Jude the Obscure Page 6

  V

  During the three or four succeeding years a quaint and singularvehicle might have been discerned moving along the lanes and by-roadsnear Marygreen, driven in a quaint and singular way.

  In the course of a month or two after the receipt of the booksJude had grown callous to the shabby trick played him by the deadlanguages. In fact, his disappointment at the nature of thosetongues had, after a while, been the means of still furtherglorifying the erudition of Christminster. To acquire languages,departed or living in spite of such obstinacies as he now knew theminherently to possess, was a herculean performance which graduallyled him on to a greater interest in it than in the presupposed patentprocess. The mountain-weight of material under which the ideas layin those dusty volumes called the classics piqued him into a dogged,mouselike subtlety of attempt to move it piecemeal.

  He had endeavoured to make his presence tolerable to his crustymaiden aunt by assisting her to the best of his ability, and thebusiness of the little cottage bakery had grown in consequence. Anaged horse with a hanging head had been purchased for eight pounds ata sale, a creaking cart with a whity-brown tilt obtained for a fewpounds more, and in this turn-out it became Jude's business thrice aweek to carry loaves of bread to the villagers and solitary cottersimmediately round Marygreen.

  The singularity aforesaid lay, after all, less in the conveyanceitself than in Jude's manner of conducting it along its route.Its interior was the scene of most of Jude's education by "privatestudy." As soon as the horse had learnt the road and the housesat which he was to pause awhile, the boy, seated in front, wouldslip the reins over his arm, ingeniously fix open, by means of astrap attached to the tilt, the volume he was reading, spread thedictionary on his knees, and plunge into the simpler passages fromCaesar, Virgil, or Horace, as the case might be, in his purblindstumbling way, and with an expenditure of labour that would have madea tender-hearted pedagogue shed tears; yet somehow getting at themeaning of what he read, and divining rather than beholding thespirit of the original, which often to his mind was something elsethan that which he was taught to look for.

  The only copies he had been able to lay hands on were old Delphineditions, because they were superseded, and therefore cheap. But,bad for idle schoolboys, it did so happen that they were passablygood for him. The hampered and lonely itinerant conscientiouslycovered up the marginal readings, and used them merely on points ofconstruction, as he would have used a comrade or tutor who shouldhave happened to be passing by. And though Jude may have had littlechance of becoming a scholar by these rough and ready means, he wasin the way of getting into the groove he wished to follow.

  While he was busied with these ancient pages, which had already beenthumbed by hands possibly in the grave, digging out the thoughtsof these minds so remote yet so near, the bony old horse pursuedhis rounds, and Jude would be aroused from the woes of Dido by thestoppage of his cart and the voice of some old woman crying, "Twoto-day, baker, and I return this stale one."

  He was frequently met in the lanes by pedestrians and others withouthis seeing them, and by degrees the people of the neighbourhoodbegan to talk about his method of combining work and play (such theyconsidered his reading to be), which, though probably convenientenough to himself, was not altogether a safe proceeding for othertravellers along the same roads. There were murmurs. Then a privateresident of an adjoining place informed the local policeman that thebaker's boy should not be allowed to read while driving, and insistedthat it was the constable's duty to catch him in the act, andtake him to the police court at Alfredston, and get him fined fordangerous practices on the highway. The policeman thereupon lay inwait for Jude, and one day accosted him and cautioned him.

  As Jude had to get up at three o'clock in the morning to heat theoven, and mix and set in the bread that he distributed later in theday, he was obliged to go to bed at night immediately after layingthe sponge; so that if he could not read his classics on the highwayshe could hardly study at all. The only thing to be done was,therefore, to keep a sharp eye ahead and around him as well as hecould in the circumstances, and slip away his books as soon asanybody loomed in the distance, the policeman in particular. To dothat official justice, he did not put himself much in the way ofJude's bread-cart, considering that in such a lonely district thechief danger was to Jude himself, and often on seeing the white tiltover the hedges he would move in another direction.

