Jude the Obscure

n their arrival the station was lively with straw-hatted young men,
welcoming young girls who bore a remarkable family likeness to their
welcomers, and who were dressed up in the brightest and lightest of
raiment.

“The place seems gay,” said Sue. “Why—it is Remembrance Day!—Jude—how
sly of you—you came to-day on purpose!”

“Yes,” said Jude quietly, as he took charge of the small child, and
told Arabella’s boy to keep close to them, Sue attending to their own
eldest. “I thought we might as well come to-day as on any other.”

“But I am afraid it will depress you!” she said, looking anxiously at
him up and down.

“Oh, I mustn’t let it interfere with our business; and we have a good
deal to do before we shall be settled here. The first thing is
lodgings.”

Having left their luggage and his tools at the station they proceeded
on foot up the familiar street, the holiday people all drifting in the
same direction. Reaching the Fourways they were about to turn off to
where accommodation was likely to be found when, looking at the clock
and the hurrying crowd, Jude said: “Let us go and see the procession,
and never mind the lodgings just now. We can get them afterwards.”

“Oughtn’t we to get a house over our heads first?” she asked.

But his soul seemed full of the anniversary, and together they went
down Chief Street, their smallest child in Jude’s arms, Sue leading her
little girl, and Arabella’s boy walking thoughtfully and silently
beside them. Crowds of pretty sisters in airy costumes, and meekly
ignorant parents who had known no college in their youth, were under
convoy in the same direction by brothers and sons bearing the opinion
written large on them that no properly qualified human beings had lived
on earth till they came to grace it here and now.

“My failure is reflected on me by every one of those young fellows,”
said Jude. “A lesson on presumption is awaiting me to-day!—Humiliation
Day for me! … If you, my dear darling, hadn’t come to my rescue, I
should have gone to the dogs with despair!”

She saw from his face that he was getting into one of his tempestuous,
self-harrowing moods. “It would have been better if we had gone at once
about our own affairs, dear,” she answered. “I am sure this sight will
awaken old sorrows in you, and do no good!”

“Well—we are near; we will see it now,” said he.

They turned in on the left by the church with the Italian porch, whose
helical columns were heavily draped with creepers, and pursued the lane
till there arose on Jude’s sight the circular theatre with that
well-known lantern above it, which stood in his mind as the sad symbol
of his abandoned hopes, for it was from that outlook that he had
finally surveyed the City of Colleges on the afternoon of his great
meditation, which convinced him at last of the futility of his attempt
to be a son of the university.

To-day, in the open space stretching between this building and the
nearest college, stood a crowd of expectant people. A passage was kept
clear through their midst by two barriers of timber, extending from the
door of the college to the door of the large building between it and
the theatre.

“Here is the place—they are just going to pass!” cried Jude in sudden
excitement. And pushing his way to the front he took up a position
close to the barrier, still hugging the youngest child in his arms,
while Sue and the others kept immediately behind him. The crowd filled
in at their back, and fell to talking, joking, and laughing as carriage
after carriage drew up at the lower door of the college, and solemn
stately figures in blood-red robes began to alight. The sky had grown
overcast and livid, and thunder rumbled now and then.

Father Time shuddered. “It do seem like the Judgment Day!” he
whispered.

“They are only learned Doctors,” said Sue.

While they waited big drops of rain fell on their heads and shoulders,
and the delay grew tedious. Sue again wished not to stay.

“They won’t be long now,” said Jude, without turning his head.

But the procession did not come forth, and somebody in the crowd, to
pass the time, looked at the façade of the nearest college, and said he
wondered what was meant by the Latin inscription in its midst. Jude,
who stood near the inquirer, explained it, and finding that the people
all round him were listening with interest, went on to describe the
carving of the frieze (which he had studied years before), and to
criticize some details of masonry in other college fronts about the
city.

The idle crowd, including the two policemen at the doors, stared like
the Lycaonians at Paul, for Jude was apt to get too enthusiastic over
any subject in hand, and they seemed to wonder how the stranger should
know more about the buildings of their town than they themselves did;
till one of them said: “Why, I know that man; he used to work here
years ago—Jude Fawley, that’s his name! Don’t you mind he used to be
nicknamed Tutor of St. Slums, d’ye mind?—because he aimed at that line
o’ business? He’s married, I suppose, then, and that’s his child he’s
carrying. Taylor would know him, as he knows everybody.”

