Jude the Obsure

He opened another drawer, and found therein an envelope, from which

he drew a photograph of Sue as a child, long before he had known her,

standing under trellis-work with a little basket in her hand. There

was another of her as a young woman, her dark eyes and hair making a

very distinct and attractive picture of her, which just disclosed,

too, the thoughtfulness that lay behind her lighter moods. It was

a duplicate of the one she had given Jude, and would have given to

any man. Phillotson brought it half-way to his lips, but withdrew

it in doubt at her perplexing phrases: ultimately kissing the

dead pasteboard with all the passionateness, and more than all the

devotion, of a young man of eighteen.

The schoolmaster's was an unhealthy-looking, old-fashioned face,

rendered more old-fashioned by his style of shaving. A certain

gentlemanliness had been imparted to it by nature, suggesting an

inherent wish to do rightly by all. His speech was a little slow,

but his tones were sincere enough to make his hesitation no defect.

His greying hair was curly, and radiated from a point in the middle

of his crown. There were four lines across his forehead, and he only

wore spectacles when reading at night. It was almost certainly a

renunciation forced upon him by his academic purpose, rather than a

distaste for women, which had hitherto kept him from closing with one

of the sex in matrimony.

Such silent proceedings as those of this evening were repeated many

and oft times when he was not under the eye of the boys, whose quick

and penetrating regard would frequently become almost intolerable to

the self-conscious master in his present anxious care for Sue, making

him, in the grey hours of morning, dread to meet anew the gimlet

glances, lest they should read what the dream within him was.

He had honourably acquiesced in Sue's announced wish that he was

not often to visit her at the training school; but at length, his

patience being sorely tried, he set out one Saturday afternoon to pay

her an unexpected call. There the news of her departure--expulsion

as it might almost have been considered--was flashed upon him without

warning or mitigation as he stood at the door expecting in a few

minutes to behold her face; and when he turned away he could hardly

see the road before him.

Sue had, in fact, never written a line to her suitor on the subject,

although it was fourteen days old. A short reflection told him that

this proved nothing, a natural delicacy being as ample a reason for

silence as any degree of blameworthiness.