VII
The stroke of scorn relieved his mind, and the next morning helaughed at his self-conceit. But the laugh was not a healthy one.He re-read the letter from the master, and the wisdom in its lines,which had at first exasperated him, chilled and depressed him now.He saw himself as a fool indeed.
Deprived of the objects of both intellect and emotion, he could notproceed to his work. Whenever he felt reconciled to his fate as astudent, there came to disturb his calm his hopeless relations withSue. That the one affined soul he had ever met was lost to himthrough his marriage returned upon him with cruel persistency, till,unable to bear it longer, he again rushed for distraction to thereal Christminster life. He now sought it out in an obscure andlow-ceiled tavern up a court which was well known to certain worthiesof the place, and in brighter times would have interested him simplyby its quaintness. Here he sat more or less all the day, convincedthat he was at bottom a vicious character, of whom it was hopeless toexpect anything.
In the evening the frequenters of the house dropped in one by one,Jude still retaining his seat in the corner, though his money was allspent, and he had not eaten anything the whole day except a biscuit.He surveyed his gathering companions with all the equanimityand philosophy of a man who has been drinking long and slowly,and made friends with several: to wit, Tinker Taylor, a decayedchurch-ironmonger who appeared to have been of a religious turn inearlier years, but was somewhat blasphemous now; also a red-nosedauctioneer; also two Gothic masons like himself, called Uncle Jim andUncle Joe. There were present, too, some clerks, and a gown- andsurplice-maker's assistant; two ladies who sported moral charactersof various depths of shade, according to their company, nicknamed"Bower o' Bliss" and "Freckles"; some horsey men "in the know"of betting circles; a travelling actor from the theatre, and twodevil-may-care young men who proved to be gownless undergraduates;they had slipped in by stealth to meet a man about bull-pups,and stayed to drink and smoke short pipes with the racing gentsaforesaid, looking at their watches every now and then.
The conversation waxed general. Christminster society wascriticized, the dons, magistrates, and other people in authoritybeing sincerely pitied for their shortcomings, while opinions on howthey ought to conduct themselves and their affairs to be properlyrespected, were exchanged in a large-minded and disinterested manner.
Jude Fawley, with the self-conceit, effrontery, and _aplomb_ ofa strong-brained fellow in liquor, threw in his remarks somewhatperemptorily; and his aims having been what they were for so manyyears, everything the others said turned upon his tongue, by a sortof mechanical craze, to the subject of scholarship and study, theextent of his own learning being dwelt upon with an insistence thatwould have appeared pitiable to himself in his sane hours.
"I don't care a damn," he was saying, "for any provost, warden,principal, fellow, or cursed master of arts in the university! WhatI know is that I'd lick 'em on their own ground if they'd give me achance, and show 'em a few things they are not up to yet!"
"Hear, hear!" said the undergraduates from the corner, where theywere talking privately about the pups.
"You always was fond o' books, I've heard," said Tinker Taylor, "andI don't doubt what you state. Now with me 'twas different. I alwayssaw there was more to be learnt outside a book than in; and I took mysteps accordingly, or I shouldn't have been the man I am."
"You aim at the Church, I believe?" said Uncle Joe. "If you are sucha scholar as to pitch yer hopes so high as that, why not give us aspecimen of your scholarship? Canst say the Creed in Latin, man?That was how they once put it to a chap down in my country."
"I should think so!" said Jude haughtily.
"Not he! Like his conceit!" screamed one of the ladies.
"Just you shut up, Bower o' Bliss!" said one of the undergraduates."Silence!" He drank off the spirits in his tumbler, rapped with iton the counter, and announced, "The gentleman in the corner is goingto rehearse the Articles of his Belief, in the Latin tongue, for theedification of the company."
"I won't!" said Jude.
"Yes--have a try!" said the surplice-maker.
"You can't!" said Uncle Joe.
"Yes, he can!" said Tinker Taylor.
"I'll swear I can!" said Jude. "Well, come now, stand me a smallScotch cold, and I'll do it straight off."
"That's a fair offer," said the undergraduate, throwing down themoney for the whisky.