The speaker was a man named Jack Stagg, with whom Jude had formerly
worked in repairing the college masonries; Tinker Taylor was seen to be
standing near. Having his attention called the latter cried across the
barriers to Jude: “You’ve honoured us by coming back again, my friend!”

Jude nodded.

“An’ you don’t seem to have done any great things for yourself by going
away?”

Jude assented to this also.

“Except found more mouths to fill!” This came in a new voice, and Jude
recognized its owner to be Uncle Joe, another mason whom he had known.

Jude replied good-humouredly that he could not dispute it; and from
remark to remark something like a general conversation arose between
him and the crowd of idlers, during which Tinker Taylor asked Jude if
he remembered the Apostles’ Creed in Latin still, and the night of the
challenge in the public house.

“But Fortune didn’t lie that way?” threw in Joe. “Yer powers wasn’t
enough to carry ’ee through?”

“Don’t answer them any more!” entreated Sue.

“I don’t think I like Christminster!” murmured little Time mournfully,
as he stood submerged and invisible in the crowd.

But finding himself the centre of curiosity, quizzing, and comment,
Jude was not inclined to shrink from open declarations of what he had
no great reason to be ashamed of; and in a little while was stimulated
to say in a loud voice to the listening throng generally:

“It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man—that
question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the
present moment in these uprising times—whether to follow uncritically
the track he finds himself in, without considering his aptness for it,
or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and re-shape his course
accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I don’t admit
that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success
would have made it a right one; though that’s how we appraise such
attempts nowadays—I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by
their accidental outcomes. If I had ended by becoming like one of these
gentlemen in red and black that we saw dropping in here by now,
everybody would have said: ‘See how wise that young man was, to follow
the bent of his nature!’ But having ended no better than I began they
say: ‘See what a fool that fellow was in following a freak of his
fancy!’

“However it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be beaten.
It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in one; and
my impulses—affections—vices perhaps they should be called—were too
strong not to hamper a man without advantages; who should be as
cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a really good
chance of being one of his country’s worthies. You may ridicule me—I am
quite willing that you should—I am a fit subject, no doubt. But I think
if you knew what I have gone through these last few years you would
rather pity me. And if they knew”—he nodded towards the college at
which the dons were severally arriving—“it is just possible they would
do the same.”

“He do look ill and worn-out, it is true!” said a woman.

Sue’s face grew more emotional; but though she stood close to Jude she
was screened.

“I may do some good before I am dead—be a sort of success as a
frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story,”
continued Jude, beginning to grow bitter, though he had opened serenely
enough. “I was, perhaps, after all, a paltry victim to the spirit of
mental and social restlessness that makes so many unhappy in these
days!”

“Don’t tell them that!” whispered Sue with tears, at perceiving Jude’s
state of mind. “You weren’t that. You struggled nobly to acquire
knowledge, and only the meanest souls in the world would blame you!”

Jude shifted the child into a more easy position on his arm, and
concluded: “And what I appear, a sick and poor man, is not the worst of
me. I am in a chaos of principles—groping in the dark—acting by
instinct and not after example. Eight or nine years ago when I came
here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away
one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have
anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations
which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to
those I love best. There, gentlemen, since you wanted to know how I was
getting on, I have told you. Much good may it do you! I cannot explain
further here. I perceive there is something wrong somewhere in our
social formulas: what it is can only be discovered by men or women with
greater insight than mine—if, indeed, they ever discover it—at least in
our time. ‘For who knoweth what is good for man in this life?—and who
can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?’”

“Hear, hear,” said the populace.

“Well preached!” said Tinker Taylor. And privately to his neighbours:
“Why, one of them jobbing pa’sons swarming about here, that takes the
services when our head reverends want a holiday, wouldn’t ha’
discoursed such doctrine for less than a guinea down. Hey? I’ll take my
oath not one o’ ’em would! And then he must have had it wrote down for
’n. And this only a working-man!”

