Jude the Obscure Read online

  VI

  At this memorable date of his life he was, one Saturday, returningfrom Alfredston to Marygreen about three o'clock in the afternoon.It was fine, warm, and soft summer weather, and he walked with histools at his back, his little chisels clinking faintly against thelarger ones in his basket. It being the end of the week he had leftwork early, and had come out of the town by a round-about route whichhe did not usually frequent, having promised to call at a flour-millnear Cresscombe to execute a commission for his aunt.

  He was in an enthusiastic mood. He seemed to see his way to livingcomfortably in Christminster in the course of a year or two, andknocking at the doors of one of those strongholds of learning ofwhich he had dreamed so much. He might, of course, have gone therenow, in some capacity or other, but he preferred to enter the citywith a little more assurance as to means than he could be said tofeel at present. A warm self-content suffused him when he consideredwhat he had already done. Now and then as he went along he turnedto face the peeps of country on either side of him. But he hardlysaw them; the act was an automatic repetition of what he had beenaccustomed to do when less occupied; and the one matter which reallyengaged him was the mental estimate of his progress thus far.

  "I have acquired quite an average student's power to read thecommon ancient classics, Latin in particular." This was true,Jude possessing a facility in that language which enabled him withgreat ease to himself to beguile his lonely walks by imaginaryconversations therein.

  "I have read two books of the _Iliad_, besides being pretty familiarwith passages such as the speech of Phoenix in the ninth book,the fight of Hector and Ajax in the fourteenth, the appearance ofAchilles unarmed and his heavenly armour in the eighteenth, and thefuneral games in the twenty-third. I have also done some Hesiod, alittle scrap of Thucydides, and a lot of the Greek Testament... Iwish there was only one dialect all the same.

  "I have done some mathematics, including the first six and theeleventh and twelfth books of Euclid; and algebra as far as simpleequations.

  "I know something of the Fathers, and something of Roman and Englishhistory.

  "These things are only a beginning. But I shall not make muchfarther advance here, from the difficulty of getting books. Hence Imust next concentrate all my energies on settling in Christminster.Once there I shall so advance, with the assistance I shall thereget, that my present knowledge will appear to me but as childishignorance. I must save money, and I will; and one of those collegesshall 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 abishop by leading a pure, energetic, wise, Christian life. And whatan example he would set! If his income were L5000 a year, he wouldgive away L4500 in one form and another, and live sumptuously (forhim) on the remainder. Well, on second thoughts, a bishop wasabsurd. He would draw the line at an archdeacon. Perhaps a mancould be as good and as learned and as useful in the capacity ofarchdeacon 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, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes--"

  "Ha, ha, ha! Hoity-toity!" The sounds were expressed in lightvoices 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--Ionly know the letters as yet--"

  "Hoity-toity!"

  "--but I can work hard. I have staying power in abundance, thankGod! and it is that which tells.... Yes, Christminster shall be myAlma Mater; and I'll be her beloved son, in whom she shall be wellpleased."

  In his deep concentration on these transactions of the future Jude'swalk had slackened, and he was now standing quite still, lookingat the ground as though the future were thrown thereon by a magiclantern. On a sudden something smacked him sharply in the ear, andhe became aware that a soft cold substance had been flung at him, andhad fallen at his feet.

  A glance told him what it was--a piece of flesh, the characteristicpart of a barrow-pig, which the countrymen used for greasing theirboots, as it was useless for any other purpose. Pigs were ratherplentiful hereabout, being bred and fattened in large numbers incertain parts of North Wessex.

  On the other side of the hedge was a stream, whence, as he now forthe first time realized, had come the slight sounds of voices andlaughter that had mingled with his dreams. He mounted the bank andlooked over the fence. On the further side of the stream stood asmall homestead, having a garden and pig-sties attached; in front ofit, beside the brook, three young women were kneeling, with bucketsand platters beside them containing heaps of pigs' chitterlings,which they were washing in the running water. One or two pairs ofeyes slyly glanced up, and perceiving that his attention had at lastbeen attracted, and that he was watching them, they braced themselvesfor inspection by putting their mouths demurely into shape andrecommencing 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 theirwork, 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 exactlyhandsome, but capable of passing as such at a little distance,despite some coarseness of skin and fibre. She had a round andprominent bosom, full lips, perfect teeth, and the rich complexionof a Cochin hen's egg. She was a complete and substantial femaleanimal--no more, no less; and Jude was almost certain that to her wasattributable the enterprise of attracting his attention from dreamsof 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 eyesof the brown girl rested in his own when he had said the words, andthere was a momentary flash of intelligence, a dumb announcement ofaffinity _in posse_ between herself and him, which, so far as JudeFawley was concerned, had no sort of premeditation in it. She sawthat he had singled her out from the three, as a woman is singled outin such cases, for no reasoned purpose of further acquaintance, butin commonplace obedience to conjunctive orders from headquarters,unconsciously received by unfortunate men when the last intention oftheir 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 herfather's business had prompted her signal to him. He set down hisbasket of tools, picked up the scrap of offal, beat a pathway forhimself with his stick, and got over the hedge. They walked inparallel lines, one on each bank of the stream, towards the smallplank bridge. As the girl drew nearer to it, she gave without Judeperceiving it, an adroit little suck to the interior of each of hercheeks in succession, by which curious and original manoeuvre shebrought as by magic upon its smooth and rotund surface a perfectdimple, which she was able to retain there as long as she continuedto smile. This production of dimples at will was a not unknownoperation, which ma
ny attempted, but only a few succeeded inaccomplishing.

