Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

parted, the sun’s position being partially uncovered, and the beams
streaming out in visible lines between two bars of slaty cloud. The
boy immediately looked back in the old direction.
At Marygreen
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Some way within the limits of the stretch of landscape, points of
light like the topaz gleamed. The air increased in transparency with
the lapse of minutes, till the topaz points showed themselves to be
the vanes, windows, wet roof slates, and other shining spots upon the
spires, domes, freestone-work, and varied outlines that were faintly
revealed. It was Christminster, unquestionably; either directly seen,
or miraged in the peculiar atmosphere.
The spectator gazed on and on till the windows and vanes lost
their shine, going out almost suddenly, like extinguished candles.
The vague city became veiled in mist. Turning to the west, he saw
that the sun had disappeared. The foreground of the scene had
grown funereally dark, and near objects put on the hues and shapes
of chimæras.
He anxiously descended the ladder, and started homewards at a
run, trying not to think of giants, Herne the Hunter,* Apollyon* lying
in wait for Christian, or of the captain* with the bleeding hole in his
forehead and the corpses round him that remutinied every night on
board the bewitched ship. He knew that he had grown out of belief in
these horrors, yet he was glad when he saw the church tower, and the
lights in the cottage windows, even though this was not the home of
his birth, and his great-aunt did not care much about him.
Inside and round about that old woman’s ‘shop’ window, with its
twenty-four little panes set in leadwork, the glass of some of them
oxidized with age, so that you could hardly see the poor penny art-
icles exhibited within, and forming part of a stock which a strong
man could have carried, Jude had his outer being for some long
tideless time. But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings
were small.
Through the solid barrier of cold cretaceous upland to the north-
ward he was always beholding a gorgeous city––the fancied place he
had likened to the New Jerusalem, though there was perhaps more of
the painter’s imagination, and less of the diamond merchant’s in his
dreams thereof than in those of the Apocalyptic writer. And the city
acquired a tangibility, a permanence, a hold on his life, mainly from
the one nucleus of fact that the man for whose knowledge and pur-
poses he had so much reverence was actually living there; not only
so, but living among the more thoughtful and mentally shining ones
therein.
Jude the Obscure
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In sad wet seasons, though he knew it must rain at Christminster
too he could hardly believe that it rained so drearily there. Whenever
he could get away from the con
fines of the hamlet for an hour or two,
which was not often, he would steal o
ff to the Brown House on the
hill, and strain his eyes persistently; sometimes to be rewarded by
the sight of a dome or spire, at other times by a little smoke, which in
his estimate had some of the mysticism of incense.
Then the day came when it suddenly occurred to him that if he
ascended to the point of view after dark, or possibly went a mile or
two further, he would see the night lights of the city. It would be
necessary to come back alone; but even that consideration did not
deter him, for he could throw a little manliness into his mood, no
doubt.
The project was duly executed. It was not late when he arrived at
the place of outlook, only just after dusk; but a black north-east sky,
accompanied by a wind from the same quarter, made the occasion
dark enough. He was rewarded; but what he saw was not the lamps
in rows as he had half expected. No individual light was visible, only
a halo or glow-fog over-arching the place against the black heavens
behind it, making the light and the city seem distant but a mile or so.
He set himself to wonder on the exact point in the glow where the
schoolmaster might be; he who never communicated with anybody
at Marygreen now,* who was as if dead to them here. In the glow he
seemed to see Phillotson promenading at ease, like one of the forms
in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace.*
He had heard that breezes travelled at the rate of ten miles an
hour, and the fact now came into his mind. He parted his lips as he
faced the north-east, and drew in the wind as if it were a sweet
liquor.
‘You,’ he said, addressing the breeze caressingly, ‘were in Christ-
minster city between one and two hours ago: 
floating along the
streets, pulling round the weather-cocks, touching Mr. Phillotson’s
face, being breathed by him; and now you are here, breathed by me;
you, the very same.’
Suddenly there came along this wind something towards him; a
message from the place––from some soul residing there, it seemed.
Surely it was the sound of bells, the voice of the city; faint and
musical, calling to him, ‘We are happy here.’
He had become entirely lost to his bodily situation during this