Jude the Obscure
by Thomas Hardy
Part First
AT MARYGREEN
"Yea, many there be that have run out of their wits for women,
and become servants for their sakes. Many also have perished,
have erred, and sinned, for women.... O ye men, how can it be
but women should be strong, seeing they do thus?"--ESDRAS.
I
THE schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.
The miller at Cresscombe lent him the small white tilted cart and horse
to carry his goods to the city of his destination, about twenty miles off,
such a vehicle proving of quite sufficient size for the departing
teacher's effects. For the schoolhouse had been partly furnished by
the managers, and the only cumbersome article possessed by the master,
in addition to the packing-case of books, was a cottage piano that he had
bought at an auction during the year in which he thought of learning
instrumental music. But the enthusiasm having waned he had never acquired
any skill in playing, and the purchased article had been a perpetual trouble
to him ever since in moving house.
The rector had gone away for the day, being a man who disliked
the sight of changes. He did not mean to return till the evening,
when the new school-teacher would have arrived and settled in,
and everything would be smooth again.
The blacksmith, the farm bailiff, and the schoolmaster himself were
standing in perplexed attitudes in the parlour before the instrument.
The master had remarked that even if he got it into the cart he should
not know what to do with it on his arrival at Christminster, the city
he was bound for, since he was only going into temporary lodgings just
at first.
A little boy of eleven, who had been thoughtfully assisting
in the packing, joined the group of men, and as they rubbed
their chins he spoke up, blushing at the sound of his own voice:
"Aunt have got a great fuel-house, and it could be put there,
perhaps, till you've found a place to settle in, sir."
"A proper good notion," said the blacksmith.
It was decided that a deputation should wait on the boy's aunt--
an old maiden resident--and ask her if she would house the piano
till Mr. Phillotson should send for it. The smith and the bailiff
started to see about the practicability of the suggested shelter,
and the boy and the schoolmaster were left standing alone.
"Sorry I am going, Jude?" asked the latter kindly.
Tears rose into the boy's eyes, for he was not among the regular day scholars,
who came unromantically close to the schoolmaster's life, but one who had
attended the night school only during the present teacher's term of office.
The regular scholars, if the truth must be told, stood at the present moment
afar off, like certain historic disciples, indisposed to any enthusiastic
volunteering of aid.
The boy awkwardly opened the book he held in his hand,
which Mr. Phillotson had bestowed on him as a parting gift,
and admitted that he was sorry.
"So am I," said Mr. Phillotson.
"Why do you go, sir?" asked the boy.
"Ah--that would be a long story. You wouldn't understand my reasons, Jude.
You will, perhaps, when you are older."
"I think I should now, sir."
"Well--don't speak of this everywhere. You know what a university is,
and a university degree? It is the necessary hallmark of a man
who wants to do anything in teaching. My scheme, or dream,
is to be a university graduate, and then to be ordained. By going
to live at Christminster, or near it, I shall be at headquarters,
so to speak, and if my scheme is practicable at all, I consider
that being on the spot will afford me a better chance of carrying it
out than I should have elsewhere."
The smith and his companion returned. Old Miss Fawley's fuel-house was dry,
and eminently practicable; and she seemed willing to give the instrument
standing-room there. It was accordingly left in the school till the evening,
when more hands would be available for removing it; and the schoolmaster gave
a final glance round.
The boy Jude assisted in loading some small articles, and at nine o'clock
Mr. Phillotson mounted beside his box of books and other IMPEDIMENTA,
and bade his friends good-bye.
"I shan't forget you, Jude," he said, smiling, as the cart moved off.
"Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all
you can. And if ever you come to Christminster remember you hunt me out
for old acquaintance' sake."
The cart creaked across the green, and disappeared round
the corner by the rectory-house. The boy returned to the draw-well
at the edge of the greensward, where he had left his buckets
when he went to help his patron and teacher in the loading.
There was a quiver in his lip now and after opening the well-cover
to begin lowering the bucket he paused and leant with his forehead
and arms against the framework, his face wearing the fixity
of a thoughtful child's who has felt the pricks of life somewhat
before his time. The well into which he was looking was as
ancient as the village itself, and from his present position
appeared as a long circular perspective ending in a shining
disk of quivering water at a distance of a hundred feet down.
There was a lining of green moss near the top, and nearer still
the hart's-tongue fern.
He said to himself, in the melodramatic tones of a whimsical boy,
that the schoolmaster had drawn at that well scores of times
on a morning like this, and would never draw there any more.
"I've seen him look down into it, when he was tired with his drawing,
just as I do now, and when he rested a bit before carrying
the buckets home! But he was too clever to bide here any longer--
a small sleepy place like this!"
A tear rolled from his eye into the depths of the well.
The morning was a little foggy, and the boy's breathing
unfurled itself as a thicker fog upon the still and heavy air.
His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden outcry:
"Bring on that water, will ye, you idle young harlican!"
It came from an old woman who had emerged from her door towards
the garden gate of a green-thatched cottage not far off.
The boy quickly waved a signal of assent, drew the water
with what was a great effort for one of his stature, landed and
emptied the big bucket into his own pair of smaller ones,
and pausing a moment for breath, started with them across
the patch of clammy greensward whereon the well stood--
nearly in the centre of the little village, or rather hamlet
of Marygreen.
It was as old-fashioned as it was small, and it rested in the lap
of an undulating upland adjoining the North Wessex downs.
Old as it was, however, the well-shaft was probably the only
relic of the local history that remained absolutely unchanged.
Many of the thatched and dormered dwelling-houses had been
pulled down of late years, and many trees felled on the green.
Above all, the original church, hump-backed, wood-turreted,
and quaintly hipped, had been taken down, and either cracked
up into heaps of road-metal in the lane, or utilized
as pig-sty walls, garden seats, guard-stones to fences,
and rockeries in the flower-beds of the neighbourhood.
In place of it a tall new building of modern Gothic design,
unfamiliar to English eyes, had been erected on a new piece
of ground by a certain obliterator of historic records who had run
down from London and back in a day. The site whereon so long
had stood the ancient temple to the Christian divinities was
not even recorded on the green and level grass-plot that had
immemorially been the churchyard, the obliterated graves being
commemorated by eighteen-penny castiron crosses warranted to last
five years.