  They met in the middle of the plank, and Jude, tossing back hermissile, seemed to expect her to explain why she had audaciouslystopped him by this novel artillery instead of by hailing him.

  But she, slyly looking in another direction, swayed herself backwardsand 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 anythingthrown away. He makes that into dubbin." She nodded towards thefragment 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 asto 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 gostraight along the high-road."

  "My father is a pig-breeder, and these girls are helping me wash theinnerds for black-puddings and such like."

  They talked a little more and a little more, as they stood regardingeach other and leaning against the hand-rail of the bridge. Theunvoiced call of woman to man, which was uttered very distinctlyby Arabella's personality, held Jude to the spot against hisintention--almost against his will, and in a way new to hisexperience. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that till thismoment Jude had never looked at a woman to consider her as such, buthad vaguely regarded the sex as beings outside his life and purposes.He gazed from her eyes to her mouth, thence to her bosom, and to herfull round naked arms, wet, mottled with the chill of the water, andfirm as marble.

  "What a nice-looking girl you are!" he murmured, though the words hadnot been necessary to express his sense of her magnetism.

  "Ah, you should see me Sundays!" she said piquantly.

  "I don't suppose I could?" he answered

  "That's for you to think on. There's nobody after me just now,though there med be in a week or two." She had spoken this withouta smile, and the dimples disappeared.

  Jude felt himself drifting strangely, but could not help it. "Willyou let me?"

  "I don't mind."

  By this time she had managed to get back one dimple by turningher face aside for a moment and repeating the odd little suckingoperation before mentioned, Jude being still unconscious of more thana general impression of her appearance. "Next Sunday?" he hazarded."To-morrow, that is?"

  "Yes."

  "Shall I call?"

  "Yes."

  She brightened with a little glow of triumph, swept him almosttenderly with her eyes in turning, and retracing her steps down thebrookside grass rejoined her companions.

  Jude Fawley shouldered his tool-basket and resumed his lonely way,filled with an ardour at which he mentally stood at gaze. He hadjust inhaled a single breath from a new atmosphere, which hadevidently been hanging round him everywhere he went, for he knew nothow long, but had somehow been divided from his actual breathing asby a sheet of glass. The intentions as to reading, working, andlearning, which he had so precisely formulated only a few minutesearlier, were suffering a curious collapse into a corner, he knew nothow.

  "Well, it's only a bit of fun," he said to himself, faintly consciousthat to common sense there was something lacking, and still moreobviously something redundant in the nature of this girl who haddrawn him to her which made it necessary that he should assert meresportiveness on his part as his reason in seeking her--something inher quite antipathetic to that side of him which had been occupiedwith literary study and the magnificent Christminster dream. It hadbeen no vestal who chose THAT missile for opening her attack on him.He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short fleetingwhile, as by the light of a falling lamp one might momentarily see aninscription on a wall before being enshrouded in darkness. And thenthis passing discriminative power was withdrawn, and Jude was lost toall conditions of things in the advent of a fresh and wild pleasure,that of having found a new channel for emotional interest hithertounsuspected, though it had lain close beside him. He was to meetthis enkindling one of the other sex on the following Sunday.

  Meanwhile the girl had joined her companions, and she silentlyresumed her flicking and sousing of the chitterlings in the pellucidstream.

  "Catched un, my dear?" laconically asked the girl called Anny.

  "I don't know. I wish I had thrown something else than that!"regretfully murmured Arabella.

  "Lord! he's nobody, though you med think so. He used to drive oldDrusilla Fawley's bread-cart out at Marygreen, till he 'prenticedhimself at Alfredston. Since then he's been very stuck up, andalways reading. He wants to be a scholar, they say."

  "Oh, I don't care what he is, or anything about 'n. Don't you thinkit, my child!"

  "Oh, don't ye! You needn't try to deceive us! What did you staytalking to him for, if you didn't want un? Whether you do or whetheryou don't, he's as simple as a child. I could see it as you courtedon the bridge, when he looked at 'ee as if he had never seen a womanbefore in his born days. Well, he's to be had by any woman who canget him to care for her a bit, if she likes to set herself to catchhim the right way."