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Jude the Obsure

Page 109

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."

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