Jude the Obscure
by
Thomas Hardy
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[2] Part First
[3]
[4] AT MARYGREEN
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8] "Yea, many there be that have run out of their wits for
[9] women, and become servants for their sakes. Many also
[10] have perished, have erred, and sinned, for women.... O
[11] ye men, how can it be but women should be strong, seeing
[12] they do thus?"--ESDRAS.
[13]
[14]
[15] I
[16]
[17]
[18] The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.
[19] The miller at Cresscombe lent him the small white tilted cart and
[20] horse to carry his goods to the city of his destination, about twenty
[21] miles off, such a vehicle proving of quite sufficient size for the
[22] departing teacher's effects. For the schoolhouse had been partly
[23] furnished by the managers, and the only cumbersome article possessed
[24] by the master, in addition to the packing-case of books, was a
[25] cottage piano that he had bought at an auction during the year in
[26] which he thought of learning instrumental music. But the enthusiasm
[27] having waned he had never acquired any skill in playing, and the
[28] purchased article had been a perpetual trouble to him ever since in
[29] moving house.
[30]
[31] The rector had gone away for the day, being a man who disliked the
[32] sight of changes. He did not mean to return till the evening, when
[33] the new school-teacher would have arrived and settled in, and
[34] everything would be smooth again.
[35]
[36] The blacksmith, the farm bailiff, and the schoolmaster himself were
[37] standing in perplexed attitudes in the parlour before the instrument.
[38] The master had remarked that even if he got it into the cart he
[39] should not know what to do with it on his arrival at Christminster,
[40] the city he was bound for, since he was only going into temporary
[41] lodgings just at first.
[42]
[43] A little boy of eleven, who had been thoughtfully assisting in the
[44] packing, joined the group of men, and as they rubbed their chins he
[45] spoke up, blushing at the sound of his own voice: "Aunt have got a
[46] great fuel-house, and it could be put there, perhaps, till you've
[47] found a place to settle in, sir."
[48]
[49] "A proper good notion," said the blacksmith.
[50]
[51] It was decided that a deputation should wait on the boy's aunt--an
[52] old maiden resident--and ask her if she would house the piano till
[53] Mr. Phillotson should send for it. The smith and the bailiff started
[54] to see about the practicability of the suggested shelter, and the boy
[55] and the schoolmaster were left standing alone.
[56]
[57] "Sorry I am going, Jude?" asked the latter kindly.
[58]
[59] Tears rose into the boy's eyes, for he was not among the regular day
[60] scholars, who came unromantically close to the schoolmaster's life,
[61] but one who had attended the night school only during the present
[62] teacher's term of office. The regular scholars, if the truth must
[63] be told, stood at the present moment afar off, like certain historic
[64] disciples, indisposed to any enthusiastic volunteering of aid.
[65]
[66] The boy awkwardly opened the book he held in his hand, which Mr.
[67] Phillotson had bestowed on him as a parting gift, and admitted that
[68] he was sorry.
[69]
[70] "So am I," said Mr. Phillotson.
[71]
[72] "Why do you go, sir?" asked the boy.
[73]
[74] "Ah--that would be a long story. You wouldn't understand my reasons,
[75] Jude. You will, perhaps, when you are older."
[76]
[77] "I think I should now, sir."
[78]
[79] "Well--don't speak of this everywhere. You know what a university
[80] is, and a university degree? It is the necessary hallmark of a man
[81] who wants to do anything in teaching. My scheme, or dream, is to be
[82] a university graduate, and then to be ordained. By going to live at
[83] Christminster, or near it, I shall be at headquarters, so to speak,
[84] and if my scheme is practicable at all, I consider that being on the
[85] spot will afford me a better chance of carrying it out than I should
[86] have elsewhere."
[87]
[88] The smith and his companion returned. Old Miss Fawley's fuel-house
[89] was dry, and eminently practicable; and she seemed willing to give
[90] the instrument standing-room there. It was accordingly left in
[91] the school till the evening, when more hands would be available for
[92] removing it; and the schoolmaster gave a final glance round.
