Jude the Obscure

ot a soul was visible on the hedgeless highway, or on either side of
it, and the white road seemed to ascend and diminish till it joined the
sky. At the very top it was crossed at right angles by a green
“ridgeway”—the Ickneild Street and original Roman road through the
district. This ancient track ran east and west for many miles, and down
almost to within living memory had been used for driving flocks and
herds to fairs and markets. But it was now neglected and overgrown.

The boy had never before strayed so far north as this from the nestling
hamlet in which he had been deposited by the carrier from a railway
station southward, one dark evening some few months earlier, and till
now he had had no suspicion that such a wide, flat, low-lying country
lay so near at hand, under the very verge of his upland world. The
whole northern semicircle between east and west, to a distance of forty
or fifty miles, spread itself before him; a bluer, moister atmosphere,
evidently, than that he breathed up here.

Not far from the road stood a weather-beaten old barn of reddish-grey
brick and tile. It was known as the Brown House by the people of the
locality. He was about to pass it when he perceived a ladder against
the eaves; and the reflection that the higher he got, the further he
could see, led Jude to stand and regard it. On the slope of the roof
two men were repairing the tiling. He turned into the ridgeway and drew
towards the barn.

When he had wistfully watched the workmen for some time he took
courage, and ascended the ladder till he stood beside them.

“Well, my lad, and what may you want up here?”

“I wanted to know where the city of Christminster is, if you please.”

“Christminster is out across there, by that clump. You can see it—at
least you can on a clear day. Ah, no, you can’t now.”

The other tiler, glad of any kind of diversion from the monotony of his
labour, had also turned to look towards the quarter designated. “You
can’t often see it in weather like this,” he said. “The time I’ve
noticed it is when the sun is going down in a blaze of flame, and it
looks like—I don’t know what.”

“The heavenly Jerusalem,” suggested the serious urchin.

“Ay—though I should never ha’ thought of it myself. … But I can’t see
no Christminster to-day.”

The boy strained his eyes also; yet neither could he see the far-off
city. He descended from the barn, and abandoning Christminster with the
versatility of his age he walked along the ridge-track, looking for any
natural objects of interest that might lie in the banks thereabout.
When he repassed the barn to go back to Marygreen he observed that the
ladder was still in its place, but that the men had finished their
day’s work and gone away.

It was waning towards evening; there was still a faint mist, but it had
cleared a little except in the damper tracts of subjacent country and
along the river-courses. He thought again of Christminster, and wished,
since he had come two or three miles from his aunt’s house on purpose,
that he could have seen for once this attractive city of which he had
been told. But even if he waited here it was hardly likely that the air
would clear before night. Yet he was loth to leave the spot, for the
northern expanse became lost to view on retreating towards the village
only a few hundred yards.

He ascended the ladder to have one more look at the point the men had
designated, and perched himself on the highest rung, overlying the
tiles. He might not be able to come so far as this for many days.
Perhaps if he prayed, the wish to see Christminster might be forwarded.
People said that, if you prayed, things sometimes came to you, even
though they sometimes did not. He had read in a tract that a man who
had begun to build a church, and had no money to finish it, knelt down
and prayed, and the money came in by the next post. Another man tried
the same experiment, and the money did not come; but he found
afterwards that the breeches he knelt in were made by a wicked Jew.
This was not discouraging, and turning on the ladder Jude knelt on the
third rung, where, resting against those above it, he prayed that the
mist might rise.

He then seated himself again, and waited. In the course of ten or
fifteen minutes the thinning mist dissolved altogether from the
northern horizon, as it had already done elsewhere, and about a quarter
of an hour before the time of sunset the westward clouds parted, the
sun’s position being partially uncovered, and the beams streaming out
in visible lines between two bars of slaty cloud. The boy immediately
looked back in the old direction.

Some way within the limits of the stretch of landscape, points of light
like the topaz gleamed. The air increased in transparency with the
lapse of minutes, till the topaz points showed themselves to be the
vanes, windows, wet roof slates, and other shining spots upon the
spires, domes, freestone-work, and varied outlines that were faintly
revealed. It was Christminster, unquestionably; either directly seen,
or miraged in the peculiar atmosphere.

