Jude the Obsure

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.