[93]
[94] The boy Jude assisted in loading some small articles, and at nine
[95] o'clock Mr. Phillotson mounted beside his box of books and other
[96] _impedimenta_, and bade his friends good-bye.
[97]
[98] "I shan't forget you, Jude," he said, smiling, as the cart moved off.
[99] "Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read
[100] all you can. And if ever you come to Christminster remember you hunt
[101] me out for old acquaintance' sake."
[102]
[103] The cart creaked across the green, and disappeared round the corner
[104] by the rectory-house. The boy returned to the draw-well at the edge
[105] of the greensward, where he had left his buckets when he went to help
[106] his patron and teacher in the loading. There was a quiver in his lip
[107] now and after opening the well-cover to begin lowering the bucket he
[108] paused and leant with his forehead and arms against the framework,
[109] his face wearing the fixity of a thoughtful child's who has felt the
[110] pricks of life somewhat before his time. The well into which he was
[111] looking was as ancient as the village itself, and from his present
[112] position appeared as a long circular perspective ending in a shining
[113] disk of quivering water at a distance of a hundred feet down.
[114] There was a lining of green moss near the top, and nearer still the
[115] hart's-tongue fern.
[116]
[117] He said to himself, in the melodramatic tones of a whimsical boy,
[118] that the schoolmaster had drawn at that well scores of times on a
[119] morning like this, and would never draw there any more. "I've seen
[120] him look down into it, when he was tired with his drawing, just as I
[121] do now, and when he rested a bit before carrying the buckets home!
[122] But he was too clever to bide here any longer--a small sleepy place
[123] like this!"
[124]
[125] A tear rolled from his eye into the depths of the well. The morning
[126] was a little foggy, and the boy's breathing unfurled itself as
[127] a thicker fog upon the still and heavy air. His thoughts were
[128] interrupted by a sudden outcry:
[129]
[130] "Bring on that water, will ye, you idle young harlican!"
[131]
[132] It came from an old woman who had emerged from her door towards the
[133] garden gate of a green-thatched cottage not far off. The boy quickly
[134] waved a signal of assent, drew the water with what was a great effort
[135] for one of his stature, landed and emptied the big bucket into his
[136] own pair of smaller ones, and pausing a moment for breath, started
[137] with them across the patch of clammy greensward whereon the well
[138] stood--nearly in the centre of the little village, or rather hamlet
[139] of Marygreen.
[140]
[141] It was as old-fashioned as it was small, and it rested in the lap of
[142] an undulating upland adjoining the North Wessex downs. Old as it
[143] was, however, the well-shaft was probably the only relic of the local
[144] history that remained absolutely unchanged. Many of the thatched
[145] and dormered dwelling-houses had been pulled down of late years, and
[146] many trees felled on the green. Above all, the original church,
[147] hump-backed, wood-turreted, and quaintly hipped, had been taken
[148] down, and either cracked up into heaps of road-metal in the lane, or
[149] utilized as pig-sty walls, garden seats, guard-stones to fences, and
[150] rockeries in the flower-beds of the neighbourhood. In place of it
[151] a tall new building of modern Gothic design, unfamiliar to English
[152] eyes, had been erected on a new piece of ground by a certain
[153] obliterator of historic records who had run down from London and back
[154] in a day. The site whereon so long had stood the ancient temple to
[155] the Christian divinities was not even recorded on the green and level
[156] grass-plot that had immemorially been the churchyard, the obliterated
[157] graves being commemorated by eighteen-penny cast-iron crosses
[158] warranted to last five years.
[159]
[160]
[161]
[162] II
[163]
[164]
[165] Slender as was Jude Fawley's frame he bore the two brimming
[166] house-buckets of water to the cottage without resting. Over the door
[167] was a little rectangular piece of blue board, on which was painted
[168] in yellow letters, "Drusilla Fawley, Baker." Within the little lead
[169] panes of the window--this being one of the few old houses left--were
[170] five bottles of sweets, and three buns on a plate of the willow
[171] pattern.
