Chapter: Necessary meditations on the actual, including the mean
bread-and-cheese question, dissipated the phantasmal for a while, and
compelled Jude to smother high thinkings under immediate needs.  He
had to get up, and seek for work, manual work; the only kind deemed
by many of its professors to be work at all.

Passing out into the streets on this errand he found that the
colleges had treacherously changed their sympathetic countenances:
some were pompous; some had put on the look of family vaults above
ground; something barbaric loomed in the masonries of all.  The
spirits of the great men had disappeared.

The numberless architectural pages around him he read, naturally,
less as an artist-critic of their forms than as an artizan and
comrade of the dead handicraftsmen whose muscles had actually
executed those forms.  He examined the mouldings, stroked them as
one who knew their beginning, said they were difficult or easy in
the working, had taken little or much time, were trying to the arm,
or convenient to the tool.

What at night had been perfect and ideal was by day the more or
less defective real.  Cruelties, insults, had, he perceived, been
inflicted on the aged erections.  The condition of several moved him
as he would have been moved by maimed sentient beings.  They were
wounded, broken, sloughing off their outer shape in the deadly
struggle against years, weather, and man.

The rottenness of these historical documents reminded him that he was
not, after all, hastening on to begin the morning practically as he
had intended.  He had come to work, and to live by work, and the
morning had nearly gone.  It was, in one sense, encouraging to think
that in a place of crumbling stones there must be plenty for one of
his trade to do in the business of renovation.  He asked his way to
the workyard of the stone-mason whose name had been given him at
Alfredston; and soon heard the familiar sound of the rubbers and
chisels.

The yard was a little centre of regeneration.  Here, with keen edges
and smooth curves, were forms in the exact likeness of those he had
seen abraded and time-eaten on the walls.  These were the ideas in
modern prose which the lichened colleges presented in old poetry.
Even some of those antiques might have been called prose when they
were new.  They had done nothing but wait, and had become poetical.
How easy to the smallest building; how impossible to most men.

He asked for the foreman, and looked round among the new traceries,
mullions, transoms, shafts, pinnacles, and battlements standing on
the bankers half worked, or waiting to be removed.  They were marked
by precision, mathematical straightness, smoothness, exactitude:
there in the old walls were the broken lines of the original idea;
jagged curves, disdain of precision, irregularity, disarray.

For a moment there fell on Jude a true illumination; that here in the
stone yard was a centre of effort as worthy as that dignified by the
name of scholarly study within the noblest of the colleges.  But he
lost it under stress of his old idea.  He would accept any employment
which might be offered him on the strength of his late employer's
recommendation; but he would accept it as a provisional thing only.
This was his form of the modern vice of unrest.

Moreover he perceived that at best only copying, patching and
imitating went on here; which he fancied to be owing to some
temporary and local cause.  He did not at that time see that
mediaevalism was as dead as a fern-leaf in a lump of coal; that other
developments were shaping in the world around him, in which Gothic
architecture and its associations had no place.  The deadly animosity
of contemporary logic and vision towards so much of what he held in
reverence was not yet revealed to him.

Having failed to obtain work here as yet he went away, and thought
again of his cousin, whose presence somewhere at hand he seemed to
feel in wavelets of interest, if not of emotion.  How he wished he
had that pretty portrait of her!  At last he wrote to his aunt to
send it.  She did so, with a request, however, that he was not to
bring disturbance into the family by going to see the girl or her
relations.  Jude, a ridiculously affectionate fellow, promised
nothing, put the photograph on the mantel-piece, kissed it--he did
not know why--and felt more at home.  She seemed to look down and
preside over his tea.  It was cheering--the one thing uniting him to
the emotions of the living city.

There remained the schoolmaster--probably now a reverend parson.
But he could not possibly hunt up such a respectable man just yet;
so raw and unpolished was his condition, so precarious were his
fortunes.  Thus he still remained in loneliness.  Although people
moved round him he virtually saw none.  Not as yet having mingled
with the active life of the place it was largely non-existent to him.
But the saints and prophets in the window-tracery, the paintings
in the galleries, the statues, the busts, the gargoyles, the
corbel-heads--these seemed to breathe his atmosphere.  Like all
newcomers to a spot on which the past is deeply graven he heard that
past announcing itself with an emphasis altogether unsuspected by,
and even incredible to, the habitual residents.

