and I'll have a cup of tea as well."

It was Jude's custom to go downstairs to the kitchen, and eat his
meals with the family, to save trouble.  His landlady brought up the
supper, however, on this occasion, and he took it from her at the
door.

When she had descended he set the teapot on the hob, and drew out
Sue's clothes anew; but they were far from dry.  A thick woollen
gown, he found, held a deal of water.  So he hung them up again, and
enlarged his fire and mused as the steam from the garments went up
the chimney.

Suddenly she said, "Jude!"

"Yes.  All right.  How do you feel now?"

"Better.  Quite well.  Why, I fell asleep, didn't I?  What time is
it?  Not late surely?"

"It is past ten."

"Is it really?  What SHALL I do!" she said, starting up.

"Stay where you are."

"Yes; that's what I want to do.  But I don't know what they would
say!  And what will you do?"

"I am going to sit here by the fire all night, and read.  To-morrow
is Sunday, and I haven't to go out anywhere.  Perhaps you will be
saved a severe illness by resting there.  Don't be frightened.  I'm
all right.  Look here, what I have got for you.  Some supper."

When she had sat upright she breathed plaintively and said, "I do
feel rather weak still.  I thought I was well; and I ought not to be
here, ought I?"  But the supper fortified her somewhat, and when she
had had some tea and had lain back again she was bright and cheerful.

The tea must have been green, or too long drawn, for she seemed
preternaturally wakeful afterwards, though Jude, who had not taken
any, began to feel heavy; till her conversation fixed his attention.

"You called me a creature of civilization, or something, didn't you?"
she said, breaking a silence.  "It was very odd you should have done
that."

"Why?"

"Well, because it is provokingly wrong.  I am a sort of negation of
it."

"You are very philosophical.  'A negation' is profound talking."

"Is it?  Do I strike you as being learned?" she asked, with a touch
of raillery.

"No--not learned.  Only you don't talk quite like a girl--well, a
girl who has had no advantages."

"I have had advantages.  I don't know Latin and Greek, though I know
the grammars of those tongues.  But I know most of the Greek and
Latin classics through translations, and other books too.  I read
Lempriere, Catullus, Martial, Juvenal, Lucian, Beaumont and Fletcher,
Boccaccio, Scarron, De Brantome, Sterne, De Foe, Smollett, Fielding,
Shakespeare, the Bible, and other such; and found that all interest
in the unwholesome part of those books ended with its mystery."

"You have read more than I," he said with a sigh.  "How came you to
read some of those queerer ones?"

"Well," she said thoughtfully, "it was by accident.  My life has been
entirely shaped by what people call a peculiarity in me.  I have no
fear of men, as such, nor of their books. I have mixed with them--one
or two of them particularly--almost as one of their own sex.  I mean
I have not felt about them as most women are taught to feel--to be on
their guard against attacks on their virtue; for no average man--no
man short of a sensual savage--will molest a woman by day or night,
at home or abroad, unless she invites him.  Until she says by a look
'Come on' he is always afraid to, and if you never say it, or look
it, he never comes.  However, what I was going to say is that when I
was eighteen I formed a friendly intimacy with an undergraduate at
Christminster, and he taught me a great deal, and lent me books which
I should never have got hold of otherwise."

"Is your friendship broken off?"

"Oh yes.  He died, poor fellow, two or three years after he had taken
his degree and left Christminster."

"You saw a good deal of him, I suppose?"

"Yes.  We used to go about together--on walking tours, reading tours,
and things of that sort--like two men almost.  He asked me to live
with him, and I agreed to by letter.  But when I joined him in London
I found he meant a different thing from what I meant.  He wanted me
to be his mistress, in fact, but I wasn't in love with him--and on
my saying I should go away if he didn't agree to MY plan, he did
so.  We shared a sitting-room for fifteen months; and he became a
leader-writer for one of the great London dailies; till he was taken
ill, and had to go abroad.  He said I was breaking his heart by
holding out against him so long at such close quarters; he could
never have believed it of woman.  I might play that game once too
often, he said.  He came home merely to die.  His death caused a
terrible remorse in me for my cruelty--though I hope he died of
consumption and not of me entirely.  I went down to Sandbourne
to his funeral, and was his only mourner.  He left me a little
money--because I broke his heart, I suppose.  That's how men
are--so much better than women!"

"Good heavens!--what did you do then?"