[172]
[173] While emptying the buckets at the back of the house he could hear an
[174] animated conversation in progress within-doors between his great-aunt,
[175] the Drusilla of the sign-board, and some other villagers. Having
[176] seen the school-master depart, they were summing up particulars of
[177] the event, and indulging in predictions of his future.
[178]
[179] "And who's he?" asked one, comparatively a stranger, when the boy
[180] entered.
[181]
[182] "Well ye med ask it, Mrs. Williams. He's my great-nephew--come since
[183] you was last this way." The old inhabitant who answered was a tall,
[184] gaunt woman, who spoke tragically on the most trivial subject, and
[185] gave a phrase of her conversation to each auditor in turn. "He come
[186] from Mellstock, down in South Wessex, about a year ago--worse luck
[187] for 'n, Belinda" (turning to the right) "where his father was living,
[188] and was took wi' the shakings for death, and died in two days, as you
[189] know, Caroline" (turning to the left). "It would ha' been a blessing
[190] if Goddy-mighty had took thee too, wi' thy mother and father, poor
[191] useless boy! But I've got him here to stay with me till I can see
[192] what's to be done with un, though I am obliged to let him earn any
[193] penny he can. Just now he's a-scaring of birds for Farmer Troutham.
[194] It keeps him out of mischty. Why do ye turn away, Jude?" she
[195] continued, as the boy, feeling the impact of their glances like slaps
[196] upon his face, moved aside.
[197]
[198] The local washerwoman replied that it was perhaps a very good plan of
[199] Miss or Mrs. Fawley's (as they called her indifferently) to have him
[200] with her--"to kip 'ee company in your loneliness, fetch water, shet
[201] the winder-shetters o' nights, and help in the bit o' baking."
[202]
[203] Miss Fawley doubted it.... "Why didn't ye get the schoolmaster to
[204] take 'ee to Christminster wi' un, and make a scholar of 'ee," she
[205] continued, in frowning pleasantry. "I'm sure he couldn't ha' took a
[206] better one. The boy is crazy for books, that he is. It runs in our
[207] family rather. His cousin Sue is just the same--so I've heard; but
[208] I have not seen the child for years, though she was born in this
[209] place, within these four walls, as it happened. My niece and her
[210] husband, after they were married, didn' get a house of their own for
[211] some year or more; and then they only had one till--Well, I won't go
[212] into that. Jude, my child, don't you ever marry. 'Tisn't for the
[213] Fawleys to take that step any more. She, their only one, was like
[214] a child o' my own, Belinda, till the split come! Ah, that a little
[215] maid should know such changes!"
[216]
[217] Jude, finding the general attention again centering on himself, went
[218] out to the bakehouse, where he ate the cake provided for his
[219] breakfast. The end of his spare time had now arrived, and emerging
[220] from the garden by getting over the hedge at the back he pursued a
[221] path northward, till he came to a wide and lonely depression in the
[222] general level of the upland, which was sown as a corn-field. This
[223] vast concave was the scene of his labours for Mr Troutham the farmer,
[224] and he descended into the midst of it.
[225]
[226] The brown surface of the field went right up towards the sky all
[227] round, where it was lost by degrees in the mist that shut out the
[228] actual verge and accentuated the solitude. The only marks on the
[229] uniformity of the scene were a rick of last year's produce standing
[230] in the midst of the arable, the rooks that rose at his approach, and
[231] the path athwart the fallow by which he had come, trodden now by he
[232] hardly knew whom, though once by many of his own dead family.
[233]
[234] "How ugly it is here!" he murmured.
