Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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before), and to criticize some details of masonry in other college
fronts about the city.
The idle crowd, including the two policemen at the doors, stared
like the Lycaonians* at Paul, for Jude was apt to get too enthusiastic
over any subject in hand, and they seemed to wonder how the stran-
ger should know more about the buildings of their town than they
themselves did; till one of them said: ‘Why, I know that man; he used
to work here years ago––Jude Fawley, that’s his name. Don’t you
mind he used to be nicknamed Tutor of St. Slums, d’ye mind?––
because he aimed at that line o’ business? He’s married, I suppose,
then, and that’s his child he’s carrying. Taylor would know him, as
he knows everybody.’
The speaker was a man named Jack Stagg, with whom Jude had
formerly worked in repairing the college masonries; Tinker Taylor
was seen to be standing near. Having his attention called the latter
cried across the barriers to Jude: ‘You’ve honoured us by coming
back again, my friend?’
Jude nodded.
‘An’ you don’t seem to have done any great things for yourself by
going away?’
Jude assented to this also.
‘Except found more mouths to 
fill!’ This came in a new voice, and
Jude recognized its owner to be Uncle Joe, another mason whom he
had known.
Jude replied good-humouredly that he could not dispute it; and
from remark to remark something like a general conversation arose
between him and the crowd of idlers, during which Tinker Taylor
asked Jude if he remembered the Apostles’ Creed in Latin still, and
the night of the challenge in the public-house.
‘But Fortune didn’t lie that way?’ threw in Joe. ‘Yer powers wasn’t
enough to carry ’ee through?’
‘Don’t answer them any more!’ entreated Sue.
‘I don’t think I like Christminster!’ murmured little Time
mournfully, as he stood submerged and invisible in the crowd.
But 
finding himself the centre of curiosity, quizzing, and com-
ment, Jude was not inclined to shrink from open declarations of
what he had no great reason to be ashamed of; and in a little while
was stimulated to say in a loud voice to the listening throng
generally:
At Christminster Again
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‘It is a di
fficult question, my friends, for any young man––that
question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at
the present moment in these uprising times––whether to follow
uncritically the track he 
finds himself in, without considering his
aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and re-
shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But
I don’t admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or
that my success would have made it a right one; though that’s how
we appraise such attempts nowadays––I mean, not by their essential
soundness, but by their accidental outcomes. If I had ended by
becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that we saw
dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: “See how wise
that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature.” But having
ended no better than I began they say: “See what a fool that fellow
was in following a freak of his fancy!”
‘However it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be
beaten. It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in
one; and my impulses––a
ffections––vices perhaps they should be
called––were too strong not to hamper a man without advantages;
who should be as cold-blooded as a 
fish and as selfish as a pig to have
a really good chance of being one of his country’s worthies. You may
ridicule me––I am quite willing that you should––I am a 
fit subject,
no doubt. But I think if you knew what I have gone through these
last few years you would rather pity me. And if they knew’––he
nodded towards the college at which the Dons were severally
arriving––‘it is just possible they would do the same.’
‘He do look ill and worn-out, it is true!’ said a woman.
Sue’s face grew more emotional; but though she stood close to
Jude she was screened.
‘I may do some good before I am dead––be a sort of success as a
frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story,’
continued Jude beginning to grow bitter, though he had opened
serenely enough. ‘I was, perhaps, after all, a paltry victim to the spirit
of mental and social restlessness, that makes so many unhappy in
these days!’
‘Don’t tell them that!’ whispered Sue with tears at perceiving
Jude’s state of mind. ‘You weren’t that. You struggled nobly to
acquire knowledge, and only the meanest souls in the world would
blame you!’