As a sort of objective commentary on Jude’s remarks there drove up at
this moment with a belated Doctor, robed and panting, a cab whose horse
failed to stop at the exact point required for setting down the hirer,
who jumped out and entered the door. The driver, alighting, began to
kick the animal in the belly.

“If that can be done,” said Jude, “at college gates in the most
religious and educational city in the world, what shall we say as to
how far we’ve got?”

“Order!” said one of the policemen, who had been engaged with a comrade
in opening the large doors opposite the college. “Keep yer tongue
quiet, my man, while the procession passes.” The rain came on more
heavily, and all who had umbrellas opened them. Jude was not one of
these, and Sue only possessed a small one, half sunshade. She had grown
pale, though Jude did not notice it then.

“Let us go on, dear,” she whispered, endeavouring to shelter him. “We
haven’t any lodgings yet, remember, and all our things are at the
station; and you are by no means well yet. I am afraid this wet will
hurt you!”

“They are coming now. Just a moment, and I’ll go!” said he.

A peal of six bells struck out, human faces began to crowd the windows
around, and the procession of heads of houses and new Doctors emerged,
their red and black gowned forms passing across the field of Jude’s
vision like inaccessible planets across an object-glass.

As they went their names were called by knowing informants, and when
they reached the old round theatre of Wren a cheer rose high.

“Let’s go that way!” cried Jude, and though it now rained steadily he
seemed not to know it, and took them round to the theatre. Here they
stood upon the straw that was laid to drown the discordant noise of
wheels, where the quaint and frost-eaten stone busts encircling the
building looked with pallid grimness on the proceedings, and in
particular at the bedraggled Jude, Sue, and their children, as at
ludicrous persons who had no business there.

“I wish I could get in!” he said to her fervidly. “Listen—I may catch a
few words of the Latin speech by staying here; the windows are open.”

However, beyond the peals of the organ, and the shouts and hurrahs
between each piece of oratory, Jude’s standing in the wet did not bring
much Latin to his intelligence more than, now and then, a sonorous word
in um or ibus.

“Well—I’m an outsider to the end of my days!” he sighed after a while.
“Now I’ll go, my patient Sue. How good of you to wait in the rain all
this time—to gratify my infatuation! I’ll never care any more about the
infernal cursed place, upon my soul I won’t! But what made you tremble
so when we were at the barrier? And how pale you are, Sue!”

“I saw Richard amongst the people on the other side.”

“Ah—did you!”

“He is evidently come up to Jerusalem to see the festival like the rest
of us: and on that account is probably living not so very far away. He
had the same hankering for the university that you had, in a milder
form. I don’t think he saw me, though he must have heard you speaking
to the crowd. But he seemed not to notice.”

“Well—suppose he did. Your mind is free from worries about him now, my
Sue?”

“Yes, I suppose so. But I am weak. Although I know it is all right with
our plans, I felt a curious dread of him; an awe, or terror, of
conventions I don’t believe in. It comes over me at times like a sort
of creeping paralysis, and makes me so sad!”

“You are getting tired, Sue. Oh—I forgot, darling! Yes, we’ll go on at
once.”

They started in quest of the lodging, and at last found something that
seemed to promise well, in Mildew Lane—a spot which to Jude was
irresistible—though to Sue it was not so fascinating—a narrow lane
close to the back of a college, but having no communication with it.
The little houses were darkened to gloom by the high collegiate
buildings, within which life was so far removed from that of the people
in the lane as if it had been on opposite sides of the globe; yet only
a thickness of wall divided them. Two or three of the houses had
notices of rooms to let, and the newcomers knocked at the door of one,
which a woman opened.

“Ah—listen!” said Jude suddenly, instead of addressing her.

“What?”

“Why the bells—what church can that be? The tones are familiar.”

Another peal of bells had begun to sound out at some distance off.

“I don’t know!” said the landlady tartly. “Did you knock to ask that?”

“No; for lodgings,” said Jude, coming to himself.

The householder scrutinized Sue’s figure a moment. “We haven’t any to
let,” said she, shutting the door.

Jude looked discomfited, and the boy distressed. “Now, Jude,” said Sue,
“let me try. You don’t know the way.”