[235]
[236] The fresh harrow-lines seemed to stretch like the channellings in
[237] a piece of new corduroy, lending a meanly utilitarian air to the
[238] expanse, taking away its gradations, and depriving it of all history
[239] beyond that of the few recent months, though to every clod and stone
[240] there really attached associations enough and to spare--echoes of
[241] songs from ancient harvest-days, of spoken words, and of sturdy
[242] deeds. Every inch of ground had been the site, first or last,
[243] of energy, gaiety, horse-play, bickerings, weariness. Groups of
[244] gleaners had squatted in the sun on every square yard. Love-matches
[245] that had populated the adjoining hamlet had been made up there
[246] between reaping and carrying. Under the hedge which divided the
[247] field from a distant plantation girls had given themselves to lovers
[248] who would not turn their heads to look at them by the next harvest;
[249] and in that ancient cornfield many a man had made love-promises to
[250] a woman at whose voice he had trembled by the next seed-time after
[251] fulfilling them in the church adjoining. But this neither Jude nor
[252] the rooks around him considered. For them it was a lonely place,
[253] possessing, in the one view, only the quality of a work-ground, and
[254] in the other that of a granary good to feed in.
[255]
[256] The boy stood under the rick before mentioned, and every few seconds
[257] used his clacker or rattle briskly. At each clack the rooks left off
[258] pecking, and rose and went away on their leisurely wings, burnished
[259] like tassets of mail, afterwards wheeling back and regarding him
[260] warily, and descending to feed at a more respectful distance.
[261]
[262] He sounded the clacker till his arm ached, and at length his heart
[263] grew sympathetic with the birds' thwarted desires. They seemed, like
[264] himself, to be living in a world which did not want them. Why should
[265] he frighten them away? They took upon more and more the aspect of
[266] gentle friends and pensioners--the only friends he could claim as
[267] being in the least degree interested in him, for his aunt had often
[268] told him that she was not. He ceased his rattling, and they alighted
[269] anew.
[270]
[271] "Poor little dears!" said Jude, aloud. "You SHALL have some dinner--
[272] you shall. There is enough for us all. Farmer Troutham can afford
[273] to let you have some. Eat, then my dear little birdies, and make a
[274] good meal!"
[275]
[276] They stayed and ate, inky spots on the nut-brown soil, and Jude
[277] enjoyed their appetite. A magic thread of fellow-feeling united his
[278] own life with theirs. Puny and sorry as those lives were, they much
[279] resembled his own.
[280]
[281] His clacker he had by this time thrown away from him, as being a mean
[282] and sordid instrument, offensive both to the birds and to himself
[283] as their friend. All at once he became conscious of a smart blow
[284] upon his buttocks, followed by a loud clack, which announced to his
[285] surprised senses that the clacker had been the instrument of offence
[286] used. The birds and Jude started up simultaneously, and the dazed
[287] eyes of the latter beheld the farmer in person, the great Troutham
[288] himself, his red face glaring down upon Jude's cowering frame, the
[289] clacker swinging in his hand.
[290]
[291] "So it's 'Eat my dear birdies,' is it, young man? 'Eat, dear
[292] birdies,' indeed! I'll tickle your breeches, and see if you say,
[293] 'Eat, dear birdies,' again in a hurry! And you've been idling at the
[294] schoolmaster's too, instead of coming here, ha'n't ye, hey? That's
[295] how you earn your sixpence a day for keeping the rooks off my corn!"
[296]
[297] Whilst saluting Jude's ears with this impassioned rhetoric, Troutham
[298] had seized his left hand with his own left, and swinging his slim
[299] frame round him at arm's-length, again struck Jude on the hind parts
[300] with the flat side of Jude's own rattle, till the field echoed with
[301] the blows, which were delivered once or twice at each revolution.
[302]
[303] "Don't 'ee, sir--please don't 'ee!" cried the whirling child, as
[304] helpless under the centrifugal tendency of his person as a hooked
[305] fish swinging to land, and beholding the hill, the rick, the
[306] plantation, the path, and the rooks going round and round him in an
[307] amazing circular race. "I--I sir--only meant that--there was a good
[308] crop in the ground--I saw 'em sow it--and the rooks could have a
[309] little bit for dinner--and you wouldn't miss it, sir--and Mr.
[310] Phillotson said I was to be kind to 'em--oh, oh, oh!"
