Jude the Obscure

Chapter 7

Deprived of the objects of both intellect and emotion, he could not

proceed to his work. Whenever he felt reconciled to his fate as a

student, there came to disturb his calm his hopeless relations with

Sue. That the one affined soul he had ever met was lost to him

through his marriage returned upon him with cruel persistency, till,

unable to bear it longer, he again rushed for distraction to the

real Christminster life. He now sought it out in an obscure and

low-ceiled tavern up a court which was well known to certain worthies

of the place, and in brighter times would have interested him simply

by its quaintness. Here he sat more or less all the day, convinced

that he was at bottom a vicious character, of whom it was hopeless to

expect 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 all

spent, and he had not eaten anything the whole day except a biscuit.

He surveyed his gathering companions with all the equanimity

and philosophy of a man who has been drinking long and slowly,

and made friends with several: to wit, Tinker Taylor, a decayed

church-ironmonger who appeared to have been of a religious turn in

earlier years, but was somewhat blasphemous now; also a red-nosed

auctioneer; also two Gothic masons like himself, called Uncle Jim and

Uncle Joe. There were present, too, some clerks, and a gown- and

surplice-maker's assistant; two ladies who sported moral characters

of 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 two

devil-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 gents

aforesaid, looking at their watches every now and then.

The conversation waxed general. Christminster society was

criticized, the dons, magistrates, and other people in authority

being sincerely pitied for their shortcomings, while opinions on how

they ought to conduct themselves and their affairs to be properly

respected, were exchanged in a large-minded and disinterested manner.

Jude Fawley, with the self-conceit, effrontery, and _aplomb_ of

a strong-brained fellow in liquor, threw in his remarks somewhat

peremptorily; and his aims having been what they were for so many

years, everything the others said turned upon his tongue, by a sort

of mechanical craze, to the subject of scholarship and study, the

extent of his own learning being dwelt upon with an insistence that

would 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! What

I know is that I'd lick 'em on their own ground if they'd give me a

chance, and show 'em a few things they are not up to yet!"

"Hear, hear!" said the undergraduates from the corner, where they

were talking privately about the pups.

"You always was fond o' books, I've heard," said Tinker Taylor, "and

I don't doubt what you state. Now with me 'twas different. I always

saw there was more to be learnt outside a book than in; and I took my

steps accordingly, or I shouldn't have been the man I am."

"You aim at the Church, I believe?" said Uncle Joe. "If you are such

a scholar as to pitch yer hopes so high as that, why not give us a

specimen 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 it

on the counter, and announced, "The gentleman in the corner is going

to rehearse the Articles of his Belief, in the Latin tongue, for the

edification 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 small

Scotch cold, and I'll do it straight off."

"That's a fair offer," said the undergraduate, throwing down the

money for the whisky.

The barmaid concocted the mixture with the bearing of a person

compelled to live amongst animals of an inferior species, and the

glass 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 stood

still, Jude's voice echoing sonorously into the inner parlour, where

the landlord was dozing, and bringing him out to see what was going

on. Jude had declaimed steadily ahead, and was continuing:

"_Crucifixus etiam pro nobis: sub Pontio Pilato passus, et sepultus

est. Et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas._"

"That's the Nicene," sneered the second undergraduate. "And we

wanted the Apostles'!"

"You didn't say so! And every fool knows, except you, that the

Nicene 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 get

on. He put his hand to his forehead, and his face assumed an

expression 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 stretched

out 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 the

end with the manner of a priest leading a congregation:

"_Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre

Filioque procedit. Qui c*m Patre et Filio simul adoratur et

conglorificatur. Qui locutus est per prophetas.

"Et unam Catholicam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam. Confiteor unum

Baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et exspecto Resurrectionem

mortuorum. Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen._"

"Well done!" said several, enjoying the last word, as being the first

and only one they had recognized.

Then Jude seemed to shake the fumes from his brain, as he stared

round upon them.

"You pack of fools!" he cried. "Which one of you knows whether I

have said it or no? It might have been the Ratcatcher's Daughter

in double Dutch for all that your besotted heads can tell! See what

I have brought myself to--the crew I have come among!"

The landlord, who had already had his license endorsed for harbouring

queer characters, feared a riot, and came outside the counter; but

Jude, in his sudden flash of reason, had turned in disgust and left

the 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 his

late companions had been left behind. Onward he still went, under

the influence of a childlike yearning for the one being in the world

to whom it seemed possible to fly--an unreasoning desire, whose ill

judgement 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 of

Lumsdon, and reaching the cottage, saw that a light was burning in

a downstairs room, which he assumed, rightly as it happened, to be

hers.