They found a second place hard by; but here the occupier, observing not
only Sue, but the boy and the small children, said civilly, “I am sorry
to say we don’t let where there are children”; and also closed the
door.

The small child squared its mouth and cried silently, with an instinct
that trouble loomed. The boy sighed. “I don’t like Christminster!” he
said. “Are the great old houses gaols?”

“No; colleges,” said Jude; “which perhaps you’ll study in some day.”

“I’d rather not!” the boy rejoined.

“Now we’ll try again,” said Sue. “I’ll pull my cloak more round me…
Leaving Kennetbridge for this place is like coming from Caiaphas to
Pilate! … How do I look now, dear?”

“Nobody would notice it now,” said Jude.

There was one other house, and they tried a third time. The woman here
was more amiable; but she had little room to spare, and could only
agree to take in Sue and the children if her husband could go
elsewhere. This arrangement they perforce adopted, in the stress from
delaying their search till so late. They came to terms with her, though
her price was rather high for their pockets. But they could not afford
to be critical till Jude had time to get a more permanent abode; and in
this house Sue took possession of a back room on the second floor with
an inner closet-room for the children. Jude stayed and had a cup of
tea; and was pleased to find that the window commanded the back of
another of the colleges. Kissing all four he went to get a few
necessaries and look for lodgings for himself.

When he was gone the landlady came up to talk a little with Sue, and
gather something of the circumstances of the family she had taken in.
Sue had not the art of prevarication, and, after admitting several
facts as to their late difficulties and wanderings, she was startled by
the landlady saying suddenly:

“Are you really a married woman?”

Sue hesitated; and then impulsively told the woman that her husband and
herself had each been unhappy in their first marriages, after which,
terrified at the thought of a second irrevocable union, and lest the
conditions of the contract should kill their love, yet wishing to be
together, they had literally not found the courage to repeat it, though
they had attempted it two or three times. Therefore, though in her own
sense of the words she was a married woman, in the landlady’s sense she
was not.

The housewife looked embarrassed, and went downstairs. Sue sat by the
window in a reverie, watching the rain. Her quiet was broken by the
noise of someone entering the house, and then the voices of a man and
woman in conversation in the passage below. The landlady’s husband had
arrived, and she was explaining to him the incoming of the lodgers
during his absence.

His voice rose in sudden anger. “Now who wants such a woman here? and
perhaps a confinement! … Besides, didn’t I say I wouldn’t have
children? The hall and stairs fresh painted, to be kicked about by
them! You must have known all was not straight with ’em—coming like
that. Taking in a family when I said a single man.”

The wife expostulated, but, as it seemed, the husband insisted on his
point; for presently a tap came to Sue’s door, and the woman appeared.

“I am sorry to tell you, ma’am,” she said, “that I can’t let you have
the room for the week after all. My husband objects; and therefore I
must ask you to go. I don’t mind your staying over to-night, as it is
getting late in the afternoon; but I shall be glad if you can leave
early in the morning.”

Though she knew that she was entitled to the lodging for a week, Sue
did not wish to create a disturbance between the wife and husband, and
she said she would leave as requested. When the landlady had gone Sue
looked out of the window again. Finding that the rain had ceased she
proposed to the boy that, after putting the little ones to bed, they
should go out and search about for another place, and bespeak it for
the morrow, so as not to be so hard-driven then as they had been that
day.

Therefore, instead of unpacking her boxes, which had just been sent on
from the station by Jude, they sallied out into the damp though not
unpleasant streets, Sue resolving not to disturb her husband with the
news of her notice to quit while he was perhaps worried in obtaining a
lodging for himself. In the company of the boy she wandered into this
street and into that; but though she tried a dozen different houses she
fared far worse alone than she had fared in Jude’s company, and could
get nobody to promise her a room for the following day. Every
householder looked askance at such a woman and child inquiring for
accommodation in the gloom.

“I ought not to be born, ought I?” said the boy with misgiving.

Thoroughly tired at last Sue returned to the place where she was not
welcome, but where at least she had temporary shelter. In her absence
Jude had left his address; but knowing how weak he still was she
adhered to her determination not to disturb him till the next day.