[311]
[312] This truthful explanation seemed to exasperate the farmer even more
[313] than if Jude had stoutly denied saying anything at all, and he still
[314] smacked the whirling urchin, the clacks of the instrument continuing
[315] to resound all across the field and as far as the ears of distant
[316] workers--who gathered thereupon that Jude was pursuing his business
[317] of clacking with great assiduity--and echoing from the brand-new
[318] church tower just behind the mist, towards the building of which
[319] structure the farmer had largely subscribed, to testify his love for
[320] God and man.
[321]
[322] Presently Troutham grew tired of his punitive task, and depositing
[323] the quivering boy on his legs, took a sixpence from his pocket and
[324] gave it him in payment for his day's work, telling him to go home and
[325] never let him see him in one of those fields again.
[326]
[327] Jude leaped out of arm's reach, and walked along the trackway
[328] weeping--not from the pain, though that was keen enough; not from the
[329] perception of the flaw in the terrestrial scheme, by which what was
[330] good for God's birds was bad for God's gardener; but with the awful
[331] sense that he had wholly disgraced himself before he had been a year
[332] in the parish, and hence might be a burden to his great-aunt for
[333] life.
[334]
[335] With this shadow on his mind he did not care to show himself in the
[336] village, and went homeward by a roundabout track behind a high hedge
[337] and across a pasture. Here he beheld scores of coupled earthworms
[338] lying half their length on the surface of the damp ground, as
[339] they always did in such weather at that time of the year. It was
[340] impossible to advance in regular steps without crushing some of them
[341] at each tread.
[342]
[343] Though Farmer Troutham had just hurt him, he was a boy who could not
[344] himself bear to hurt anything. He had never brought home a nest of
[345] young birds without lying awake in misery half the night after, and
[346] often reinstating them and the nest in their original place the next
[347] morning. He could scarcely bear to see trees cut down or lopped,
[348] from a fancy that it hurt them; and late pruning, when the sap was up
[349] and the tree bled profusely, had been a positive grief to him in his
[350] infancy. This weakness of character, as it may be called, suggested
[351] that he was the sort of man who was born to ache a good deal before
[352] the fall of the curtain upon his unnecessary life should signify that
[353] all was well with him again. He carefully picked his way on tiptoe
[354] among the earthworms, without killing a single one.
[355]
[356] On entering the cottage he found his aunt selling a penny loaf to a
[357] little girl, and when the customer was gone she said, "Well, how do
[358] you come to be back here in the middle of the morning like this?"
[359]
[360] "I'm turned away."
[361]
[362] "What?"
[363]
[364] "Mr. Troutham have turned me away because I let the rooks have a few
[365] peckings of corn. And there's my wages--the last I shall ever hae!"
[366]
[367] He threw the sixpence tragically on the table.
[368]
[369] "Ah!" said his aunt, suspending her breath. And she opened upon him
[370] a lecture on how she would now have him all the spring upon her hands
[371] doing nothing. "If you can't skeer birds, what can ye do? There!
[372] don't ye look so deedy! Farmer Troutham is not so much better than
[373] myself, come to that. But 'tis as Job said, 'Now they that are
[374] younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have
[375] disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.' His father was my
[376] father's journeyman, anyhow, and I must have been a fool to let 'ee
[377] go to work for 'n, which I shouldn't ha' done but to keep 'ee out of
[378] mischty."
[379]
[380] More angry with Jude for demeaning her by coming there than for
[381] dereliction of duty, she rated him primarily from that point of view,
[382] and only secondarily from a moral one.
[383]
[384] "Not that you should have let the birds eat what Farmer Troutham
[385] planted. Of course you was wrong in that. Jude, Jude, why didstn't
[386] go off with that schoolmaster of thine to Christminster or somewhere?
[387] But, oh no--poor or'nary child--there never was any sprawl on thy
[388] side of the family, and never will be!"
[389]
[390] "Where is this beautiful city, Aunt--this place where Mr. Phillotson
[391] is gone to?" asked the boy, after meditating in silence.