  On a day when Fawley was getting quite advanced, being now aboutsixteen, and had been stumbling through the "Carmen Saeculare," onhis way home, he found himself to be passing over the high edge ofthe plateau by the Brown House. The light had changed, and it wasthe sense of this which had caused him to look up. The sun was goingdown, and the full moon was rising simultaneously behind the woods inthe opposite quarter. His mind had become so impregnated with thepoem that, in a moment of the same impulsive emotion which yearsbefore had caused him to kneel on the ladder, he stopped the horse,alighted, and glancing round to see that nobody was in sight, kneltdown on the roadside bank with open book. He turned first to theshiny goddess, who seemed to look so softly and critically at hisdoings, then to the disappearing luminary on the other hand, as hebegan:

  "Phoebe silvarumque potens Diana!"

  The horse stood still till he had finished the hymn, which Juderepeated under the sway of a polytheistic fancy that he would neverhave thought of humouring in broad daylight.

  Reaching home, he mused over his curious superstition, innate oracquired, in doing this, and the strange forgetfulness which had ledto such a lapse from common sense and custom in one who wished, nextto being a scholar, to be a Christian divine. It had all come ofreading heathen works exclusively. The more he thought of it themore convinced he was of his inconsistency. He began to wonderwhether he could be reading quite the right books for his objectin life. Certainly there seemed little harmony between this paganliterature and the mediaeval colleges at Christminster, thatecclesiastical romance in stone.

  Ultimately he decided that in his sheer love of reading he had takenup a wrong emotion for a Christian young man. He had dabbled inClarke's Homer, but had never yet worked much at the New Testamentin the Greek, though he possessed a copy, obtained by post from asecond-hand bookseller. He abandoned the now familiar Ionic for anew dialect, and for a long time onward limited his reading almostentirely to the Gospels and Epistles in Griesbach's text. Moreover,on going into Alfredston one day, he was introduced to patristicliterature by finding at the bookseller's some volumes of theFathers which had been left behind by an insolvent clergyman of theneighbourhood.

  As another outcome of this change of groove he visited on Sundays allthe churches within a walk, and deciphered the Latin inscriptions onfifteenth-century brasses and tombs. On one of these pilgrimages hemet with a hunch-backed old woman of great intelligence, who readeverything she could lay her hands on, and she told him more yetof the romantic charms of the city of light and lore. Thither heresolved as firmly as ever to go.

  But how live in that city? At present he had no income at all. Hehad no trade or calling of any dignity or stability whatever on whichhe could subsist while carrying out an intellectual labour whichmight spread over many years.

  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 thethird requisite he inclined to. They built in a city; therefore hewould learn to build. He thought of his unknown uncle, his cousinSusanna's father, an ecclesiastical worker in metal, and somehowmediaeval art in any material was a trade for which he had rather afancy. He could not go far wrong in following his uncle's footsteps,and engaging himself awhile with the carcases that contained thescholar souls.

  As a preliminary he obtained some small blocks of freestone, metalnot being available, and suspending his studies awhile, occupied hisspare half-hours in copying the heads and capitals in his parishchurch.

  There was a ston
e-mason of a humble kind in Alfredston, and assoon as he had found a substitute for himself in his aunt's littlebusiness, he offered his services to this man for a trifling wage.Here Jude had the opportunity of learning at least the rudiments offreestone-working. Some time later he went to a church-builder inthe same place, and under the architect's direction became handy atrestoring the dilapidated masonries of several village churches roundabout.

  Not forgetting that he was only following up this handicraft asa prop to lean on while he prepared those greater engines whichhe flattered himself would be better fitted for him, he yet wasinterested in his pursuit on its own account. He now had lodgingsduring the week in the little town, whence he returned to Marygreenvillage every Saturday evening. And thus he reached and passed hisnineteenth year.