Jude the Obscure

Chapter 6

He was in an enthusiastic mood. He seemed to see his way to living

comfortably in Christminster in the course of a year or two, and

knocking at the doors of one of those strongholds of learning of

which he had dreamed so much. He might, of course, have gone there

now, in some capacity or other, but he preferred to enter the city

with a little more assurance as to means than he could be said to

feel at present. A warm self-content suffused him when he considered

what he had already done. Now and then as he went along he turned

to face the peeps of country on either side of him. But he hardly

saw them; the act was an automatic repetition of what he had been

accustomed to do when less occupied; and the one matter which really

engaged him was the mental estimate of his progress thus far.

"I have acquired quite an average student's power to read the

common ancient classics, Latin in particular." This was true,

Jude possessing a facility in that language which enabled him with

great ease to himself to beguile his lonely walks by imaginary

conversations therein.

"I have read two books of the _Iliad_, besides being pretty familiar

with passages such as the speech of Phoenix in the ninth book,

the fight of Hector and Ajax in the fourteenth, the appearance of

Achilles unarmed and his heavenly armour in the eighteenth, and the

funeral games in the twenty-third. I have also done some Hesiod, a

little scrap of Thucydides, and a lot of the Greek Testament... I

wish there was only one dialect all the same.

"I have done some mathematics, including the first six and the

eleventh and twelfth books of Euclid; and algebra as far as simple

equations.

"I know something of the Fathers, and something of Roman and English

history.

"These things are only a beginning. But I shall not make much

farther advance here, from the difficulty of getting books. Hence I

must next concentrate all my energies on settling in Christminster.

Once there I shall so advance, with the assistance I shall there

get, that my present knowledge will appear to me but as childish

ignorance. I must save money, and I will; and one of those colleges

shall open its doors to me--shall welcome whom now it would spurn,

if I wait twenty years for the welcome.

"I'll be D.D. before I have done!"

And then he continued to dream, and thought he might become even a

bishop by leading a pure, energetic, wise, Christian life. And what

an example he would set! If his income were 5000 a year, he would

give away 4500 in one form and another, and live sumptuously (for

him) on the remainder. Well, on second thoughts, a bishop was

absurd. He would draw the line at an archdeacon. Perhaps a man

could be as good and as learned and as useful in the capacity of

archdeacon as in that of bishop. Yet he thought of the bishop again.

"Meanwhile I will read, as soon as I am settled in Christminster,

the books I have not been able to get hold of here: Livy, Tacitus,

Herodotus, schylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes--"

"Ha, ha, ha! Hoity-toity!" The sounds were expressed in light

voices on the other side of the hedge, but he did not notice them.

His thoughts went on:

"--Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Epictetus, Seneca,

Antoninus. Then I must master other things: the Fathers thoroughly;

Bede and ecclesiastical history generally; a smattering of Hebrew--I

only know the letters as yet--"

"Hoity-toity!"

"--but I can work hard. I have staying power in abundance, thank

God! and it is that which tells.... Yes, Christminster shall be my

Alma Mater; and I'll be her beloved son, in whom she shall be well

pleased."

In his deep concentration on these transactions of the future Jude's

walk had slackened, and he was now standing quite still, looking

at the ground as though the future were thrown thereon by a magic

lantern. On a sudden something smacked him sharply in the ear, and

he became aware that a soft cold substance had been flung at him, and

had fallen at his feet.

A glance told him what it was--a piece of flesh, the characteristic

part of a barrow-pig, which the countrymen used for greasing their

boots, as it was useless for any other purpose. Pigs were rather

plentiful hereabout, being bred and fattened in large numbers in

certain parts of North Wessex.

On the other side of the hedge was a stream, whence, as he now for

the first time realized, had come the slight sounds of voices and

laughter that had mingled with his dreams. He mounted the bank and

looked over the fence. On the further side of the stream stood a

small homestead, having a garden and pig-sties attached; in front of

it, beside the brook, three young women were kneeling, with buckets

and platters beside them containing heaps of pigs' chitterlings,

which they were washing in the running water. One or two pairs of

eyes slyly glanced up, and perceiving that his attention had at last

been attracted, and that he was watching them, they braced themselves

for inspection by putting their mouths demurely into shape and

recommencing their rinsing operations with assiduity.

"Thank you!" said Jude severely.

"I DIDN'T throw it, I tell you!" asserted one girl to her neighbour,

as if unconscious of the young man's presence.

"Nor I," the second answered.

"Oh, Anny, how can you!" said the third.

"If I had thrown anything at all, it shouldn't have been THAT!"

"Pooh! I don't care for him!" And they laughed and continued their

work, without looking up, still ostentatiously accusing each other.

Jude grew sarcastic as he wiped his face, and caught their remarks.

"YOU didn't do it--oh no!" he said to the up-stream one of the three.

She whom he addressed was a fine dark-eyed girl, not exactly

handsome, but capable of passing as such at a little distance,

despite some coarseness of skin and fibre. She had a round and

prominent bosom, full lips, perfect teeth, and the rich complexion

of a Cochin hen's egg. She was a complete and substantial female

animal--no more, no less; and Jude was almost certain that to her was

attributable the enterprise of attracting his attention from dreams

of the humaner letters to what was simmering in the minds around him.

"That you'll never be told," said she deedily.

"Whoever did it was wasteful of other people's property."

"Oh, that's nothing."

"But you want to speak to me, I suppose?"

"Oh yes; if you like to."

"Shall I clamber across, or will you come to the plank above here?"

