Jude the Obscure
What was most required by citizens? Food, clothing, and shelter. An
income from any work in preparing the first would be too meagre; for
making the second he felt a distaste; the preparation of the third
requisite he inclined to. They built in a city; therefore he would
learn to build. He thought of his unknown uncle, his cousin Susanna’s
father, an ecclesiastical worker in metal, and somehow mediæval art in
any material was a trade for which he had rather a fancy. He could not
go far wrong in following his uncle’s footsteps, and engaging himself
awhile with the carcases that contained the scholar souls.
As a preliminary he obtained some small blocks of freestone, metal not
being available, and suspending his studies awhile, occupied his spare
half-hours in copying the heads and capitals in his parish church.
There was a stone-mason of a humble kind in Alfredston, and as soon as
he had found a substitute for himself in his aunt’s little business, he
offered his services to this man for a trifling wage. Here Jude had the
opportunity of learning at least the rudiments of freestone-working.
Some time later he went to a church-builder in the same place, and
under the architect’s direction became handy at restoring the
dilapidated masonries of several village churches round about.
Not forgetting that he was only following up this handicraft as a prop
to lean on while he prepared those greater engines which he flattered
himself would be better fitted for him, he yet was interested in his
pursuit on its own account. He now had lodgings during the week in the
little town, whence he returned to Marygreen village every Saturday
evening. And thus he reached and passed his nineteenth year.
VI
At this memorable date of his life he was, one Saturday, returning from
Alfredston to Marygreen about three o’clock in the afternoon. It was
fine, warm, and soft summer weather, and he walked with his tools at
his back, his little chisels clinking faintly against the larger ones
in his basket. It being the end of the week he had left work early, and
had come out of the town by a round-about route which he did not
usually frequent, having promised to call at a flour-mill near
Cresscombe to execute a commission for his aunt.
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 Phœnix 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, Æschylus, 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 manœuvre 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