VI
Jude's old and embittered aunt lay unwell at Marygreen, and on thefollowing Sunday he went to see her--a visit which was the result ofa victorious struggle against his inclination to turn aside to thevillage of Lumsdon and obtain a miserable interview with his cousin,in which the word nearest his heart could not be spoken, and thesight which had tortured him could not be revealed.
His aunt was now unable to leave her bed, and a great part of Jude'sshort day was occupied in making arrangements for her comfort. Thelittle bakery business had been sold to a neighbour, and with theproceeds of this and her savings she was comfortably supplied withnecessaries and more, a widow of the same village living with her andministering to her wants. It was not till the time had nearly comefor him to leave that he obtained a quiet talk with her, and hiswords tended insensibly towards his cousin.
"Was Sue born here?"
"She was--in this room. They were living here at that time. Whatmade 'ee ask that?"
"Oh--I wanted to know."
"Now you've been seeing her!" said the harsh old woman. "And whatdid I tell 'ee?"
"Well--that I was not to see her."
"Have you gossiped with her?"
"Yes."
"Then don't keep it up. She was brought up by her father to hate hermother's family; and she'll look with no favour upon a working chaplike you--a townish girl as she's become by now. I never cared muchabout her. A pert little thing, that's what she was too often, withher tight-strained nerves. Many's the time I've smacked her for herimpertinence. Why, one day when she was walking into the pond withher shoes and stockings off, and her petticoats pulled above herknees, afore I could cry out for shame, she said: 'Move on, Aunty!This is no sight for modest eyes!'"
"She was a little child then."
"She was twelve if a day."
"Well--of course. But now she's older she's of a thoughtful,quivering, tender nature, and as sensitive as--"
"Jude!" cried his aunt, springing up in bed. "Don't you be a foolabout her!"
"No, no, of course not."
"Your marrying that woman Arabella was about as bad a thing as a mancould possibly do for himself by trying hard. But she's gone tothe other side of the world, and med never trouble you again. Andthere'll be a worse thing if you, tied and bound as you be, shouldhave a fancy for Sue. If your cousin is civil to you, take hercivility for what it is worth. But anything more than a relation'sgood wishes it is stark madness for 'ee to give her. If she'stownish and wanton it med bring 'ee to ruin."
"Don't say anything against her, Aunt! Don't, please!"
A relief was afforded to him by the entry of the companion and nurseof his aunt, who must have been listening to the conversation, forshe began a commentary on past years, introducing Sue Bridehead asa character in her recollections. She described what an odd littlemaid Sue had been when a pupil at the village school across the greenopposite, before her father went to London--how, when the vicararranged readings and recitations, she appeared on the platform, thesmallest of them all, "in her little white frock, and shoes, and pinksash"; how she recited "Excelsior," "There was a sound of revelry bynight," and "The Raven"; how during the delivery she would knit herlittle brows and glare round tragically, and say to the empty air, asif some real creature stood there--
"Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the Nightly shore, Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
"She'd bring up the nasty carrion bird that clear," corroborated thesick woman reluctantly, "as she stood there in her little sash andthings, that you could see un a'most before your very eyes. You too,Jude, had the same trick as a child of seeming to see things in theair."
The neighbour told also of Sue's accomplishments in other kinds:
"She was not exactly a tomboy, you know; but she could do things thatonly boys do, as a rule. I've seen her hit in and steer down thelong slide on yonder pond, with her little curls blowing, one ofa file of twenty moving along against the sky like shapes paintedon glass, and up the back slide without stopping. All boys exceptherself; and then they'd cheer her, and then she'd say, 'Don't besaucy, boys,' and suddenly run indoors. They'd try to coax her outagain. But 'a wouldn't come."
These retrospective visions of Sue only made Jude the more miserablethat he was unable to woo her, and he left the cottage of his auntthat day with a heavy heart. He would fain have glanced into theschool to see the room in which Sue's little figure had so glorifieditself; but he checked his desire and went on.
