Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure


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The man pointed north-eastward, in the very direction where lay
that 
field in which Jude had so disgraced himself. There was some-
thing unpleasant about the coincidence for the moment, but the
fearsomeness of this fact rather increased his curiosity about the city.
The farmer had said he was never to be seen in that 
field again; yet
Christminster lay across it, and the path was a public one. So, steal-
ing out of the hamlet he descended into the same hollow which had
witnessed his punishment in the morning, never swerving an inch
from the path, and climbing up the long and tedious ascent on the
other side, till the track joined the highway by a little clump of trees.
Here the ploughed land ended, and all before him was bleak open
down.
At Marygreen


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I.–iii.
N
 a soul was visible on the hedgeless highway, or on either side of
it, and the white road seemed to ascend and diminish till it joined the
sky. At the very top it was crossed at right angles by a green
‘ridgeway’––the Icknield Street and original Roman road* through
the district. This ancient track ran east and west for many miles, and
down almost to within living memory had been used for driving
flocks and herds to fairs and markets. But it was now neglected and
overgrown.
The boy had never before strayed so far north as this from the
nestling hamlet in which he had been deposited by the carrier from a
railway station southward, one dark evening some few months earl-
ier, and till now he had had no suspicion that such a wide, 
flat, low-
lying country lay so near at hand, under the very verge of his upland
world. The whole northern semicircle between east and west, to a
distance of forty or 
fifty miles, spread itself before him; a bluer,
moister atmosphere evidently than that he breathed up here.
Not far from the road stood a weather-beaten old barn of reddish-
gray brick and tile. It was known as the Brown House by the people
of the locality. He was about to pass it when he perceived a ladder
against the eaves;* and the re
flection that the higher he got, the fur-
ther he could see led Jude to stand and regard it. On the slope of the
roof two men were repairing the tiling. He turned into the ridgeway,
and drew towards the barn.
When he had wistfully watched the workmen for some time he
took courage, and ascended the ladder till he stood beside them.
‘Well, my lad; and what may you want up here?’
‘I wanted to know where the city of Christminster is, if you
please.’
‘Christminster is out across there, by that clump. You can see it––
at least, you can on a clear day. Ah, no, you can’t now.’
The other tiler, glad of any kind of diversion from the monotony
of his labour, had also turned to look towards the quarter designated.
‘You can’t often see it in weather like this,’ he said. ‘The time I’ve
noticed it is when the sun is going down in a blaze of 
flame, and it
looks like––I don’t know what.’

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‘The Heavenly Jerusalem,’ suggested the serious urchin.
‘Ay––though I should never ha’ thought of it myself. . . . But I
can’t see no Christminster to-day.’
The boy strained his eyes also; yet neither could he see the far-o
ff
city. He descended from the barn, and abandoning Christminster
with the versatility of his age he walked along the ridge-track, look-
ing for any natural objects of interest that might lie in the banks
thereabout. When he repassed the barn to go back to Marygreen he
observed that the ladder was still in its place, but that the men had
finished their day’s work and gone away.
It was waning towards evening; there was still a faint mist, but it
had cleared a little except in the damper tracts of subjacent country,
and along the river-courses. He thought again of Christminster, and
wished, since he had come two or three miles from his aunt’s house
on purpose, that he could have seen for once this attractive city of
which he had been told. But even if he waited here it was hardly
likely that the air would clear before night. Yet he was loth to leave
the spot, for the northern expanse became lost to view on retreating
towards the village only a few hundred yards.
He ascended the ladder to have one more look at the point the men
had designated, and perched himself on the highest rung, overlying
the tiles. He might not be able to come so far as this for many days.
Perhaps if he prayed the wish to see Christminster might be for-
warded. People said that, if you prayed things sometimes came to
you, even though they sometimes did not. He had read in a tract that
a man who had begun to build a church, and had no money to 
finish
it, knelt down and prayed, and the money came in by the next post.
Another man tried the same experiment, and the money did not
come; but he found afterwards that the breeches he knelt in were
made by a wicked Jew. This was not discouraging, and turning on
the ladder Jude knelt on the third rung, where, resting against those
above it, he prayed that the mist might rise.
He then seated himself again, and waited. In the course of ten or
fifteen minutes the thinning mist dissolved altogether from the
northern horizon, as it had already done elsewhere, and about a
quarter of an hour before the time of sunset the westward clouds