Perhaps she foresaw an opportunity; for somehow or other the eyes

of the brown girl rested in his own when he had said the words, and

there was a momentary flash of intelligence, a dumb announcement of

affinity _in posse_ between herself and him, which, so far as Jude

Fawley was concerned, had no sort of premeditation in it. She saw

that he had singled her out from the three, as a woman is singled out

in such cases, for no reasoned purpose of further acquaintance, but

in commonplace obedience to conjunctive orders from headquarters,

unconsciously received by unfortunate men when the last intention of

their lives is to be occupied with the feminine.

Springing to her feet, she said: "Bring back what is lying there."

Jude was now aware that no message on any matter connected with her

father's business had prompted her signal to him. He set down his

basket of tools, picked up the scrap of offal, beat a pathway for

himself with his stick, and got over the hedge. They walked in

parallel lines, one on each bank of the stream, towards the small

plank bridge. As the girl drew nearer to it, she gave without Jude

perceiving it, an adroit little suck to the interior of each of her

cheeks in succession, by which curious and original manoeuvre she

brought as by magic upon its smooth and rotund surface a perfect

dimple, which she was able to retain there as long as she continued

to smile. This production of dimples at will was a not unknown

operation, which many attempted, but only a few succeeded in

accomplishing.

They met in the middle of the plank, and Jude, tossing back her

missile, seemed to expect her to explain why she had audaciously

stopped him by this novel artillery instead of by hailing him.

But she, slyly looking in another direction, swayed herself backwards

and forwards on her hand as it clutched the rail of the bridge; till,

moved by amatory curiosity, she turned her eyes critically upon him.

"You don't think _I_ would shy things at you?"

"Oh no."

"We are doing this for my father, who naturally doesn't want anything

thrown away. He makes that into dubbin." She nodded towards the

fragment on the grass.

"What made either of the others throw it, I wonder?" Jude asked,

politely accepting her assertion, though he had very large doubts as

to its truth.

"Impudence. Don't tell folk it was I, mind!"

"How can I? I don't know your name."

"Ah, no. Shall I tell it to you?"

"Do!"

"Arabella Donn. I'm living here."

"I must have known it if I had often come this way. But I mostly go

straight along the high-road."

"My father is a pig-breeder, and these girls are helping me wash the

innerds for black-puddings and such like."

They talked a little more and a little more, as they stood regarding

each other and leaning against the hand-rail of the bridge. The

unvoiced call of woman to man, which was uttered very distinctly

by Arabella's personality, held Jude to the spot against his

intention--almost against his will, and in a way new to his

experience. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that till this

moment Jude had never looked at a woman to consider her as such, but

had vaguely regarded the s*x as beings outside his life and purposes.

He gazed from her eyes to her mouth, thence to her bosom, and to her

full round naked arms, wet, mottled with the chill of the water, and

firm as marble.

"What a nice-looking girl you are!" he murmured, though the words had

not been necessary to express his sense of her magnetism.

"Ah, you should see me Sundays!" she said piquantly.

"I don't suppose I could?" he answered

"That's for you to think on. There's nobody after me just now,

though there med be in a week or two." She had spoken this without

a smile, and the dimples disappeared.

Jude felt himself drifting strangely, but could not help it. "Will

you let me?"

"I don't mind."

By this time she had managed to get back one dimple by turning

her face aside for a moment and repeating the odd little sucking

operation before mentioned, Jude being still unconscious of more than

a general impression of her appearance. "Next Sunday?" he hazarded.

"To-morrow, that is?"

"Yes."

"Shall I call?"

"Yes."

She brightened with a little glow of triumph, swept him almost

tenderly with her eyes in turning, and retracing her steps down the

brookside grass rejoined her companions.

Jude Fawley shouldered his tool-basket and resumed his lonely way,

filled with an ardour at which he mentally stood at gaze. He had

just inhaled a single breath from a new atmosphere, which had

evidently been hanging round him everywhere he went, for he knew not

how long, but had somehow been divided from his actual breathing as

by a sheet of glass. The intentions as to reading, working, and

learning, which he had so precisely formulated only a few minutes

earlier, were suffering a curious collapse into a corner, he knew not

how.

"Well, it's only a bit of fun," he said to himself, faintly conscious

that to common sense there was something lacking, and still more

obviously something redundant in the nature of this girl who had

drawn him to her which made it necessary that he should assert mere

sportiveness on his part as his reason in seeking her--something in

her quite antipathetic to that side of him which had been occupied

with literary study and the magnificent Christminster dream. It had

been no vestal who chose THAT missile for opening her attack on him.

He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short; fleeting

while, as by the light of a falling lamp one might momentarily see an

inscription on a wall before being enshrouded in darkness. And then

this passing discriminative power was withdrawn, and Jude was lost to

all conditions of things in the advent of a fresh and wild pleasure,

that of having found a new channel for emotional interest hitherto

unsuspected, though it had lain close beside him. He was to meet

this enkindling one of the other s*x on the following Sunday.

Meanwhile the girl had joined her companions, and she silently

resumed her flicking and sousing of the chitterlings in the pellucid

stream.

"Catched un, my dear?" laconically asked the girl called Anny.

"I don't know. I wish I had thrown something else than that!"

regretfully murmured Arabella.

"Lord! he's nobody, though you med think so. He used to drive old

Drusilla Fawley's bread-cart out at Marygreen, till he 'prenticed

himself at Alfredston. Since then he's been very stuck up, and

always reading. He wants to be a scholar, they say."

"Oh, I don't care what he is, or anything about 'n. Don't you think

it, my child!"

"Oh, don't ye! You needn't try to deceive us! What did you stay

talking to him for, if you didn't want un? Whether you do or whether

you don't, he's as simple as a child. I could see it as you courted

on the bridge, when he looked at 'ee as if he had never seen a woman

before in his born days. Well, he's to be had by any woman who can

get him to care for her a bit, if she likes to set herself to catch

him the right way."