It being Sunday evening some villagers who had known him during hisresidence here were standing in a group in their best clothes. Judewas startled by a salute from one of them:
"Ye've got there right enough, then!"
Jude showed that he did not understand.
"Why, to the seat of l'arning--the 'City of Light' you used to talkto us about as a little boy! Is it all you expected of it?"
"Yes; more!" cried Jude.
"When I was there once for an hour I didn't see much in it for mypart; auld crumbling buildings, half church, half almshouse, and notmuch going on at that."
"You are wrong, John; there is more going on than meets the eye of aman walking through the streets. It is a unique centre of thoughtand religion--the intellectual and spiritual granary of this country.All that silence and absence of goings-on is the stillness ofinfinite motion--the sleep of the spinning-top, to borrow the simileof a well-known writer."
"Oh, well, it med be all that, or it med not. As I say, I didn't seenothing of it the hour or two I was there; so I went in and had a poto' beer, and a penny loaf, and a ha'porth o' cheese, and waited tillit was time to come along home. You've j'ined a college by thistime, I suppose?"
"Ah, no!" said Jude. "I am almost as far off that as ever."
"How so?"
Jude slapped his pocket.
"Just what we thought! Such places be not for such as you--only forthem with plenty o' money."
"There you are wrong," said Jude, with some bitterness. "They arefor such ones!"
Still, the remark was sufficient to withdraw Jude's attention fromthe imaginative world he had lately inhabited, in which an abstractfigure, more or less himself, was steeping his mind in a sublimationof the arts and sciences, and making his calling and election sureto a seat in the paradise of the learned. He was set regarding hisprospects in a cold northern light. He had lately felt that hecould not quite satisfy himself in his Greek--in the Greek ofthe dramatists particularly. So fatigued was he sometimes afterhis day's work that he could not maintain the critical attentionnecessary for thorough application. He felt that he wanted acoach--a friend at his elbow to tell him in a moment what sometimeswould occupy him a weary month in extracting from unanticipative,clumsy books.
It was decidedly necessary to consider facts a little more closelythan he had done of late. What was the good, after all, of usingup his spare hours in a vague labour called "private study" withoutgiving an outlook on practicabilities?
"I ought to have thought of this before," he said, as he journeyedback. "It would have been better never to have embarked in thescheme at all than to do it without seeing clearly where I am going,or what I am aiming at... This hovering outside the walls of thecolleges, as if expecting some arm to be stretched out from them tolift me inside, won't do! I must get special information."
The next week accordingly he sought it. What at first seemed anopportunity occurred one afternoon when he saw an elderly gentleman,who had been pointed out as the head of a particular college, walkingin the public path of a parklike enclosure near the spot at whichJude chanced to be sitting. The gentleman came nearer, and Judelooked anxiously at his face. It seemed benign, considerate, yetrather reserved. On second thoughts Jude felt that he could notgo up and address him; but he was sufficiently influenced by theincident to think what a wise thing it would be for him to state hisdifficulties by letter to some of the best and most judicious ofthes
e old masters, and obtain their advice.
During the next week or two he accordingly placed himself in suchpositions about the city as would afford him glimpses of severalof the most distinguished among the provosts, wardens, and otherheads of houses; and from those he ultimately selected five whosephysiognomies seemed to say to him that they were appreciative andfar-seeing men. To these five he addressed letters, briefly statinghis difficulties, and asking their opinion on his stranded situation.
When the letters were posted Jude mentally began to criticizethem; he wished they had not been sent. "It is just one of thoseintrusive, vulgar, pushing, applications which are so common in thesedays," he thought. "Why couldn't I know better than address utterstrangers in such a way? I may be an impostor, an idle scamp, a manwith a bad character, for all that they know to the contrary...Perhaps that's what I am!"
