Jude the Obsure

"I couldn't stay to eat my dinner in school, because they said--"

He described how some boys had taunted him about his nominal mother,

and Sue, grieved, expressed her indignation to Jude aloft. The child

went into the churchyard, and Sue returned to her work. Meanwhile

the door had opened again, and there shuffled in with a businesslike

air the white-aproned woman who cleaned the church. Sue recognized

her as one who had friends in Spring Street, whom she visited. The

church-cleaner looked at Sue, gaped, and lifted her hands; she had

evidently recognized Jude's companion as the latter had recognized

her. Next came two ladies, and after talking to the charwoman they

also moved forward, and as Sue stood reaching upward, watched her

hand tracing the letters, and critically regarded her person in

relief against the white wall, till she grew so nervous that she

trembled visibly.

They went back to where the others were standing, talking in

undertones: and one said--Sue could not hear which--"She's his wife,

I suppose?"

"Some say Yes: some say No," was the reply from the charwoman.

"Not? Then she ought to be, or somebody's--that's very clear!"

"They've only been married a very few weeks, whether or no."

"A strange pair to be painting the Two Tables! I wonder Biles and

Willis could think of such a thing as hiring those!"

The churchwarden supposed that Biles and Willis knew of nothing

wrong, and then the other, who had been talking to the old woman,

explained what she meant by calling them strange people.

The probable drift of the subdued conversation which followed was

made plain by the churchwarden breaking into an anecdote, in a voice

that everybody in the church could hear, though obviously suggested

by the present situation: "Well, now, it is a curious thing, but my grandfather told me a

strange tale of a most immoral case that happened at the painting of

the Commandments in a church out by Gaymead--which is quite within a

walk of this one. In them days Commandments were mostly done in gilt

letters on a black ground, and that's how they were out where I say,

before the owld church was rebuilded. It must have been somewhere

about a hundred years ago that them Commandments wanted doing up just

as ours do here, and they had to get men from Aldbrickham to do 'em.

Now they wished to get the job finished by a particular Sunday, so

the men had to work late Saturday night, against their will, for

overtime was not paid then as 'tis now. There was no true religion

in the country at that date, neither among pa'sons, clerks, nor

people, and to keep the men up to their work the vicar had to let 'em

have plenty of drink during the afternoon. As evening drawed on they

sent for some more themselves; rum, by all account. It got later and

later, and they got more and more fuddled, till at last they went

a-putting their rum-bottle and rummers upon the communion table, and

drawed up a trestle or two, and sate round comfortable and poured

out again right hearty bumpers. No sooner had they tossed off their

glasses than, so the story goes they fell down senseless, one and

all. How long they bode so they didn't know, but when they came

to themselves there was a terrible thunder-storm a-raging, and

they seemed to see in the gloom a dark figure with very thin legs

and a curious voot, a-standing on the ladder, and finishing their

work. When it got daylight they could see that the work was really

finished, and couldn't at all mind finishing it themselves. They

went home, and the next thing they heard was that a great scandal had

been caused in the church that Sunday morning, for when the people

came and service began, all saw that the Ten Commandments wez painted

with the 'nots' left out. Decent people wouldn't attend service

there for a long time, and the Bishop had to be sent for to

reconsecrate the church. That's the tradition as I used to hear it

as a child. You must take it for what it is wo'th, but this case

to-day has reminded me o't, as I say."