Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

partment and say to the boy, ‘All right, my man. Your box is safe in
the van.’ The boy would say, ‘Yes,’ without animation, would try to
smile, and fail.
He was Age masquerading as Juvenility, and doing it so badly that
his real self showed through crevices. A ground swell from ancient
years of night seemed now and then to lift the child in this his
morning-life, when his face took a back view over some great
Atlantic of time, and appeared not to care about what it saw.
When the other travellers closed their eyes, which they did one by
one––even the kitten curling itself up in the basket, weary of its too
circumscribed play––the boy remained just as before. He then
seemed to be doubly awake, like an enslaved and dwarfed Divinity,
sitting passive, and regarding his companions as if he saw their whole
rounded lives rather than their immediate 
figures.
This was Arabella’s boy. With her usual carelessness she had post-
poned writing to Jude about him till the eve of his landing, when she
could absolutely postpone no longer, though she had known for
weeks of his approaching arrival, and had, as she truly said, visited
Aldbrickham mainly to reveal the boy’s existence and his near home-
coming to Jude. This very day on which she had received her former
husband’s answer at some time in the afternoon the child reached
the London Docks, and the family in whose charge he had come
having put him into a cab for Lambeth and directed the cabman to
his mother’s house, bade him good-bye, and went their way.
On his arrival at the Three Horns, Arabella had looked him over
with an expression that was as good as saying, ‘You are very much
what I expected you to be,’ had given him a good meal, a little
money, and late as it was getting, dispatched him to Jude by the next
train, wishing her husband Cartlett, who was out, not to see him.
The train reached Aldbrickham, and the boy was deposited on the
lonely platform beside his box. The collector took his ticket and,
with a meditative sense of the un
fitness of things, asked him where
he was going by himself at that time of night.
‘Going to Spring Street,’ said the little one impassively.
‘Why, that’s a long way from here; a’most out in the country; and
the folks will be gone to bed.’
Jude the Obscure


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‘I’ve got to go there.’
‘You must have a 
fly for your box.’
‘No. I must walk.’
‘O well: you’d better leave your box here and send for it. There’s a
’bus goes half-way, but you’ll have to walk the rest.’
‘I am not afraid.’
‘Why didn’t your friends come to meet ’ee?’
‘I suppose they didn’t know I was coming.’
‘Who is your friends?’
‘Mother didn’t wish me to say.’
‘All I can do, then, is to take charge of this. Now walk as fast as
you can.’
Saying nothing further the boy came out into the street, looking
round to see that nobody followed or observed him. When he had
walked some little distance he asked for the street of his destination.
He was told to go straight on quite into the outskirts of the place.
The child fell into a steady mechanical creep which had in it an
impersonal quality––the movement of the wave, or of the breeze, or
of the cloud. He followed his directions literally, without an inquir-
ing gaze at anything. It could have been seen that the boy’s ideas of
life were di
fferent from those of the local boys. Children begin with
detail, and learn up to the general; they begin with the contiguous,
and gradually comprehend the universal. The boy seemed to have
begun with the generals of life, and never to have concerned himself
with the particulars. To him the houses, the willows, the obscure
fields beyond, were apparently regarded not as brick residences, pol-
lards, meadows; but as human dwellings in the abstract, vegetation,
and the wide dark world.
He found the way to the little lane, and knocked at the door of
Jude’s house. Jude had just retired to bed, and Sue was about to enter
her chamber adjoining when she heard the knock and came down.
‘Is this where father lives?’ asked the child.
‘Who?’
‘Mr. Fawley, that’s his name.’
Sue ran up to Jude’s room and told him, and he hurried down as
soon as he could, though to her impatience he seemed long.
‘What––is it he––so soon?’ she asked as Jude came.
She scrutinized the child’s features, and suddenly went away into
the little sitting-room adjoining. Jude lifted the boy to a level with