Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

PART SIXTH
AT CHRISTMINSTER AGAIN

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‘. . . And she humbled her body greatly, and all the places of her
joy she 
filled with her torn hair.’*
E
 (Apoc.).
‘There are two who decline, a woman and I,
And enjoy our death in the darkness here.’
*
R. B
.

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  
VI.–i.
O
 their arrival the station was lively with straw-hatted young men
welcoming young girls who bore a remarkable family likeness to their
welcomers, and who were dressed up in the brightest and lightest of
raiment.
‘The place seems gay,’ said Sue. ‘Why––it is Remembrance
Day!*––Jude––how sly of you––you came to-day on purpose.’
‘Yes,’ said Jude quietly, as he took charge of the small child, and
told Arabella’s boy to keep close to them, Sue attending to their own
eldest. ‘I thought we might as well come to-day as on any other.’
‘But I am afraid it will depress you!’ she said, looking anxiously at
him, up and down.
‘O, I mustn’t let it interfere with our business; and we have a good
deal to do before we shall be settled here. The 
first thing is lodgings.’
Having left their luggage and his tools at the station they pro-
ceeded on foot up the familiar street, the holiday people all drifting
in the same direction. Reaching the Fourways they were about to
turn o
ff to where accommodation was likely to be found when, look-
ing at the clock and the hurrying crowd Jude said: ‘Let us go and see
the procession, and never mind the lodgings just now? We can get
them afterwards.’
‘Oughtn’t we to get a house over our heads 
first?’ she asked.
But his soul seemed full of the anniversary, and together they went
down Chief Street, their smallest child in Jude’s arms, Sue leading
her little girl, and Arabella’s boy walking thoughtfully and silently
beside them. Crowds of pretty sisters in airy costumes, and meekly
ignorant parents who had known no College in their youth were
under convoy in the same direction by brothers and sons bearing the
opinion written large on them that no properly quali
fied human
beings had lived on earth till they came to grace it here and now.
‘My failure is re
flected on me by every one of those young fel-
lows,’ said Jude. ‘A lesson on presumption is awaiting me today!––
Humiliation Day for me! . . . If you, my dear darling, hadn’t come to
my rescue, I should have gone to the dogs with despair!’

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She saw from his face that he was getting into one of his tem-
pestuous, self-harrowing moods. ‘It would have been better if we had
gone at once about our own a
ffairs, dear,’ she answered. ‘I am sure
this sight will awaken old sorrows in you, and do no good!’
‘Well––we are near; we will see it now,’ said he.
They turned in on the left by the church with the Italian porch,
whose helical columns* were heavily draped with creepers, and pur-
sued the lane till there arose on Jude’s sight the circular theatre* with
that well-known lantern above it, which stood in his mind as the sad
symbol of his abandoned hopes; for it was from that outlook that he
had 
finally surveyed the City of Colleges on the afternoon of his
great meditation, which convinced him at last of the futility of his
attempt to be a son of the University.
To-day, in the open space stretching between this building and the
nearest college, stood a crowd of expectant people. A passage was
kept clear through their midst by two barriers of timber, extending
from the door of the college to the door of the large building between
it and the theatre.
‘Here is the place––they are just going to pass!’ cried Jude in
sudden excitement. And pushing his way to the front he took up a
position close to the barrier, still hugging the youngest child in his
arms, while Sue and the others kept immediately behind him. The
crowd 
filled in at their back, and fell to talking, joking, and laughing
as carriage after carriage drew up at the lower door of the college,
and solemn stately 
figures in blood-red robes began to alight. The
sky had grown overcast and livid, and thunder rumbled now and
then.
Father Time shuddered. ‘It do seem like the Judgment Day!’ he
whispered.
‘They are only learned doctors,’ said Sue.
While they waited big drops of rain fell on their heads and shoul-
ders, and the delay grew tedious. Sue again wished not to stay.
‘They won’t be long now,’ said Jude, without turning his head.
But the procession did not come forth, and somebody in the
crowd, to pass the time, looked at the façade of the nearest college,
and said he wondered what was meant by the Latin inscription in its
midst. Jude, who stood near the inquirer, explained it, and 
finding
that the people all round him were listening with interest, went on to
describe the carving of the frieze (which he had studied years