"Ah--now you are angry with me!" she said, a contralto note of
tragedy coming suddenly into her silvery voice.  "I wouldn't have
told you if I had known!"

"No, I am not.  Tell me all."

"Well, I invested his money, poor fellow, in a bubble scheme, and
lost it.  I lived about London by myself for some time, and then I
returned to Christminster, as my father-- who was also in London, and
had started as an art metal-worker near Long-Acre--wouldn't have me
back; and I got that occupation in the artist-shop where you found
me...  I said you didn't know how bad I was!"

Jude looked round upon the arm-chair and its occupant, as if to read
more carefully the creature he had given shelter to.  His voice
trembled as he said: "However you have lived, Sue, I believe you are
as innocent as you are unconventional!"

"I am not particularly innocent, as you see, now that I have


                           'twitched the robe
   From that blank lay-figure your fancy draped,'"


said she, with an ostensible sneer, though he could hear that she was
brimming with tears.  "But I have never yielded myself to any lover,
if that's what you mean!  I have remained as I began."

"I quite believe you.  But some women would not have remained as they
began."

"Perhaps not.  Better women would not.  People say I must be
cold-natured--sexless--on account of it.  But I won't have it!
Some of the most passionately erotic poets have been the most
self-contained in their daily lives."

"Have you told Mr. Phillotson about this university scholar friend?"

"Yes--long ago.  I have never made any secret of it to anybody."

"What did he say?"

"He did not pass any criticism--only said I was everything to him,
whatever I did; and things like that."

Jude felt much depressed; she seemed to get further and further away
from him with her strange ways and curious unconsciousness of gender.

"Aren't you REALLY vexed with me, dear Jude?" she suddenly asked, in
a voice of such extraordinary tenderness that it hardly seemed to
come from the same woman who had just told her story so lightly.  "I
would rather offend anybody in the world than you, I think!"

"I don't know whether I am vexed or not.  I know I care very much
about you!"

"I care as much for you as for anybody I ever met."

"You don't care MORE!  There, I ought not to say that.  Don't answer
it!"

There was another long silence.  He felt that she was treating
him cruelly, though he could not quite say in what way.  Her very
helplessness seemed to make her so much stronger than he.

"I am awfully ignorant on general matters, although I have worked so
hard," he said, to turn the subject.  "I am absorbed in theology, you
know.  And what do you think I should be doing just about now, if you
weren't here?  I should be saying my evening prayers.  I suppose you
wouldn't like--"

"Oh no, no," she answered, "I would rather not, if you don't mind.
I should seem so--such a hypocrite."

"I thought you wouldn't join, so I didn't propose it.  You must
remember that I hope to be a useful minister some day."

"To be ordained, I think you said?"

"Yes."

"Then you haven't given up the idea?--I thought that perhaps you had
by this time."

"Of course not.  I fondly thought at first that you felt as I do
about that, as you were so mixed up in Christminster Anglicanism.
And Mr. Phillotson--"

"I have no respect for Christminster whatever, except, in a qualified
degree, on its intellectual side," said Sue Bridehead earnestly.  "My
friend I spoke of took that out of me.  He was the most irreligious
man I ever knew, and the most moral.  And intellect at Christminster
is new wine in old bottles.  The mediaevalism of Christminster must
go, be sloughed off, or Christminster itself will have to go.  To
be sure, at times one couldn't help having a sneaking liking for
the traditions of the old faith, as preserved by a section of the
thinkers there in touching and simple sincerity; but when I was in my
saddest, rightest mind I always felt,


   'O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!'"...


"Sue, you are not a good friend of mine to talk like that!"

"Then I won't, dear Jude!"  The emotional throat-note had come back,
and she turned her face away.

"I still think Christminster has much that is glorious; though I
was resentful because I couldn't get there."  He spoke gently, and
resisted his impulse to pique her on to tears.

"It is an ignorant place, except as to the townspeople, artizans,
drunkards, and paupers," she said, perverse still at his differing
from her.  "THEY see life as it is, of course; but few of the people
in the colleges do.  You prove it in your own person.  You are one
of the very men Christminster was intended for when the colleges
were founded; a man with a passion for learning, but no money, or
opportunities, or friends.  But you were elbowed off the pavement
by the millionaires' sons."

"Well, I can do without what it confers.  I care for something
higher."