The spectator gazed on and on till the windows and vanes lost their
shine, going out almost suddenly like extinguished candles. The vague
city became veiled in mist. Turning to the west, he saw that the sun
had disappeared. The foreground of the scene had grown funereally dark,
and near objects put on the hues and shapes of chimaeras.

He anxiously descended the ladder, and started homewards at a run,
trying not to think of giants, Herne the Hunter, Apollyon lying in wait
for Christian, or of the captain with the bleeding hole in his forehead
and the corpses round him that remutinied every night on board the
bewitched ship. He knew that he had grown out of belief in these
horrors, yet he was glad when he saw the church tower and the lights in
the cottage windows, even though this was not the home of his birth,
and his great-aunt did not care much about him.

Inside and round about that old woman’s “shop” window, with its
twenty-four little panes set in lead-work, the glass of some of them
oxidized with age, so that you could hardly see the poor penny articles
exhibited within, and forming part of a stock which a strong man could
have carried, Jude had his outer being for some long tideless time. But
his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.

Through the solid barrier of cold cretaceous upland to the northward he
was always beholding a gorgeous city—the fancied place he had likened
to the new Jerusalem, though there was perhaps more of the painter’s
imagination and less of the diamond merchant’s in his dreams thereof
than in those of the Apocalyptic writer. And the city acquired a
tangibility, a permanence, a hold on his life, mainly from the one
nucleus of fact that the man for whose knowledge and purposes he had so
much reverence was actually living there; not only so, but living among
the more thoughtful and mentally shining ones therein.

In sad wet seasons, though he knew it must rain at Christminster too,
he could hardly believe that it rained so drearily there. Whenever he
could get away from the confines of the hamlet for an hour or two,
which was not often, he would steal off to the Brown House on the hill
and strain his eyes persistently; sometimes to be rewarded by the sight
of a dome or spire, at other times by a little smoke, which in his
estimate had some of the mysticism of incense.

Then the day came when it suddenly occurred to him that if he ascended
to the point of view after dark, or possibly went a mile or two
further, he would see the night lights of the city. It would be
necessary to come back alone, but even that consideration did not deter
him, for he could throw a little manliness into his mood, no doubt.

The project was duly executed. It was not late when he arrived at the
place of outlook, only just after dusk, but a black north-east sky,
accompanied by a wind from the same quarter, made the occasion dark
enough. He was rewarded; but what he saw was not the lamps in rows, as
he had half expected. No individual light was visible, only a halo or
glow-fog over-arching the place against the black heavens behind it,
making the light and the city seem distant but a mile or so.

He set himself to wonder on the exact point in the glow where the
schoolmaster might be—he who never communicated with anybody at
Marygreen now; who was as if dead to them here. In the glow he seemed
to see Phillotson promenading at ease, like one of the forms in
Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace.

He had heard that breezes travelled at the rate of ten miles an hour,
and the fact now came into his mind. He parted his lips as he faced the
north-east, and drew in the wind as if it were a sweet liquor.

“You,” he said, addressing the breeze caressingly “were in
Christminster city between one and two hours ago, floating along the
streets, pulling round the weather-cocks, touching Mr. Phillotson’s
face, being breathed by him; and now you are here, breathed by me—you,
the very same.”

Suddenly there came along this wind something towards him—a message
from the place—from some soul residing there, it seemed. Surely it was
the sound of bells, the voice of the city, faint and musical, calling
to him, “We are happy here!”

He had become entirely lost to his bodily situation during this mental
leap, and only got back to it by a rough recalling. A few yards below
the brow of the hill on which he paused a team of horses made its
appearance, having reached the place by dint of half an hour’s
serpentine progress from the bottom of the immense declivity. They had
a load of coals behind them—a fuel that could only be got into the
upland by this particular route. They were accompanied by a carter, a
second man, and a boy, who now kicked a large stone behind one of the
wheels, and allowed the panting animals to have a long rest, while
those in charge took a flagon off the load and indulged in a drink
round.

They were elderly men, and had genial voices. Jude addressed them,
inquiring if they had come from Christminster.