[392]
[393] "Lord! you ought to know where the city of Christminster is. Near a
[394] score of miles from here. It is a place much too good for you ever
[395] to have much to do with, poor boy, I'm a-thinking."
[396]
[397] "And will Mr. Phillotson always be there?"
[398]
[399] "How can I tell?"
[400]
[401] "Could I go to see him?"
[402]
[403] "Lord, no! You didn't grow up hereabout, or you wouldn't ask such as
[404] that. We've never had anything to do with folk in Christminster, nor
[405] folk in Christminster with we."
[406]
[407] Jude went out, and, feeling more than ever his existence to be an
[408] undemanded one, he lay down upon his back on a heap of litter near
[409] the pig-sty. The fog had by this time become more translucent, and
[410] the position of the sun could be seen through it. He pulled his
[411] straw hat over his face, and peered through the interstices of the
[412] plaiting at the white brightness, vaguely reflecting. Growing up
[413] brought responsibilities, he found. Events did not rhyme quite as
[414] he had thought. Nature's logic was too horrid for him to care for.
[415] That mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another
[416] sickened his sense of harmony. As you got older, and felt yourself
[417] to be at the centre of your time, and not at a point in its
[418] circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized
[419] with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed
[420] to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares
[421] hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped
[422] it.
[423]
[424] If he could only prevent himself growing up! He did not want to be a
[425] man.
[426]
[427] Then, like the natural boy, he forgot his despondency, and sprang up.
[428] During the remainder of the morning he helped his aunt, and in the
[429] afternoon, when there was nothing more to be done, he went into the
[430] village. Here he asked a man whereabouts Christminster lay.
[431]
[432] "Christminster? Oh, well, out by there yonder; though I've never bin
[433] there--not I. I've never had any business at such a place."
[434]
[435] The man pointed north-eastward, in the very direction where lay that
[436] field in which Jude had so disgraced himself. There was something
[437] unpleasant about the coincidence for the moment, but the fearsomeness
[438] of this fact rather increased his curiosity about the city. The
[439] farmer had said he was never to be seen in that field again; yet
[440] Christminster lay across it, and the path was a public one. So,
[441] stealing out of the hamlet, he descended into the same hollow which
[442] had witnessed his punishment in the morning, never swerving an inch
[443] from the path, and climbing up the long and tedious ascent on the
[444] other side till the track joined the highway by a little clump of
[445] trees. Here the ploughed land ended, and all before him was bleak
[446] open down.
[447]
[448]
[449]
[450] III
[451]
[452]
[453] Not a soul was visible on the hedgeless highway, or on either side of
[454] it, and the white road seemed to ascend and diminish till it joined
[455] the sky. At the very top it was crossed at right angles by a green
[456] "ridgeway"--the Ickneild Street and original Roman road through the
[457] district. This ancient track ran east and west for many miles, and
[458] down almost to within living memory had been used for driving flocks
[459] and herds to fairs and markets. But it was now neglected and
[460] overgrown.
[461]
[462] The boy had never before strayed so far north as this from the
[463] nestling hamlet in which he had been deposited by the carrier from a
[464] railway station southward, one dark evening some few months earlier,
[465] and till now he had had no suspicion that such a wide, flat,
[466] low-lying country lay so near at hand, under the very verge of his
[467] upland world. The whole northern semicircle between east and west,
[468] to a distance of forty or fifty miles, spread itself before him; a
[469] bluer, moister atmosphere, evidently, than that he breathed up here.
[470]
[471] Not far from the road stood a weather-beaten old barn of reddish-grey
[472] brick and tile. It was known as the Brown House by the people of the
[473] locality. He was about to pass it when he perceived a ladder against
[474] the eaves; and the reflection that the higher he got, the further he
[475] could see, led Jude to stand and regard it. On the slope of the roof
[476] two men were repairing the tiling. He turned into the ridgeway and
[477] drew towards the barn.
