Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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‘I’ll swear I can!’ said Jude. ‘Well; come now, stand me a small
Scotch cold, and I’ll do it straight o
ff.’
‘That’s a fair o
ffer,’ said the undergraduate, throwing down the
money for the whisky.
The barmaid concocted the mixture with the bearing of a person
compelled to live amongst animals of an inferior species, and the
glass was handed across to Jude, who, having drunk the contents,
stood up and began rhetorically, without hesitation:
‘Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, Factorem coeli et
terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium.’
‘Good! Excellent Latin!’ cried one of the undergraduates; who,
however, had not the slightest conception of a single word.
A silence reigned among the rest in the bar, and the maid stood
still, Jude’s voice echoing sonorously into the inner parlour, where
the landlord was dozing, and bringing him out to see what was going
on. Jude had declaimed steadily ahead, and was continuing:
‘Cruci
fixus etiam pro nobis: sub Pontio Pilato passus, et sepultus
est. Et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas.’
‘That’s the Nicene,’ sneered the second undergraduate. ‘And we
wanted the Apostles’!’
‘You didn’t say so! And every fool knows, except you, that the
Nicene is the most historic creed!’*
‘Let un go on, let un go on!’ said the auctioneer.
But Jude’s mind seemed to grow confused soon, and he could not
get on. He put his hand to his forehead, and his face assumed an
expression of pain.
‘Give him another glass––then he’ll fetch up and get through it,’
said Tinker Taylor.
Somebody threw down threepence, the glass was handed, Jude
stretched out his arm for it without looking, and having swallowed
the liquor went on in a moment in a revived voice, raising it as
he neared the end with the manner of a priest leading a
congregation:
‘Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivi
ficantem, qui ex Patre
Filioque procedit. Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglori-
ficatur. Qui locutus est prophetas.
‘Et unam Catholicam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam. Con
fiteor unum
Baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et expecto Resurrectionem
mortuorum. Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.’
At Christminster
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‘Well done!’ said several, enjoying the last word, as being the 
first
and only one they had recognized.
Then Jude seemed to shake the fumes from his brain, as he stared
round upon them.
‘You pack of fools!’ he cried. ‘Which one of you knows whether I
have said it or no? It might have been the Ratcatcher’s Daughter* in
double dutch for all that your besotted heads can tell! See what I
have brought myself to––the crew I have come among!’
The landlord, who had already had his license endorsed for har-
bouring queer characters, feared a riot, and came outside the coun-
ter; but Jude, in his sudden 
flash of reason, had turned in disgust and
left the scene, the door slamming with a dull thud behind him.
He hastened down the lane and round into the straight broad
street, which he followed till it merged in the highway, and all sound
of his late companions had been left behind. Onward he still went,
under the in
fluence of a childlike yearning for the one being in the
world to whom it seemed possible to 
fly––an unreasoning desire,
whose ill judgment was not apparent to him now. In the course of an
hour, when it was between ten and eleven o’clock, he entered the
village of Lumsdon, and reaching the cottage saw that a light was
burning in a downstairs room, which he assumed, rightly as it
happened, to be hers.
Jude stepped close to the wall, and tapped with his 
finger on the
pane, saying impatiently, ‘Sue, Sue!’
She must have recognized his voice, for the light disappeared from
the apartment, and in a second or two the door was unlocked and
opened, and Sue appeared with a candle in her hand.
‘Is it Jude? Yes, it is! My dear dear cousin, what’s the matter?’
‘O, I am––I couldn’t help coming, Sue!’ said he, sinking down
upon the doorstep. ‘I am so wicked, Sue––my heart is nearly broken,
and I could not bear my life as it was! So I have been drinking, and
blaspheming, or next door to it, and saying holy things in disreput-
able quarters––repeating in idle bravado words which ought never to
be uttered but reverently. O, do anything with me, Sue––kill me––I
don’t care! Only don’t hate me and despise me like all the rest of the
world!’
‘You are ill, poor dear! No, I won’t despise you; of course I won’t!
Come in and rest, and let me see what I can do for you. Now lean on
me, and don’t mind.’ With one hand holding the candle and the