"And I for something broader, truer," she insisted.  "At present
intellect in Christminster is pushing one way, and religion the
other; and so they stand stock-still, like two rams butting each
other."

"What would Mr. Phillotson--"

"It is a place full of fetishists and ghost-seers!"

He noticed that whenever he tried to speak of the schoolmaster she
turned the conversation to some generalizations about the offending
university.  Jude was extremely, morbidly, curious about her life as
Phillotson's _protegee_ and betrothed; yet she would not enlighten
him.

"Well, that's just what I am, too," he said.  "I am fearful of life,
spectre-seeing always."

"But you are good and dear!" she murmured.

His heart bumped, and he made no reply.

"You are in the Tractarian stage just now, are you not?" she added,
putting on flippancy to hide real feeling, a common trick with her.
"Let me see--when was I there?  In the year eighteen hundred and--"

"There's a sarcasm in that which is rather unpleasant to me, Sue.
Now will you do what I want you to?  At this time I read a chapter,
and then say prayers, as I told you.  Now will you concentrate your
attention on any book of these you like, and sit with your back to
me, and leave me to my custom?  You are sure you won't join me?"

"I'll look at you."

"No. Don't tease, Sue!"

"Very well--I'll do just as you bid me, and I won't vex you, Jude,"
she replied, in the tone of a child who was going to be good for ever
after, turning her back upon him accordingly.  A small Bible other
than the one he was using lay near her, and during his retreat she
took it up, and turned over the leaves.

"Jude," she said brightly, when he had finished and come back to her;
"will you let me make you a NEW New Testament, like the one I made
for myself at Christminster?"

"Oh yes.  How was that made?"

"I altered my old one by cutting up all the Epistles and Gospels into
separate _brochures_, and rearranging them in chronological order as
written, beginning the book with Thessalonians, following on with the
Epistles, and putting the Gospels much further on.  Then I had the
volume rebound.  My university friend Mr.--but never mind his name,
poor boy--said it was an excellent idea.  I know that reading it
afterwards made it twice as interesting as before, and twice as
understandable."

"H'm!" said Jude, with a sense of sacrilege.

"And what a literary enormity this is," she said, as she glanced
into the pages of Solomon's Song.  "I mean the synopsis at the head
of each chapter, explaining away the real nature of that rhapsody.
You needn't be alarmed: nobody claims inspiration for the chapter
headings.  Indeed, many divines treat them with contempt.  It seems
the drollest thing to think of the four-and-twenty elders, or
bishops, or whatever number they were, sitting with long faces and
writing down such stuff."

Jude looked pained.  "You are quite Voltairean!" he murmured.

"Indeed?  Then I won't say any more, except that people have no
right to falsify the Bible!  I HATE such hum-bug as could attempt to
plaster over with ecclesiastical abstractions such ecstatic, natural,
human love as lies in that great and passionate song!"  Her speech
had grown spirited, and almost petulant at his rebuke, and her eyes
moist.  "I WISH I had a friend here to support me; but nobody is ever
on my side!"

"But my dear Sue, my very dear Sue, I am not against you!" he said,
taking her hand, and surprised at her introducing personal feeling
into mere argument.

"Yes you are, yes you are!" she cried, turning away her face that he
might not see her brimming eyes.  "You are on the side of the people
in the training-school--at least you seem almost to be!  What I
insist on is, that to explain such verses as this: 'Whither is thy
beloved gone, O thou fairest among women?' by the note: '_The Church
professeth her faith_,' is supremely ridiculous!"

"Well then, let it be!  You make such a personal matter of
everything!  I am--only too inclined just now to apply the words
profanely.  You know YOU are fairest among women to me, come to
that!"

"But you are not to say it now!"  Sue replied, her voice changing
to its softest note of severity.  Then their eyes met, and they
shook hands like cronies in a tavern, and Jude saw the absurdity of
quarrelling on such a hypothetical subject, and she the silliness of
crying about what was written in an old book like the Bible.

"I won't disturb your convictions--I really won't!" she went on
soothingly, for now he was rather more ruffled than she.  "But I did
want and long to ennoble some man to high aims; and when I saw you,
and knew you wanted to be my comrade, I--shall I confess it?--thought
that man might be you.  But you take so much tradition on trust that
I don't know what to say."

"Well, dear; I suppose one must take some things on trust.  Life
isn't long enough to work out everything in Euclid problems before
you believe it.  I take Christianity."