For many days he haunted the cloisters and quadrangles of the
colleges at odd minutes in passing them, surprised by impish
echoes of his own footsteps, smart as the blows of a mallet.  The
Christminster "sentiment," as it had been called, ate further and
further into him; till he probably knew more about those buildings
materially, artistically, and historically, than any one of their
inmates.

It was not till now, when he found himself actually on the spot of
his enthusiasm, that Jude perceived how far away from the object of
that enthusiasm he really was.  Only a wall divided him from those
happy young contemporaries of his with whom he shared a common mental
life; men who had nothing to do from morning till night but to read,
mark, learn, and inwardly digest.  Only a wall--but what a wall!

Every day, every hour, as he went in search of labour, he saw them
going and coming also, rubbed shoulders with them, heard their
voices, marked their movements.  The conversation of some of the
more thoughtful among them seemed oftentimes, owing to his long and
persistent preparation for this place, to be peculiarly akin to his
own thoughts.  Yet he was as far from them as if he had been at the
antipodes.  Of course he was.  He was a young workman in a white
blouse, and with stone-dust in the creases of his clothes; and in
passing him they did not even see him, or hear him, rather saw
through him as through a pane of glass at their familiars beyond.
Whatever they were to him, he to them was not on the spot at all; and
yet he had fancied he would be close to their lives by coming there.

But the future lay ahead after all; and if he could only be so
fortunate as to get into good employment he would put up with the
inevitable.  So he thanked God for his health and strength, and took
courage.  For the present he was outside the gates of everything,
colleges included: perhaps some day he would be inside.  Those
palaces of light and leading; he might some day look down on the
world through their panes.

At length he did receive a message from the stone-mason's yard--that
a job was waiting for him.  It was his first encouragement, and he
closed with the offer promptly.

He was young and strong, or he never could have executed with such
zest the undertakings to which he now applied himself, since they
involved reading most of the night after working all the day.  First
he bought a shaded lamp for four and six-pence, and obtained a good
light.  Then he got pens, paper, and such other necessary books as he
had been unable to obtain elsewhere.  Then, to the consternation of
his landlady, he shifted all the furniture of his room--a single one
for living and sleeping--rigged up a curtain on a rope across the
middle, to make a double chamber out of one, hung up a thick blind
that nobody should know how he was curtailing the hours of sleep,
laid out his books, and sat down.

Having been deeply encumbered by marrying, getting a cottage, and
buying the furniture which had disappeared in the wake of his wife,
he had never been able to save any money since the time of those
disastrous ventures, and till his wages began to come in he was
obliged to live in the narrowest way.  After buying a book or two
he could not even afford himself a fire; and when the nights reeked
with the raw and cold air from the Meadows he sat over his lamp in
a great-coat, hat, and woollen gloves.

From his window he could perceive the spire of the cathedral, and the
ogee dome under which resounded the great bell of the city.  The tall
tower, tall belfry windows, and tall pinnacles of the college by the
bridge he could also get a glimpse of by going to the staircase.
These objects he used as stimulants when his faith in the future was
dim.

Like enthusiasts in general he made no inquiries into details of
procedure.  Picking up general notions from casual acquaintance, he
never dwelt upon them.  For the present, he said to himself, the one
thing necessary was to get ready by accumulating money and knowledge,
and await whatever chances were afforded to such an one of becoming
a son of the University.  "For wisdom is a defence, and money is a
defence; but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life
to them that have it."  His desire absorbed him, and left no part of
him to weigh its practicability.

At this time he received a nervously anxious letter from his poor old
aunt, on the subject which had previously distressed her--a fear that
Jude would not be strong-minded enough to keep away from his cousin
Sue Bridehead and her relations.  Sue's father, his aunt believed,
had gone back to London, but the girl remained at Christminster.  To
make her still more objectionable, she was an artist or designer of
some sort in what was called an ecclesiastical warehouse, which was
a perfect seed-bed of idolatry, and she was no doubt abandoned to
mummeries on that account--if not quite a Papist. (Miss Drusilla
Fawley was of her date, Evangelical.)