Jude stepped close to the wall, and tapped with his finger on the

pane, saying impatiently, "Sue, Sue!"

She must have recognized his voice, for the light disappeared from

the apartment, and in a second or two the door was unlocked and

opened, 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, sinking down upon

the 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 in

disreputable quarters--repeating in idle bravado words which ought

never 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 like

all 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 on

me, and don't mind." With one hand holding the candle and the other

supporting him, she led him indoors, and placed him in the only easy

chair the meagrely furnished house afforded, stretching his feet upon

another, and pulling off his boots. Jude, now getting towards his

sober senses, could only say, "Dear, dear Sue!" in a voice broken by

grief 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 early

in the morning and get him some breakfast, she bade him good-night

and ascended the stairs.

Almost immediately he fell into a heavy slumber, and did not wake

till dawn. At first he did not know where he was, but by degrees his

situation cleared to him, and he beheld it in all the ghastliness

of a right mind. She knew the worst of him--the very worst. How

could he face her now? She would soon be coming down to see about

breakfast, as she had said, and there would he be in all his shame

confronting her. He could not bear the thought, and softly drawing

on his boots, and taking his hat from the nail on which she had hung

it, he slipped noiselessly out of the house.

His fixed idea was to get away to some obscure spot and hide, and

perhaps pray; and the only spot which occurred to him was Marygreen.

He called at his lodging in Christminster, where he found awaiting

him a note of dismissal from his employer; and having packed up he

turned his back upon the city that had been such a thorn in his

side, and struck southward into Wessex. He had no money left in

his pocket, his small savings, deposited at one of the banks in

Christminster, having fortunately been left untouched. To get to

Marygreen, therefore, his only course was walking; and the distance

being nearly twenty miles, he had ample time to complete on the way

the sobering process begun in him.

At some hour of the evening he reached Alfredston. Here he pawned

his waistcoat, and having gone out of the town a mile or two, slept

under a rick that night. At dawn he rose, shook off the hayseeds and

stems from his clothes, and started again, breasting the long white

road up the hill to the downs, which had been visible to him a long

way off, and passing the milestone at the top, whereon he had carved

his hopes years ago.

He reached the ancient hamlet while the people were at breakfast.

Weary and mud-bespattered, but quite possessed of his ordinary

clearness of brain, he sat down by the well, thinking as he did so

what a poor Christ he made. Seeing a trough of water near he bathed

his face, and went on to the cottage of his great-aunt, whom he found

breakfasting in bed, attended by the woman who lived with her.

"What--out o' work?" asked his relative, regarding him through eyes

sunken deep, under lids heavy as pot-covers, no other cause for his

tumbled appearance suggesting itself to one whose whole life had been

a 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 down

in his shirt-sleeves, after the manner of the artizan. He fell

asleep for a short while, and when he awoke it was as if he had

awakened in hell. It WAS hell--"the hell of conscious failure," both

in ambition and in love. He thought of that previous abyss into

which he had fallen before leaving this part of the country; the

deepest 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 nervous

tension which he was now undergoing. But that relief being denied to

his virility, he clenched his teeth in misery, bringing lines about

his mouth like those in the Laoco n, and corrugations between his

brows.

A mournful wind blew through the trees, and sounded in the chimney

like the pedal notes of an organ. Each ivy leaf overgrowing the wall

of the churchless church-yard hard by, now abandoned, pecked its

neighbour smartly, and the vane on the new Victorian-Gothic church in

the new spot had already begun to creak. Yet apparently it was not

always 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 with

his 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 mentioned

you more than once. Well, here I am, just come home; a fellow gone

to the bad; though I had the best intentions in the world at one

time. Now I am melancholy mad, what with drinking and one thing and

another."

Slowly Jude unfolded to the curate his late plans and movements, by

an unconscious bias dwelling less upon the intellectual and ambitious

side of his dream, and more upon the theological, though this had, up

till 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," added

Jude in conclusion. "And I don't regret the collapse of my

university hopes one jot. I wouldn't begin again if I were sure to

succeed. I don't care for social success any more at all. But I do

feel I should like to do some good thing; and I bitterly regret the

Church, and the loss of my chance of being her ordained minister."

The curate, who was a new man to this neighbourhood, had grown deeply

interested, and at last he said: "If you feel a real call to the

ministry, 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 the

Church as a licentiate. Only you must make up your mind to avoid

strong drink."

"I could avoid that easily enough, if I had any kind of hope to

support me!"