"Well, perhaps you might take something worse."

"Indeed I might.  Perhaps I have done so!"  He thought of Arabella.

"I won't ask what, because we are going to be VERY nice with each
other, aren't we, and never, never, vex each other any more?"  She
looked up trustfully, and her voice seemed trying to nestle in his
breast.

"I shall always care for you!" said Jude.

"And I for you.  Because you are single-hearted, and forgiving to
your faulty and tiresome little Sue!"

He looked away, for that epicene tenderness of hers was too
harrowing.  Was it that which had broken the heart of the poor
leader-writer; and was he to be the next one? ...  But Sue was so
dear! ...  If he could only get over the sense of her sex, as she
seemed to be able to do so easily of his, what a comrade she would
make; for their difference of opinion on conjectural subjects only
drew them closer together on matters of daily human experience.  She
was nearer to him than any other woman he had ever met, and he could
scarcely believe that time, creed, or absence, would ever divide him
from her.

But his grief at her incredulities returned.  They sat on till she
fell asleep again, and he nodded in his chair likewise.  Whenever
he aroused himself he turned her things, and made up the fire anew.
About six o'clock he awoke completely, and lighting a candle, found
that her clothes were dry.  Her chair being a far more comfortable
one than his she still slept on inside his great-coat, looking warm
as a new bun and boyish as a Ganymede.  Placing the garments by her
and touching her on the shoulder he went downstairs, and washed
himself by starlight in the yard.




When he returned she was dressed as usual.

"Now could I get out without anybody seeing me?" she asked.  "The
town is not yet astir."

"But you have had no breakfast."

"Oh, I don't want any!  I fear I ought not to have run away from that
school!  Things seem so different in the cold light of morning, don't
they?  What Mr. Phillotson will say I don't know!  It was quite by
his wish that I went there.  He is the only man in the world for whom
I have any respect or fear.  I hope he'll forgive me; but he'll scold
me dreadfully, I expect!"

"I'll go to him and explain--" began Jude.

"Oh no, you shan't. I don't care for him!  He may think what he
likes--I shall do just as I choose!"

"But you just this moment said--"

"Well, if I did, I shall do as I like for all him!  I have thought of
what I shall do--go to the sister of one of my fellow-students in the
training-school, who has asked me to visit her.  She has a school
near Shaston, about eighteen miles from here--and I shall stay there
till this has blown over, and I get back to the training-school
again."

At the last moment he persuaded her to let him make her a cup of
coffee, in a portable apparatus he kept in his room for use on rising
to go to his work every day before the household was astir.

"Now a dew-bit to eat with it," he said; "and off we go.  You can
have a regular breakfast when you get there."

They went quietly out of the house, Jude accompanying her to the
station.  As they departed along the street a head was thrust out
of an upper window of his lodging and quickly withdrawn.  Sue still
seemed sorry for her rashness, and to wish she had not rebelled;
telling him at parting that she would let him know as soon as she
got re-admitted to the training-school.  They stood rather miserably
together on the platform; and it was apparent that he wanted to say
more.

"I want to tell you something--two things," he said hurriedly as the
train came up.  "One is a warm one, the other a cold one!"

"Jude," she said.  "I know one of them.  And you mustn't!"

"What?"

"You mustn't love me.  You are to like me--that's all!"

Jude's face became so full of complicated glooms that hers was
agitated in sympathy as she bade him adieu through the carriage
window.  And then the train moved on, and waving her pretty hand to
him she vanished away.



Melchester was a dismal place enough for Jude that Sunday of her
departure, and the Close so hateful that he did not go once to the
cathedral services.  The next morning there came a letter from her,
which, with her usual promptitude, she had written directly she had
reached her friend's house.  She told him of her safe arrival and
comfortable quarters, and then added:--


   What I really write about, dear Jude, is something I said
   to you at parting.  You had been so very good and kind to
   me that when you were out of sight I felt what a cruel and
   ungrateful woman I was to say it, and it has reproached me
   ever since.  IF YOU WANT TO LOVE ME, JUDE, YOU MAY: I don't
   mind at all; and I'll never say again that you mustn't!

   Now I won't write any more about that.  You do forgive your
   thoughtless friend for her cruelty? and won't make her
   miserable by saying you don't?--Ever,

   SUE.