[478]
[479] When he had wistfully watched the workmen for some time he took
[480] courage, and ascended the ladder till he stood beside them.
[481]
[482] "Well, my lad, and what may you want up here?"
[483]
[484] "I wanted to know where the city of Christminster is, if you please."
[485]
[486] "Christminster is out across there, by that clump. You can see
[487] it--at least you can on a clear day. Ah, no, you can't now."
[488]
[489] The other tiler, glad of any kind of diversion from the monotony of
[490] his labour, had also turned to look towards the quarter designated.
[491] "You can't often see it in weather like this," he said. "The time
[492] I've noticed it is when the sun is going down in a blaze of flame,
[493] and it looks like--I don't know what."
[494]
[495] "The heavenly Jerusalem," suggested the serious urchin.
[496]
[497] "Ay--though I should never ha' thought of it myself.... But I can't
[498] see no Christminster to-day."
[499]
[500] The boy strained his eyes also; yet neither could he see the far-off
[501] city. He descended from the barn, and abandoning Christminster with
[502] the versatility of his age he walked along the ridge-track, looking
[503] for any natural objects of interest that might lie in the banks
[504] thereabout. When he repassed the barn to go back to Marygreen he
[505] observed that the ladder was still in its place, but that the men had
[506] finished their day's work and gone away.
[507]
[508] It was waning towards evening; there was still a faint mist, but it
[509] had cleared a little except in the damper tracts of subjacent country
[510] and along the river-courses. He thought again of Christminster, and
[511] wished, since he had come two or three miles from his aunt's house
[512] on purpose, that he could have seen for once this attractive city of
[513] which he had been told. But even if he waited here it was hardly
[514] likely that the air would clear before night. Yet he was loth to
[515] leave the spot, for the northern expanse became lost to view on
[516] retreating towards the village only a few hundred yards.
[517]
[518] He ascended the ladder to have one more look at the point the men
[519] had designated, and perched himself on the highest rung, overlying
[520] the tiles. He might not be able to come so far as this for many
[521] days. Perhaps if he prayed, the wish to see Christminster might be
[522] forwarded. People said that, if you prayed, things sometimes came to
[523] you, even though they sometimes did not. He had read in a tract that
[524] a man who had begun to build a church, and had no money to finish
[525] it, knelt down and prayed, and the money came in by the next post.
[526] Another man tried the same experiment, and the money did not come;
[527] but he found afterwards that the breeches he knelt in were made by
[528] a wicked Jew. This was not discouraging, and turning on the ladder
[529] Jude knelt on the third rung, where, resting against those above it,
[530] he prayed that the mist might rise.
[531]
[532] He then seated himself again, and waited. In the course of ten or
[533] fifteen minutes the thinning mist dissolved altogether from the
[534] northern horizon, as it had already done elsewhere, and about a
[535] quarter of an hour before the time of sunset the westward clouds
[536] parted, the sun's position being partially uncovered, and the beams
[537] streaming out in visible lines between two bars of slaty cloud. The
[538] boy immediately looked back in the old direction.
[539]
[540] Some way within the limits of the stretch of landscape, points of
[541] light like the topaz gleamed. The air increased in transparency with
[542] the lapse of minutes, till the topaz points showed themselves to be
[543] the vanes, windows, wet roof slates, and other shining spots upon the
[544] spires, domes, freestone-work, and varied outlines that were faintly
[545] revealed. It was Christminster, unquestionably; either directly
[546] seen, or miraged in the peculiar atmosphere.
[547]
[548] The spectator gazed on and on till the windows and vanes lost their
[549] shine, going out almost suddenly like extinguished candles. The
[550] vague city became veiled in mist. Turning to the west, he saw that
[551] the sun had disappeared. The foreground of the scene had grown
[552] funereally dark, and near objects put on the hues and shapes of
[553] chimaeras.
[554]
[555] He anxiously descended the ladder, and started homewards at a run,
[556] trying not to think of giants, Herne the Hunter, Apollyon lying in
[557] wait for Christian,