Jude the Obsure

"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.