It would be superfluous to say what his answer was; and how he
thought what he would have done had he been free, which should have
rendered a long residence with a female friend quite unnecessary for
Sue.  He felt he might have been pretty sure of his own victory if
it had come to a conflict between Phillotson and himself for the
possession of her.

Yet Jude was in danger of attaching more meaning to Sue's impulsive
note than it really was intended to bear.

After the lapse of a few days he found himself hoping that she would
write again.  But he received no further communication; and in the
intensity of his solicitude he sent another note, suggesting that he
should pay her a visit some Sunday, the distance being under eighteen
miles.

He expected a reply on the second morning after despatching his
missive; but none came.  The third morning arrived; the postman did
not stop.  This was Saturday, and in a feverish state of anxiety
about her he sent off three brief lines stating that he was coming
the following day, for he felt sure something had happened.

His first and natural thought had been that she was ill from her
immersion; but it soon occurred to him that somebody would have
written for her in such a case.  Conjectures were put an end to by
his arrival at the village school-house near Shaston on the bright
morning of Sunday, between eleven and twelve o'clock, when the parish
was as vacant as a desert, most of the inhabitants having gathered
inside the church, whence their voices could occasionally be heard in
unison.

A little girl opened the door.  "Miss Bridehead is up-stairs," she
said.  "And will you please walk up to her?"

"Is she ill?" asked Jude hastily.

"Only a little--not very."

Jude entered and ascended.  On reaching the landing a voice told him
which way to turn--the voice of Sue calling his name.  He passed the
doorway, and found her lying in a little bed in a room a dozen feet
square.

"Oh, Sue!" he cried, sitting down beside her and taking her hand.
"How is this!  You couldn't write?"

"No--it wasn't that!" she answered.  "I did catch a bad cold--but I
could have written.  Only I wouldn't!"

"Why not?--frightening me like this!"

"Yes--that was what I was afraid of!  But I had decided not to write
to you any more.  They won't have me back at the school--that's why I
couldn't write.  Not the fact, but the reason!"

"Well?"

"They not only won't have me, but they gave me a parting piece of
advice--"

"What?"

She did not answer directly.  "I vowed I never would tell you,
Jude--it is so vulgar and distressing!"

"Is it about us?"

"Yes."

"But do tell me!"

"Well--somebody has sent them baseless reports about us, and they
say you and I ought to marry as soon as possible, for the sake of my
reputation! ...  There--now I have told you, and I wish I hadn't!"

"Oh, poor Sue!"

"I don't think of you like that means!  It did just OCCUR to me to
regard you in the way they think I do, but I hadn't begun to.  I HAVE
recognized that the cousinship was merely nominal, since we met as
total strangers.  But my marrying you, dear Jude--why, of course,
if I had reckoned upon marrying you I shouldn't have come to you so
often!  And I never supposed you thought of such a thing as marrying
me till the other evening; when I began to fancy you did love me a
little.  Perhaps I ought not to have been so intimate with you.  It
is all my fault.  Everything is my fault always!"

The speech seemed a little forced and unreal, and they regarded each
other with a mutual distress.

"I was so blind at first!" she went on.  "I didn't see what you felt
at all.  Oh, you have been unkind to me--you have--to look upon me
as a sweetheart without saying a word, and leaving me to discover it
myself!  Your attitude to me has become known; and naturally they
think we've been doing wrong!  I'll never trust you again!"

"Yes, Sue," he said simply; "I am to blame--more than you think.  I
was quite aware that you did not suspect till within the last meeting
or two what I was feeling about you.  I admit that our meeting as
strangers prevented a sense of relationship, and that it was a sort
of subterfuge to avail myself of it.  But don't you think I deserve a
little consideration for concealing my wrong, very wrong, sentiments,
since I couldn't help having them?"

She turned her eyes doubtfully towards him, and then looked away as
if afraid she might forgive him.

By every law of nature and sex a kiss was the only rejoinder that
fitted the mood and the moment, under the suasion of which Sue's
undemonstrative regard of him might not inconceivably have changed
its temperature.  Some men would have cast scruples to the winds,
and ventured it, oblivious both of Sue's declaration of her neutral
feelings, and of the pair of autographs in the vestry chest of
Arabella's parish church.  Jude did not.  He had, in fact, come in
part to tell his own fatal story.  It was upon his lips; yet at the
hour of this distress he could not disclose it.  He preferred to
dwell upon the recognized barriers between them.