The barmaid concocted the mixture with the bearing of a personcompelled to live amongst animals of an inferior species, and theglass was handed across to Jude, who, having drunk the contents,stood up and began rhetorically, without hesitation:
"_Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, Factorem coeli et terrae,visibilium omnium et invisibilium._"
"Good! Excellent Latin!" cried one of the undergraduates, who,however, had not the slightest conception of a single word.
A silence reigned among the rest in the bar, and the maid stoodstill, Jude's voice echoing sonorously into the inner parlour, wherethe landlord was dozing, and bringing him out to see what was goingon. Jude had declaimed steadily ahead, and was continuing:
"_Crucifixus etiam pro nobis: sub Pontio Pilato passus, et sepultusest. Et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas._"
"That's the Nicene," sneered the second undergraduate. "And wewanted the Apostles'!"
"You didn't say so! And every fool knows, except you, that theNicene is the most historic creed!"
"Let un go on, let un go on!" said the auctioneer.
But Jude's mind seemed to grow confused soon, and he could not geton. He put his hand to his forehead, and his face assumed anexpression of pain.
"Give him another glass--then he'll fetch up and get through it,"said Tinker Taylor.
Somebody threw down threepence, the glass was handed, Jude stretchedout his arm for it without looking, and having swallowed the liquor,went on in a moment in a revived voice, raising it as he neared theend with the manner of a priest leading a congregation:
"_Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex PatreFilioque procedit. Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur etconglorificatur. Qui locutus est per prophetas.
"Et unam Catholicam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam. Confiteor unumBaptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et exspecto Resurrectionemmortuorum. Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen._"
"Well done!" said several, enjoying the last word, as being the firstand only one they had recognized.
Then Jude seemed to shake the fumes from his brain, as he staredround upon them.
"You pack of fools!" he cried. "Which one of you knows whether Ihave said it or no? It might have been the Ratcatcher's Daughterin double Dutch for all that your besotted heads can tell! See whatI have brought myself to--the crew I have come among!"
The landlord, who had already had his license endorsed for harbouringqueer characters, feared a riot, and came outside the counter; butJude, in his sudden flash of reason, had turned in disgust and leftthe scene, the door slamming with a dull thud behind him.
He hastened down the lane and round into the straight broad street,which he followed till it merged in the highway, and all sound of hislate companions had been left behind. Onward he still went, underthe influence of a childlike yearning for the one being in the worldto whom it seemed possible to fly--an unreasoning desire, whose illjudgement was not apparent to him now. In the course of an hour,when it was between ten and eleven o'clock, he entered the village ofLumsdon, and reaching the cottage, saw that a light was burning ina downstairs room, which he assumed, rightly as it happened, to behers.
Jude stepped close to the wall, and tapped with his finger on thepane, saying impatiently, "Sue, Sue!"
She must have recognized his voice, for the light disappeared fromthe apartment, and in a second or two the door was unlocked andopened, and Sue appeared with a candle in her hand.
"Is it Jude? Yes, it is! My dear, dear cousin, what's the matter?"
"Oh, I am--I couldn't help coming, Sue!" said he, si
nking down uponthe doorstep. "I am so wicked, Sue--my heart is nearly broken,and I could not bear my life as it was! So I have been drinking,and blaspheming, or next door to it, and saying holy things indisreputable quarters--repeating in idle bravado words which oughtnever to be uttered but reverently! Oh, do anything with me,Sue--kill me--I don't care! Only don't hate me and despise me likeall the rest of the world!"
"You are ill, poor dear! No, I won't despise you; of course I won't!Come in and rest, and let me see what I can do for you. Now lean onme, and don't mind." With one hand holding the candle and the othersupporting him, she led him indoors, and placed him in the only easychair the meagrely furnished house afforded, stretching his feet uponanother, and pulling off his boots. Jude, now getting towards hissober senses, could only say, "Dear, dear Sue!" in a voice broken bygrief and contrition.
She asked him if he wanted anything to eat, but he shook his head.Then telling him to go to sleep, and that she would come down earlyin the morning and get him some breakfast, she bade him good-nightand ascended the stairs.
Almost immediately he fell into a heavy slumber, and did not waketill dawn. At first he did not know where he was, but by degrees hissituation cleared to him, and he beheld it in all the ghastlinessof a right mind. She knew the worst of him--the very worst. Howcould he face her now? She would soon be coming down to see aboutbreakfast, as she had said, and there would he be in all his shameconfronting her. He could not bear the thought, and softly drawingon his boots, and taking his hat from the nail on which she had hungit, he slipped noiselessly out of the house.