Nevertheless, he found himself clinging to the hope of some replyas to his one last chance of redemption. He waited day after day,saying that it was perfectly absurd to expect, yet expecting.While he waited he was suddenly stirred by news about Phillotson.Phillotson was giving up the school near Christminster, for a largerone further south, in Mid-Wessex. What this meant; how it wouldaffect his cousin; whether, as seemed possible, it was a practicalmove of the schoolmaster's towards a larger income, in view of aprovision for two instead of one, he would not allow himself to say.And the tender relations between Phillotson and the young girl ofwhom Jude was passionately enamoured effectually made it repugnant toJude's tastes to apply to Phillotson for advice on his own scheme.
Meanwhile the academic dignitaries to whom Jude had writtenvouchsafed no answer, and the young man was thus thrown backentirely on himself, as formerly, with the added gloom of a weakenedhope. By indirect inquiries he soon perceived clearly what he hadlong uneasily suspected, that to qualify himself for certain openscholarships and exhibitions was the only brilliant course. But todo this a good deal of coaching would be necessary, and much naturalability. It was next to impossible that a man reading on his ownsystem, however widely and thoroughly, even over the prolonged periodof ten years, should be able to compete with those who had passedtheir lives under trained teachers and had worked to ordained lines.
The other course, that of buying himself in, so to speak, seemed theonly one really open to men like him, the difficulty being simply ofa material kind. With the help of his information he began to reckonthe extent of this material obstacle, and ascertained, to his dismay,that, at the rate at which, with the best of fortune, he would beable to save money, fifteen years must elapse before he could be in aposition to forward testimonials to the head of a college and advanceto a matriculation examination. The undertaking was hopeless.
He saw what a curious and cunning glamour the neighbourhood of theplace had exercised over him. To get there and live there, to moveamong the churches and halls and become imbued with the _geniusloci_, had seemed to his dreaming youth, as the spot shaped itscharms to him from its halo on the horizon, the obvious and idealthing to do. "Let me only get there," he had said with thefatuousness of Crusoe over his big boat, "and the rest is but amatter of time and energy." It would have been far better for him inevery way if he had never come within sight and sound of the delusiveprecincts, had gone to some busy commercial town with the sole objectof making money by his wits, and thence surveyed his plan in trueperspective. Well, all that was clear to him amounted to this, thatthe whole scheme had burst up, like an iridescent soap-bubble, underthe touch of a reasoned inquiry. He looked back at himself along thevista of his past years, and his thought was akin to Heine's:
Above the youth's inspired and flashing eyes I see the motley mocking fool's-cap rise!
Fortunately he had not been allowed to bring his disappointment intohis dear Sue's life by involving her in this collapse. And thepainful details of his awakening to a sense of his limitations shouldnow be spared her as far as possible. After all, she had only knowna little part of the miserable struggle in which he had been engagedthus unequipped, poor, and unforeseeing.
He always remembered the appearance of the afternoon on which heawoke from his dream. Not quite knowing what to do with himself, hewent up to an octagonal chamber in the lantern of a singularly builttheatre that was set amidst this quaint and singular city. It hadwindows all round, from which an outlook over the whole town andits edifices could be gained. Jude's eyes swept all the views insuccession, meditatively, mournfully, yet sturdily. Those buildingsand their associations and privileges were not for him. From thelooming roof of the great library, into which he hardly ever had timeto enter, his gaze travelled on to the varied spires, halls, gables,streets, chapels, gardens, quadrangles, which composed the ensembleof this unrivalled panorama. He saw that his destiny lay not withthese, but among the manual toilers in the shabby purlieu which hehimself occupied, unrecognized as part of the city at all by itsvisitors and panegyrists, yet without whose denizens the hard readerscould not read nor the high thinkers live.