"Of course--I know you don't--care about me in any particular way,"
he sorrowed.  "You ought not, and you are right.  You belong to--Mr.
Phillotson.  I suppose he has been to see you?"

"Yes," she said shortly, her face changing a little.  "Though I
didn't ask him to come.  You are glad, of course, that he has been!
But I shouldn't care if he didn't come any more!"

It was very perplexing to her lover that she should be piqued at his
honest acquiescence in his rival, if Jude's feelings of love were
deprecated by her.  He went on to something else.

"This will blow over, dear Sue," he said.  "The training-school
authorities are not all the world.  You can get to be a student in
some other, no doubt."

"I'll ask Mr. Phillotson," she said decisively.

Sue's kind hostess now returned from church, and there was no more
intimate conversation.  Jude left in the afternoon, hopelessly
unhappy.  But he had seen her, and sat with her.  Such intercourse
as that would have to content him for the remainder of his life.
The lesson of renunciation it was necessary and proper that he, as
a parish priest, should learn.

But the next morning when he awoke he felt rather vexed with her,
and decided that she was rather unreasonable, not to say capricious.
Then, in illustration of what he had begun to discern as one of her
redeeming characteristics there came promptly a note, which she must
have written almost immediately he had gone from her:


   Forgive me for my petulance yesterday!  I was horrid to
   you; I know it, and I feel perfectly miserable at my
   horridness.  It was so dear of you not to be angry!  Jude,
   please still keep me as your friend and associate, with
   all my faults.  I'll try not to be like it again.

   I am coming to Melchester on Saturday, to get my things
   away from the T. S., &c.  I could walk with you for half
   an hour, if you would like?--Your repentant

   SUE.


Jude forgave her straightway, and asked her to call for him at the
cathedral works when she came.

 At the training college the previous evening there is a good deal of talk about Sue and her young man. The year before a student was seduced by a young man who claimed to be the girl's cousin, so there is some doubt about the fact that Jude is supposed to be Sue's cousin. After Sue does come in the next morning, the girls learn she has been severely punished, and they make a protest, only to learn that inquiries made have revealed Sue has no cousin. That evening they learn that Sue has gone, presumably climbing out of a back window and crossing a river. Sue turns up at Jude's lodgings wet and asking for help. He gives her a suit of his clothes until hers can dry, and after taking some brandy she falls asleep. When Sue awakens, she and Jude talk through much of the night, the conversation beginning with what Sue has read and why. She says her unusual taste in books came from a Christminster undergraduate with whom she had a "friendly intimacy." She looked upon the two of them as intellectual companions and after she had agreed to live with him in London was surprised that he meant as a mistress. They did live together, and the young man accused her of cruelty in not yielding to him. When Jude says he believes her as innocent as she is unconventional, she replies she has never had a lover and is proud of it, though he says that not all women are like her. Sue refuses to pray with Jude, his usual evening custom, and goes on to criticize both the religious and intellectual life of Christminster, pointing out that Jude is the very kind of person for whom the colleges were founded. Jude says he can do without Christminster and prefers something "higher"; Sue retorts that she wants something "broader, truer." After Jude says his prayers Sue speaks of the new New Testament she made for herself by rearranging the books into chronological order and decries the attempt to falsify or misrepresent the contents of the Bible. She promises not to disturb his convictions but says she hoped when she met him that he might be the man whom she had always wanted to "ennoble" to "high aims" but he is too traditional. Jude wishes he could see her as other than a woman because she would make a fascinating companion. In the morning Sue, uncertain as to what she will do and what Phillotson will think, decides to visit a friend near Shaston until her disgrace has been forgotten. Before she leaves, Jude wants to tell her that he has been married and that he loves her, but she guesses the latter and says he mustn't love her. But as soon as she reaches Shaston she writes him, telling him that she has been cruel and that he may love her if he wishes. Not hearing from her for several days, Jude goes to Shaston, to discover she has not written him because of the reason for her not being readmitted to the training college: it is said she has been intimate with Jude. Sue accuses him of mistreating her by not revealing that he loves her, and though he realizes he is even more to blame because he is married he still doesn't tell her about Arabella. He is puzzled by her annoyance at his saying that of course she can't care about him because of Phillotson. And he is both puzzled and pleased the next day when she writes to ask forgiveness for the way she treated him when he called on her as well as to tell him she would like to see him when she comes to Melchester.