His fixed idea was to get away to some obscure spot and hide, andperhaps pray; and the only spot which occurred to him was Marygreen.He called at his lodging in Christminster, where he found awaitinghim a note of dismissal from his employer; and having packed up heturned his back upon the city that had been such a thorn in hisside, and struck southward into Wessex. He had no money left inhis pocket, his small savings, deposited at one of the banks inChristminster, having fortunately been left untouched. To get toMarygreen, therefore, his only course was walking; and the distancebeing nearly twenty miles, he had ample time to complete on the waythe sobering process begun in him.
At some hour of the evening he reached Alfredston. Here he pawnedhis waistcoat, and having gone out of the town a mile or two, sleptunder a rick that night. At dawn he rose, shook off the hayseeds andstems from his clothes, and started again, breasting the long whiteroad up the hill to the downs, which had been visible to him a longway off, and passing the milestone at the top, whereon he had carvedhis hopes years ago.
He reached the ancient hamlet while the people were at breakfast.Weary and mud-bespattered, but quite possessed of his ordinaryclearness of brain, he sat down by the well, thinking as he did sowhat a poor Christ he made. Seeing a trough of water near he bathedhis face, and went on to the cottage of his great-aunt, whom he foundbreakfasting in bed, attended by the woman who lived with her.
"What--out o' work?" asked his relative, regarding him through eyessunken deep, under lids heavy as pot-covers, no other cause for histumbled appearance suggesting itself to one whose whole life had beena struggle with material things.
"Yes," said Jude heavily. "I think I must have a little rest."
Refreshed by some breakfast, he went up to his old room and lay downin his shirt-sleeves, after the manner of the artizan. He fellasleep for a short while, and when he awoke it was as if he hadawakened in hell. It WAS hell--"the hell of conscious failure," bothin ambition and in love. He thought of that previous abyss intowhich he had fallen before leaving this part of the country; thedeepest deep he had supposed it then; but it was not so deep as this.That had been the breaking in of the outer bulwarks of his hope:this was of his second line.
If he had been a woman he must have screamed under the nervoustension which he was now undergoing. But that relief being denied tohis virility, he clenched his teeth in misery, bringing lines abouthis mouth like those in the Laocoon, and corrugations between hisbrows.
A mournful wind blew through the trees, and sounded in the chimneylike the pedal notes of an organ. Each ivy leaf overgrowing the wallof the churchless church-yard hard by, now abandoned, pecked itsneighbour smartly, and the vane on the new Victorian-Gothic church inthe new spot had already begun to creak. Yet apparently it was notalways the outdoor wind that made the deep murmurs; it was a voice.He guessed its origin in a moment or two; the curate was praying withhis aunt in the adjoining room. He remembered her speaking of him.Presently the sounds ceased, and a step seemed to cross the landing.Jude sat up, and shouted "Hoi!"
The step made for his door, which was open, and a man looked in.It was a young clergyman.
"I think you are Mr. Highridge," said Jude. "My aunt has mentionedyou more than once. Well, here I am, just come home; a fellow goneto the bad; though I had the best intentions in the world at onetime. Now I am melancholy mad, what with drinking and one thing andanother."
Slowly Jude unfolded to the curate his late plans and movements, byan unconscious bias dwelling less upon the intellectual and ambitiousside of his dream, and more upon the theological, though this had, uptill now, been merely a portion of the general plan of advancement.
"Now I know I have been a fool, and that folly is with me," addedJude in conclusion. "And I don't regret the collapse of myuniversity hopes one jot. I wouldn't begin again if I were sure tosucceed. I don't care for social success any more at all. But I dofeel I should like to do some good thing; and I bitterly regret theChurch, and the loss of my chance of being her ordained minister."
The curate, who was a new man to this neighbourhood, had grown deeplyinterested, and at last he said: "If you feel a real call to theministry, and I won't say from your conversation that you do not,for it is that of a thoughtful and educated man, you might enter theChurch as a licentiate. Only you must make up your mind to avoidstrong drink."
"I could avoid that easily enough, if I had any kind of hope tosupport me!"