Jude the Obscure
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.”
IV
Walking somewhat slowly by reason of his concentration, the boy—an
ancient man in some phases of thought, much younger than his years in
others—was overtaken by a light-footed pedestrian, whom,
notwithstanding the gloom, he could perceive to be wearing an
extraordinarily tall hat, a swallow-tailed coat, and a watch-chain that
danced madly and threw around scintillations of sky-light as its owner
swung along upon a pair of thin legs and noiseless boots. Jude,
beginning to feel lonely, endeavoured to keep up with him.
“Well, my man! I’m in a hurry, so you’ll have to walk pretty fast if
you keep alongside of me. Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, I think. Physician Vilbert?”
“Ah—I’m known everywhere, I see! That comes of being a public
benefactor.”
Vilbert was an itinerant quack-doctor, well known to the rustic
population, and absolutely unknown to anybody else, as he, indeed, took
care to be, to avoid inconvenient investigations. Cottagers formed his
only patients, and his Wessex-wide repute was among them alone. His
position was humbler and his field more obscure than those of the
quacks with capital and an organized system of advertising. He was, in
fact, a survival. The distances he traversed on foot were enormous, and
extended nearly the whole length and breadth of Wessex. Jude had one
day seen him selling a pot of coloured lard to an old woman as a
certain cure for a bad leg, the woman arranging to pay a guinea, in
instalments of a shilling a fortnight, for the precious salve, which,
according to the physician, could only be obtained from a particular
animal which grazed on Mount Sinai, and was to be captured only at
great risk to life and limb. Jude, though he already had his doubts
about this gentleman’s medicines, felt him to be unquestionably a
travelled personage, and one who might be a trustworthy source of
information on matters not strictly professional.
“I s’pose you’ve been to Christminster, Physician?”
“I have—many times,” replied the long thin man. “That’s one of my
centres.”
“It’s a wonderful city for scholarship and religion?”
“You’d say so, my boy, if you’d seen it. Why, the very sons of the old
women who do the washing of the colleges can talk in Latin—not good
Latin, that I admit, as a critic: dog-Latin—cat-Latin, as we used to
call it in my undergraduate days.”
“And Greek?”
“Well—that’s more for the men who are in training for bishops, that
they may be able to read the New Testament in the original.”
“I want to learn Latin and Greek myself.”
“A lofty desire. You must get a grammar of each tongue.”
“I mean to go to Christminster some day.”
“Whenever you do, you say that Physician Vilbert is the only proprietor
of those celebrated pills that infallibly cure all disorders of the
alimentary system, as well as asthma and shortness of breath. Two and
threepence a box—specially licensed by the government stamp.”
“Can you get me the grammars if I promise to say it hereabout?”
“I’ll sell you mine with pleasure—those I used as a student.”
“Oh, thank you, sir!” said Jude gratefully, but in gasps, for the
amazing speed of the physician’s walk kept him in a dog-trot which was
giving him a stitch in the side.
“I think you’d better drop behind, my young man. Now I’ll tell you what
I’ll do. I’ll get you the grammars, and give you a first lesson, if
you’ll remember, at every house in the village, to recommend Physician
Vilbert’s golden ointment, life-drops, and female pills.”
“Where will you be with the grammars?”
“I shall be passing here this day fortnight at precisely this hour of
five-and-twenty minutes past seven. My movements are as truly timed as
those of the planets in their courses.”
“Here I’ll be to meet you,” said Jude.
“With orders for my medicines?”
“Yes, Physician.”
Jude then dropped behind, waited a few minutes to recover breath, and
went home with a consciousness of having struck a blow for
Christminster.
Through the intervening fortnight he ran about and smiled outwardly at
his inward thoughts, as if they were people meeting and nodding to
him—smiled with that singularly beautiful irradiation which is seen to
spread on young faces at the inception of some glorious idea, as if a
supernatural lamp were held inside their transparent natures, giving
rise to the flattering fancy that heaven lies about them then.
He honestly performed his promise to the man of many cures, in whom he
now sincerely believed, walking miles hither and thither among the
surrounding hamlets as the Physician’s agent in advance. On the evening
appointed he stood motionless on the plateau, at the place where he had
parted from Vilbert, and there awaited his approach. The road-physician
was fairly up to time; but, to the surprise of Jude on striking into
his pace, which the pedestrian did not diminish by a single unit of
force, the latter seemed hardly to recognize his young companion,
though with the lapse of the fortnight the evenings had grown light.
Jude thought it might perhaps be owing to his wearing another hat, and
he saluted the physician with dignity.
“Well, my boy?” said the latter abstractedly.
“I’ve come,” said Jude.
“You? who are you? Oh yes—to be sure! Got any orders, lad?”
“Yes.” And Jude told him the names and addresses of the cottagers who
were willing to test the virtues of the world-renowned pills and salve.
The quack mentally registered these with great care.
“And the Latin and Greek grammars?” Jude’s voice trembled with anxiety.
“What about them?”
“You were to bring me yours, that you used before you took your
degree.”
“Ah, yes, yes! Forgot all about it—all! So many lives depending on my
attention, you see, my man, that I can’t give so much thought as I
would like to other things.”
Jude controlled himself sufficiently long to make sure of the truth;
and he repeated, in a voice of dry misery, “You haven’t brought ’em!”
“No. But you must get me some more orders from sick people, and I’ll
bring the grammars next time.”
Jude dropped behind. He was an unsophisticated boy, but the gift of
sudden insight which is sometimes vouchsafed to children showed him all
at once what shoddy humanity the quack was made of. There was to be no
intellectual light from this source. The leaves dropped from his
imaginary crown of laurel; he turned to a gate, leant against it, and
cried bitterly.
The disappointment was followed by an interval of blankness. He might,
perhaps, have obtained grammars from Alfredston, but to do that
required money, and a knowledge of what books to order; and though
physically comfortable, he was in such absolute dependence as to be
without a farthing of his own.
At this date Mr. Phillotson sent for his pianoforte, and it gave Jude a
lead. Why should he not write to the schoolmaster, and ask him to be so
kind as to get him the grammars in Christminster? He might slip a