Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Marygreen
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fear of farmers, or hindrance, or ridicule, he could watch and wait
and set himself to some mighty undertaking like the men of old of
whom he had heard? As the halo had been to his eyes when gazing at
it a quarter of an hour earlier, so was the spot mentally to him as he
pursued his dark way.
‘It is a city of light,’ he said to himself.
‘The tree of knowledge grows there,’ he added a few steps further
on.
‘It is a place that teachers of men spring from, and go to.’
‘It is what you may call a castle, manned by scholarship and
religion.’
After this 
figure he was silent a long while, till he added,
‘It would just suit me.’
Jude the Obscure
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I.–iv.
W
 somewhat slowly by reason of his concentration, the
boy––an ancient man in some phases of thought, much younger than
his years in others––was overtaken by a light-footed pedestrian
whom, notwithstanding the gloom, he could perceive to be wearing
an extraordinarily tall hat, a swallow-tailed coat, and a watch-chain
that danced madly and threw around scintillations of sky-light as its
owner swung along upon a pair of thin legs and noiseless boots. Jude,
beginning to feel lonely, endeavoured to keep up with him.
‘Well, my man! I’m in a hurry, so you’ll have to walk pretty fast if
you keep alongside of me. Do you know who I am?’
‘Yes, I think. Physician Vilbert?’
‘Ah––I’m known everywhere, I see! That comes of being a public
benefactor.’
Vilbert was an itinerant quack-doctor, well known to the rustic
population, and absolutely unknown to anybody else, as he indeed,
took care to be, to avoid inconvenient investigations. Cottagers
formed his only patients, and his Wessex-wide repute was among
them alone. His position was humbler and his 
field more obscure
than those of the quacks with capital and an organized system of
advertising. He was, in fact, a survival. The distances he traversed on
foot were enormous, and extended nearly the whole length and
breadth of Wessex. Jude had one day seen him selling a pot of col-
oured lard to an old woman as a certain cure for a bad leg, the woman
arranging to pay a guinea, in instalments of a shilling a fortnight, for
the precious salve which, according to the physician, could only be
obtained from a particular animal which grazed on Mount Sinai, and
was to be captured only at great risk to life and limb. Jude, though he
already had his doubts about this gentleman’s medicines, felt him to
be unquestionably a travelled personage, and one who might be a
trustworthy source of information on matters not strictly
professional.
‘I s’pose you’ve been to Christminster, Physician?’
‘I have––many times,’ replied the long thin man. ‘That’s one of
my centres.’
‘It’s a wonderful city for scholarship and religion?’

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‘You’d say so, my boy, if you’d seen it. Why, the very sons of the
old women who do the washing of the colleges can talk in Latin––
not good Latin, that I admit, as a critic: dog-Latin––cat-Latin as we
used to call it in my undergraduate days.’
‘And Greek?’
‘Well––that’s more for the men who are in training for bishops,
that they may be able to read the New Testament in the original.’
‘I want to learn Latin and Greek myself.’
‘A lofty desire. You must get a grammar of each tongue.’
‘I mean to go to Christminster some day.’
‘Whenever you do, you say that Physician Vilbert is the only pro-
prietor of those celebrated pills that infallibly cure all disorders of
the alimentary system, as well as asthma and shortness of breath.
Two and threepence a box––specially licensed by the government
stamp.’
‘Can you get me the grammars, if I promise to say it hereabout?’
‘I’ll sell you mine with pleasure––those I used as a student.’
‘O thank you, sir!’ said Jude gratefully, but in gasps, for the amaz-
ing speed of the physician’s walk kept him in a dog-trot which was
giving him a stitch in the side.
‘I think you’d better drop behind, my young man. Now I’ll tell
you what I’ll do. I’ll get you the grammars, and give you a 
first
lesson, if you’ll remember, at every house in the village, to recom-
mend Physician Vilbert’s golden ointment, life-drops, and female
pills.’*
‘Where will you be with the grammars?’
‘I shall be passing here this day fortnight at precisely this hour of
five-and-twenty minutes past seven. My movements are as truly
timed as those of the planets in their courses.’
‘Here I’ll be to meet you,’ said Jude.
‘With orders for my medicines.’
‘Yes, Physician.’
Jude then dropped behind, waited a few minutes to recover
breath, and went home with a consciousness of having struck a blow
for Christminster.
Through the intervening fortnight he ran about and smiled out-
wardly at his inward thoughts, as if they were people meeting and
nodding to him––smiled with that singularly beautiful irradiation
which is seen to spread on young faces at the inception of some