V
THE schoolmaster sat in his homely dwelling attached to the school, both being
modern erections; and he looked across the way at the old house in which his
teacher Sue had a lodging. The arrangement had been concluded very quickly.
A pupil-teacher who was to have been transferred to Mr. Phillotson's school
had failed him, and Sue had been taken as stop-gap. All such provisional
arrangements as these could only last till the next annual visit of H.M.
Inspector, whose approval was necessary to make them permanent. Having taught
for some two years in London, though she had abandoned that vocation of late,
Miss Bridehead was not exactly a novice, and Phillotson thought there would
be no difficulty in retaining her services, which he already wished to do,
though she had only been with him three or four weeks. He had found her quite
as bright as Jude had described her; and what master-tradesman does not wish
to keep an apprentice who saves him half his labour?
It was a little over half-past eight o'clock in the morning and he was
waiting to see her cross the road to the school, when he would follow.
At twenty minutes to nine she did cross, a light hat tossed on her head;
and he watched her as a curiosity. A new emanation, which had nothing
to do with her skill as a teacher, seemed to surround her this morning.
He went to the school also, and Sue remained governing her class at
the other end of the room, all day under his eye. She certainly was an
excellent teacher.
It was part of his duty to give her private lessons in the evening,
and some article in the Code made it necessary that a respectable,
elderly woman should be present at these lessons when the teacher
and the taught were of different sexes. Richard Phillotson thought
of the absurdity of the regulation in this case, when he was old
enough to be the girl's father; but he faithfully acted up to it;
and sat down with her in a room where Mrs. Hawes, the widow
at whose house Sue lodged, occupied herself with sewing.
The regulation was, indeed, not easy to evade, for there was no other
sitting-room in the dwelling.
Sometimes as she figured--it was arithmetic that they were working at--
she would involuntarily glance up with a little inquiring smile at him,
as if she assumed that, being the master, he must perceive all that was
passing in her brain, as right or wrong. Phillotson was not really thinking
of the arithmetic at all, but of her, in a novel way which somehow seemed
strange to him as preceptor. Perhaps she knew that he was thinking of
her thus.
For a few weeks their work had gone on with a monotony which in
itself was a delight to him. Then it happened that the children
were to be taken to Christminster to see an itinerant exhibition,
in the shape of a model of Jerusalem, to which schools were
admitted at a penny a head in the interests of education.
They marched along the road two and two, she beside her
class with her simple cotton sunshade, her little thumb
cocked up against its stem; and Phillotson behind in his
long dangling coat, handling his walking-stick genteelly,
in the musing mood which had come over him since her arrival.
The afternoon was one of sun and dust, and when they entered
the exhibition room few people were present but themselves.
The model of the ancient city stood in the middle of the apartment,
and the proprietor, with a fine religious philanthropy written
on his features, walked round it with a pointer in his hand,
showing the young people the various quarters and places known
to them by name from reading their Bibles, Mount Moriah,
the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the City of Zion, the walls and the gates,
outside one of which there was a large mound like a tumulus,
and on the mound a little white cross. The spot, he said,
was Calvary.
"I think," said Sue to the schoolmaster, as she stood with him
a little in the background, "that this model, elaborate as it is,
is a very imaginary production. How does anybody know that Jerusalem
was like this in the time of Christ? I am sure this man doesn't."
"It is made after the best conjectural maps, based on actual
visits to the city as it now exists."
"I fancy we have had enough of Jerusalem," she said, "considering we are
not descended from the Jews. There was nothing first-rate about the place,
or people, after all--as there was about Athens, Rome, Alexandria, and other
old cities."
"But my dear girl, consider what it is to us!"
She was silent, for she was easily repressed; and then perceived
behind the group of children clustered round the model a young man
in a white flannel jacket, his form being bent so low in his intent
inspection of the Valley of Jehoshaphat that his face was almost
hidden from view by the Mount of Olives. "Look at your cousin Jude,"
continued the schoolmaster. "He doesn't think we have had enough
of Jerusalem!"
"Ah--I didn't see him!" she cried in her quick, light voice.
"Jude--how seriously you are going into it!"
Jude started up from his reverie, and saw her. "Oh--Sue!" he said,
with a glad flush of embarrassment. "These are your school-children,
of course! I saw that schools were admitted in the afternoons,
and thought you might come; but I got so deeply interested that I
didn't remember where I was. How it carries one back, doesn't it!
I could examine it for hours, but I have only a few minutes, unfortunately;
for I am in the middle of a job out here."
"Your cousin is so terribly clever that she criticizes it unmercifully,"
said Phillotson, with good-humoured satire. "She is quite sceptical
as to its correctness."