He looked over the town into the country beyond, to the trees whichscreened her whose presence had at first been the support of hisheart, and whose loss was now a maddening torture. But for this blowhe might have borne with his fate. With Sue as companion he couldhave renounced his ambitions with a smile. Without her it wasinevitable that the reaction from the long strain to which he hadsubjected himself should affect him disastrously. Phillotson hadno doubt passed through a similar intellectual disappointment tothat which now enveloped him. But the schoolmaster had been sinceblest with the consolation of sweet Sue, while for him there was noconsoler.
Descending to the streets, he went listlessly along till he arrivedat an inn, and entered it. Here he drank several glasses of beer inrapid succession, and when he came out it was night. By the light ofthe flickering lamps he rambled home to supper, and had not long beensitting at table when his landlady brought up a letter that had justarrived for him. She laid it down as if impressed with a sense ofits possible importance, and on looking at it Jude perceived that itbore the embossed stamp of one of the colleges whose heads he hadaddressed. "ONE--at last!" cried Jude.
The communication was brief, and not exactly what he had expected;though it really was from the master in person. It ran thus:
BIBLIOLL COLLEGE.
SIR,--I have read your letter with interest; and, judging from your description of yourself as a working-man, I venture to think that you will have a much better chance of success in life by remaining in your own sphere and sticking to your trade than by adopting any other course. That, therefore, is what I advise you to do. Yours faithfully,
T. TETUPHENAY.
To Mr. J. FAWLEY, Stone-mason.
This terribly sensible advice exasperated Jude. He had known allthat before. He knew it was true. Yet it seemed a hard slap afterten years of labour, and its effect upon him just now was to make himrise recklessly from the table, and, instead of reading as usual, togo downstairs and into the street. He stood at a bar and tossed offtwo or three glasses, then unconsciously sauntered along till hecame to a spot called The Fourways in the middle of the city, gazingabstractedly at the groups of people like one in a trance, till,coming to himself, he began talking to the policeman fixed there.
That officer yawned, stretched out his elbows, elevated himselfan inch and a half on the balls of his toes, smiled, and lookinghumorously at Jude, said, "You've had a wet, young man."
"No; I've only begun," he replied cynically.
Whatever his wetness, his brains were dry enough. He only heard inpart the policeman's further remarks, having fallen into thought onwhat struggling people like himself had stood at that crossway, whomnobody ever thought of now. It had more history than the oldestcollege in the city. It was literally teeming, stratified, with theshades of human groups, who had met there for tragedy, comedy, farce;real enactments of the intensest kind. At Fourways men had stoodand talked of Napoleon, the loss of America, the exec
ution of KingCharles, the burning of the Martyrs, the Crusades, the NormanConquest, possibly of the arrival of Caesar. Here the two sexes hadmet for loving, hating, coupling, parting; had waited, had suffered,for each other; had triumphed over each other; cursed each other injealousy, blessed each other in forgiveness.
He began to see that the town life was a book of humanity infinitelymore palpitating, varied, and compendious than the gown life.These struggling men and women before him were the reality ofChristminster, though they knew little of Christ or Minster.That was one of the humours of things. The floating populationof students and teachers, who did know both in a way, were notChristminster in a local sense at all.
He looked at his watch, and, in pursuit of this idea, he went on tillhe came to a public hall, where a promenade concert was in progress.Jude entered, and found the room full of shop youths and girls,soldiers, apprentices, boys of eleven smoking cigarettes, and lightwomen of the more respectable and amateur class. He had tapped thereal Christminster life. A band was playing, and the crowd walkedabout and jostled each other, and every now and then a man got upona platform and sang a comic song.
The spirit of Sue seemed to hover round him and prevent his flirtingand drinking with the frolicsome girls who made advances--wistfulto gain a little joy. At ten o'clock he came away, choosing acircuitous route homeward to pass the gates of the college whose headhad just sent him the note.
The gates were shut, and, by an impulse, he took from his pocket thelump of chalk which as a workman he usually carried there, and wrotealong the wall:
"_I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you:yea, who knoweth not such things as these?_"--Job xii. 3.