“Heaven forbid, with this load!” said they.

“The place I mean is that one yonder.” He was getting so romantically
attached to Christminster that, like a young lover alluding to his
mistress, he felt bashful at mentioning its name again. He pointed to
the light in the sky—hardly perceptible to their older eyes.

“Yes. There do seem a spot a bit brighter in the nor’-east than
elsewhere, though I shouldn’t ha’ noticed it myself, and no doubt it
med be Christminster.”

Here a little book of tales which Jude had tucked up under his arm,
having brought them to read on his way hither before it grew dark,
slipped and fell into the road. The carter eyed him while he picked it
up and straightened the leaves.

“Ah, young man,” he observed, “you’d have to get your head screwed on
t’other way before you could read what they read there.”

“Why?” asked the boy.

“Oh, they never look at anything that folks like we can understand,”
the carter continued, by way of passing the time. “On’y foreign tongues
used in the days of the Tower of Babel, when no two families spoke
alike. They read that sort of thing as fast as a night-hawk will whir.
’Tis all learning there—nothing but learning, except religion. And
that’s learning too, for I never could understand it. Yes, ’tis a
serious-minded place. Not but there’s wenches in the streets o’ nights…
You know, I suppose, that they raise pa’sons there like radishes in a
bed? And though it do take—how many years, Bob?—five years to turn a
lirruping hobble-de-hoy chap into a solemn preaching man with no
corrupt passions, they’ll do it, if it can be done, and polish un off
like the workmen they be, and turn un out wi’ a long face, and a long
black coat and waistcoat, and a religious collar and hat, same as they
used to wear in the Scriptures, so that his own mother wouldn’t know un
sometimes. … There, ’tis their business, like anybody else’s.”

“But how should you know”

“Now don’t you interrupt, my boy. Never interrupt your senyers. Move
the fore hoss aside, Bobby; here’s som’at coming… You must mind that I
be a-talking of the college life. ’Em lives on a lofty level; there’s
no gainsaying it, though I myself med not think much of ’em. As we be
here in our bodies on this high ground, so be they in their
minds—noble-minded men enough, no doubt—some on ’em—able to earn
hundreds by thinking out loud. And some on ’em be strong young fellows
that can earn a’most as much in silver cups. As for music, there’s
beautiful music everywhere in Christminster. You med be religious, or
you med not, but you can’t help striking in your homely note with the
rest. And there’s a street in the place—the main street—that ha’n’t
another like it in the world. I should think I did know a little about
Christminster!”

By this time the horses had recovered breath and bent to their collars
again. Jude, throwing a last adoring look at the distant halo, turned
and walked beside his remarkably well-informed friend, who had no
objection to telling him as they moved on more yet of the city—its
towers and halls and churches. The waggon turned into a cross-road,
whereupon Jude thanked the carter warmly for his information, and said
he only wished he could talk half as well about Christminster as he.

“Well, ’tis oonly what has come in my way,” said the carter
unboastfully. “I’ve never been there, no more than you; but I’ve picked
up the knowledge here and there, and you be welcome to it. A-getting
about the world as I do, and mixing with all classes of society, one
can’t help hearing of things. A friend o’ mine, that used to clane the
boots at the Crozier Hotel in Christminster when he was in his prime,
why, I knowed un as well as my own brother in his later years.”

Jude continued his walk homeward alone, pondering so deeply that he
forgot to feel timid. He suddenly grew older. It had been the yearning
of his heart to find something to anchor on, to cling to—for some place
which he could call admirable. Should he find that place in this city
if he could get there? Would it be a spot in which, without fear of
farmers, or hindrance, or ridicule, he could watch and wait, and set
himself to some mighty undertaking like the men of old of whom he had
heard? As the halo had been to his eyes when gazing at it a quarter of
an hour earlier, so was the spot mentally to him as he pursued his dark
way.

“It is a city of light,” he said to himself.

“The tree of knowledge grows there,” he added a few steps further on.

“It is a place that teachers of men spring from and go to.”

“It is what you may call a castle, manned by scholarship and religion.”

After this figure he was silent a long while, till he added:

“It would just suit me.”