Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy [top 100 novels of all time TXT] 📗

packing, had offered her what money she required, and had written a friendly letter to her young man, telling him to take care of her. The chairman of committee thought the matter over, and talked to the other managers of the school, till a request came to Phillotson to meet them privately. The meeting lasted a long time, and at the end the schoolmaster came home, looking as usual pale and worn. Gillingham was sitting in his house awaiting him.

“Well; it is as you said,” observed Phillotson, flinging himself down wearily in a chair. “They have requested me to send in my resignation on account of my scandalous conduct in giving my tortured wife her liberty⁠—or, as they call it, condoning her adultery. But I shan’t resign!”

“I think I would.”

“I won’t. It is no business of theirs. It doesn’t affect me in my public capacity at all. They may expel me if they like.”

“If you make a fuss it will get into the papers, and you’ll never get appointed to another school. You see, they have to consider what you did as done by a teacher of youth⁠—and its effects as such upon the morals of the town; and, to ordinary opinion, your position is indefensible. You must let me say that.”

To this good advice, however, Phillotson would not listen.

“I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t go unless I am turned out. And for this reason; that by resigning I acknowledge I have acted wrongly by her; when I am more and more convinced every day that in the sight of Heaven and by all natural, straightforward humanity, I have acted rightly.”

Gillingham saw that his rather headstrong friend would not be able to maintain such a position as this; but he said nothing further, and in due time⁠—indeed, in a quarter of an hour⁠—the formal letter of dismissal arrived, the managers having remained behind to write it after Phillotson’s withdrawal. The latter replied that he should not accept dismissal; and called a public meeting, which he attended, although he looked so weak and ill that his friend implored him to stay at home. When he stood up to give his reasons for contesting the decision of the managers he advanced them firmly, as he had done to his friend, and contended, moreover, that the matter was a domestic theory which did not concern them. This they overruled, insisting that the private eccentricities of a teacher came quite within their sphere of control, as it touched the morals of those he taught. Phillotson replied that he did not see how an act of natural charity could injure morals.

All the respectable inhabitants and well-to-do fellow-natives of the town were against Phillotson to a man. But, somewhat to his surprise, some dozen or more champions rose up in his defence as from the ground.

It has been stated that Shaston was the anchorage of a curious and interesting group of itinerants, who frequented the numerous fairs and markets held up and down Wessex during the summer and autumn months. Although Phillotson had never spoken to one of these gentlemen they now nobly led the forlorn hope in his defence. The body included two cheapjacks, a shooting-gallery proprietor and the ladies who loaded the guns, a pair of boxing-masters, a steam-roundabout manager, two travelling broom-makers, who called themselves widows, a gingerbread-stall keeper, a swing-boat owner, and a “test-your-strength” man.

This generous phalanx of supporters, and a few others of independent judgment, whose own domestic experiences had been not without vicissitude, came up and warmly shook hands with Phillotson; after which they expressed their thoughts so strongly to the meeting that issue was joined, the result being a general scuffle, wherein a blackboard was split, three panes of the school-windows were broken, an inkbottle was spilled over a town-councillor’s shirtfront, a churchwarden was dealt such a topper with the map of Palestine that his head went right through Samaria, and many black eyes and bleeding noses were given, one of which, to everybody’s horror, was the venerable incumbent’s, owing to the zeal of an emancipated chimney-sweep, who took the side of Phillotson’s party. When Phillotson saw the blood running down the rector’s face he deplored almost in groans the untoward and degrading circumstances, regretted that he had not resigned when called upon, and went home so ill that next morning he could not leave his bed.

The farcical yet melancholy event was the beginning of a serious illness for him; and he lay in his lonely bed in the pathetic state of mind of a middle-aged man who perceives at length that his life, intellectual and domestic, is tending to failure and gloom. Gillingham came to see him in the evenings, and on one occasion mentioned Sue’s name.

“She doesn’t care anything about me!” said Phillotson. “Why should she?”

“She doesn’t know you are ill.”

“So much the better for both of us.”

“Where are her lover and she living?”

“At Melchester⁠—I suppose; at least he was living there some time ago.”

When Gillingham reached home he sat and reflected, and at last wrote an anonymous line to Sue, on the bare chance of its reaching her, the letter being enclosed in an envelope addressed to Jude at the diocesan capital. Arriving at that place it was forwarded to Marygreen in North Wessex, and thence to Aldbrickham by the only person who knew his present address⁠—the widow who had nursed his aunt.

Three days later, in the evening, when the sun was going down in splendour over the lowlands of Blackmoor, and making the Shaston windows like tongues of fire to the eyes of the rustics in that Vale, the sick man fancied that he heard somebody come to the house, and a few minutes after there was a tap at the bedroom door. Phillotson did not speak; the door was hesitatingly opened, and there entered⁠—Sue.

She was in light spring clothing, and her advent seemed ghostly⁠—like the flitting in of a moth. He turned his eyes upon her, and flushed; but appeared to check his