Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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glorious idea, as if a supernatural lamp were held inside their trans-
parent natures, giving rise to the 
flattering fancy that heaven lies
about them then.*
He honestly performed his promise to the man of many cures, in
whom he now sincerely believed, walking miles hither and thither
among the surrounding hamlets as the physician’s agent in advance.
On the evening appointed he stood motionless on the plateau, at the
place where he had parted from Vilbert, and there awaited his
approach. The road-physician was fairly up to time; but to the sur-
prise of Jude on striking into his pace, which the pedestrian did not
diminish by a single unit of force, the latter seemed hardly to recog-
nize his young companion, though with the lapse of the fortnight the
evenings had grown light. Jude thought it might perhaps be owing to
his wearing another hat, and he saluted the physician with dignity.
‘Well my boy?’ said the latter abstractedly.
‘I’ve come,’ said Jude.
‘You? who are you? O yes––to be sure? Got any orders, lad?’
‘Yes.’ And Jude told him the names and addresses of the cottagers
who were willing to test the virtues of the world-renowned pills and
salve. The quack mentally registered these with great care.
‘And the Latin and Greek grammars?’ Jude’s voice trembled with
anxiety.
‘What about them?’
‘You were to bring me yours, that you used before you took your
degree.’
‘Ah, yes, yes! Forgot all about it––all! So many lives depending on
my attention, you see, my man, that I can’t give so much thought as I
would like to other things.’
Jude controlled himself su
fficiently long to make sure of the truth;
and he repeated in a voice of dry misery,
‘You haven’t brought ’em!’
‘No. But you must get me some more orders from sick people, and
I’ll bring the grammars next time.’
Jude dropped behind. He was an unsophisticated boy, but the gift
of sudden insight which is sometimes vouchsafed to children showed
him all at once what shoddy humanity the quack was made of. There
was to be no intellectual light from this source. The leaves dropped
from his imaginary crown of laurel; he turned to a gate, leant against
it, and cried bitterly.
At Marygreen
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The disappointment was followed by an interval of blankness. He
might, perhaps, have obtained grammars from Alfredston,* but to do
that required money, and a knowledge of what books to order; and
though physically comfortable, he was in such absolute dependence
as to be without a farthing of his own.
At this date Mr. Phillotson sent for his pianoforte, and it gave Jude
a lead. Why should he not write to the school-master, and ask him to
be so kind as to get him the grammars in Christminster? He might
slip a letter inside the case of the instrument, and it would be sure to
reach the desired eyes. Why not ask him to send any old second-hand
copies, which would have the charm of being mellowed by the
university atmosphere?*
To tell his aunt of his intention would be to defeat it. It was
necessary to act alone.
After a further consideration of a few days he did act, and on the
day of the piano’s departure, which happened to be his next birth-
day, clandestinely placed the letter inside the packing-case, directed
to his much-admired friend; being afraid to reveal the operation to
his aunt Drusilla, lest she should discover his motive, and compel
him to abandon his scheme.
The piano was despatched, and Jude waited days and weeks, call-
ing every morning at the cottage post-o
ffice before his great-aunt
was stirring. At last a packet did indeed arrive at the village; and he
saw from the ends of it that it contained two thin books. He took it
away into a lonely place, and sat down on a felled elm to open it.
Ever since his 
first ecstasy or vision of Christminster and its pos-
sibilities Jude had meditated much and curiously on the probable
sort of process that was involved in turning the expressions of one
language into those of another. He concluded that a grammar of the
required tongue would contain, primarily, a rule, prescription, or
clue of the nature of a secret cipher, which, once known, would
enable him by merely applying it, to change at will all words of his
own speech into those of the foreign one. His childish idea was, in
fact, a pushing to the extremity of mathematical precision what is
everywhere known as Grimm’s Law,* an aggrandizement of rough
rules to ideal completeness. Thus he assumed that the words of the
required language were always to be found somewhere latent in the
words of the given language by those who had the art to uncover
them; such art being furnished by the books aforesaid.