"No, Mr. Phillotson, I am not--altogether! I hate to be what is
called a clever girl--there are too many of that sort now!"
answered Sue sensitively. "I only meant--I don't know what I meant--
except that it was what you don't understand!"
"I know your meaning," said Jude ardently (although he did not).
"And I think you are quite right."
"That's a good Jude--I know you believe in me!" She impulsively
seized his hand, and leaving a reproachful look on the schoolmaster
turned away to Jude, her voice revealing a tremor which she
herself felt to be absurdly uncalled for by sarcasm so gentle.
She had not the least conception how the hearts of the twain went
out to her at this momentary revelation of feeling, and what a
complication she was building up thereby in the futures of both.
The model wore too much of an educational aspect for the children
not to tire of it soon, and a little later in the afternoon they
were all marched back to Lumsdon, Jude returning to his work.
He watched the juvenile flock in their clean frocks and pinafores,
filing down the street towards the country beside Phillotson and Sue,
and a sad, dissatisfied sense of being out of the scheme of the latters'
lives had possession of him. Phillotson had invited him to walk
out and see them on Friday evening, when there would be no lessons
to give to Sue, and Jude had eagerly promised to avail himself of
the opportunity.
Meanwhile the scholars and teachers moved homewards, and the next day,
on looking on the blackboard in Sue's class, Phillotson was surprised
to find upon it, skilfully drawn in chalk, a perspective view of Jerusalem,
with every building shown in its place.
"I thought you took no interest in the model, and hardly looked at it?"
he said.
"I hardly did," said she, "but I remembered that much of it."
"It is more than I had remembered myself."
Her Majesty's school-inspector was at that time paying "surprise-visits"
in this neighbourhood to test the teaching unawares; and two days later,
in the middle of the morning lessons, the latch of the door was softly lifted,
and in walked my gentleman, the king of terrors--to pupil-teachers.
To Mr. Phillotson the surprise was not great; like the lady in the story
he had been played that trick too many times to be unprepared.
But Sue's class was at the further end of the room, and her back was towards
the entrance; the inspector therefore came and stood behind her and watched
her teaching some half-minute before she became aware of his presence.
She turned, and realized that an oft-dreaded moment had come.
The effect upon her timidity was such that she uttered a cry of fright.
Phillotson, with a strange instinct of solicitude quite beyond his control,
was at her side just in time to prevent her falling from faintness.
She soon recovered herself, and laughed; but when the inspector had gone there
was a reaction, and she was so white that Phillotson took her into his room,
and gave her some brandy to bring her round. She found him holding
her hand.
"You ought to have told me," she gasped petulantly, "that one of
the inspector's surprise-visits was imminent! Oh, what shall I do!
Now he'll write and tell the managers that I am no good, and I shall
be disgraced for ever!"
"He won't do that, my dear little girl. You are the best teacher ever I had!"
He looked so gently at her that she was moved, and regretted that she
had upbraided him. When she was better she went home.
Jude in the meantime had been waiting impatiently for Friday.
On both Wednesday and Thursday he had been so much under
the influence of his desire to see her that he walked
after dark some distance along the road in the direction
of the village, and, on returning to his room to read,
found himself quite unable to concentrate his mind on the page.
On Friday, as soon as he had got himself up as he thought
Sue would like to see him, and made a hasty tea, he set out,
notwithstanding that the evening was wet. The trees overhead
deepened the gloom of the hour, and they dripped sadly upon him,
impressing him with forebodings--illogical forebodings;
for though he knew that he loved her he also knew that he could
not be more to her than he was.
On turning the corner and entering the village the first sight
that greeted his eyes was that of two figures under one umbrella
coming out of the vicarage gate. He was too far back for them
to notice him, but he knew in a moment that they were Sue
and Phillotson. The latter was holding the umbrella over her head,
and they had evidently been paying a visit to the vicar--
probably on some business connected with the school work.
And as they walked along the wet and deserted lane Jude saw
Phillotson place his arm round the girl's waist; whereupon she
gently removed it; but he replaced it; and she let it remain,
looking quickly round her with an air of misgiving. She did
not look absolutely behind her, and therefore did not see Jude,
who sank into the hedge like one struck with a blight.
There he remained hidden till they had reached Sue's cottage
and she had passed in, Phillotson going on to the school
hard by.
"Oh, he's too old for her--too old!" cried Jude in all the terrible sickness
of hopeless, handicapped love.
He could not interfere. Was he not Arabella's? He was unable
to go on further, and retraced his steps towards Christminster.
Every tread of his feet seemed to say to him that he must
on no account stand in the schoolmaster's way with Sue.
Phillotson was perhaps twenty years her senior, but many a happy
marriage had been made in such conditions of age. The ironical
clinch to his sorrow was given by the thought that the intimacy
between his cousin and the schoolmaster had been brought about
entirely by himself.