As Jude was rather on an intellectual track than a theological, this
news of Sue's probable opinions did not much influence him one way or
the other, but the clue to her whereabouts was decidedly interesting.
With an altogether singular pleasure he walked at his earliest spare
minutes past the shops answering to his great-aunt's description; and
beheld in one of them a young girl sitting behind a desk, who was
suspiciously like the original of the portrait.  He ventured to enter
on a trivial errand, and having made his purchase lingered on the
scene.  The shop seemed to be kept entirely by women.  It contained
Anglican books, stationery, texts, and fancy goods: little plaster
angels on brackets, Gothic-framed pictures of saints, ebony crosses
that were almost crucifixes, prayer-books that were almost missals.
He felt very shy of looking at the girl in the desk; she was so
pretty that he could not believe it possible that she should belong
to him.  Then she spoke to one of the two older women behind the
counter; and he recognized in the accents certain qualities of his
own voice; softened and sweetened, but his own.  What was she doing?
He stole a glance round.  Before her lay a piece of zinc, cut to
the shape of a scroll three or four feet long, and coated with a
dead-surface paint on one side.  Hereon she was designing or
illuminating, in characters of Church text, the single word


   A L L E L U J A


"A sweet, saintly, Christian business, hers!" thought he.

Her presence here was now fairly enough explained, her skill in
work of this sort having no doubt been acquired from her father's
occupation as an ecclesiastical worker in metal.  The lettering on
which she was engaged was clearly intended to be fixed up in some
chancel to assist devotion.

He came out.  It would have been easy to speak to her there and then,
but it seemed scarcely honourable towards his aunt to disregard her
request so incontinently.  She had used him roughly, but she had
brought him up: and the fact of her being powerless to control him
lent a pathetic force to a wish that would have been inoperative as
an argument.

So Jude gave no sign.  He would not call upon Sue just yet.  He had
other reasons against doing so when he had walked away.  She seemed
so dainty beside himself in his rough working-jacket and dusty
trousers that he felt he was as yet unready to encounter her, as he
had felt about Mr. Phillotson.  And how possible it was that she had
inherited the antipathies of her family, and would scorn him, as
far as a Christian could, particularly when he had told her that
unpleasant part of his history which had resulted in his becoming
enchained to one of her own sex whom she would certainly not admire.

Thus he kept watch over her, and liked to feel she was there.
The consciousness of her living presence stimulated him.  But she
remained more or less an ideal character, about whose form he began
to weave curious and fantastic day-dreams.

Between two and three weeks afterwards Jude was engaged with some
more men, outside Crozier College in Old-time Street, in getting a
block of worked freestone from a waggon across the pavement, before
hoisting it to the parapet which they were repairing.  Standing in
position the head man said, "Spaik when he heave! He-ho!"  And they
heaved.

All of a sudden, as he lifted, his cousin stood close to his elbow,
pausing a moment on the bend of her foot till the obstructing object
should have been removed.  She looked right into his face with
liquid, untranslatable eyes, that combined, or seemed to him to
combine, keenness with tenderness, and mystery with both, their
expression, as well as that of her lips, taking its life from some
words just spoken to a companion, and being carried on into his face
quite unconsciously.  She no more observed his presence than that of
the dust-motes which his manipulations raised into the sunbeams.

His closeness to her was so suggestive that he trembled, and turned
his face away with a shy instinct to prevent her recognizing him,
though as she had never once seen him she could not possibly do so;
and might very well never have heard even his name.  He could
perceive that though she was a country-girl at bottom, a latter
girlhood of some years in London, and a womanhood here, had taken
all rawness out of her.

When she was gone he continued his work, reflecting on her.  He had
been so caught by her influence that he had taken no count of her
general mould and build.  He remembered now that she was not a large
figure, that she was light and slight, of the type dubbed elegant.
That was about all he had seen.  There was nothing statuesque in her;
all was nervous motion.  She was mobile, living, yet a painter might
not have called her handsome or beautiful.  But the much that she was
surprised him.  She was quite a long way removed from the rusticity
that was his.  How could one of his cross-grained, unfortunate,
almost accursed stock, have contrived to reach this pitch of
niceness?  London had done it, he supposed.

From this moment the emotion which had been accumulating in his
breast as the bottled-up effect of solitude and the poetized
locality he dwelt in, insensibly began to precipitate itself on this
half-visionary form; and he perceived that, whatever his obedient
wish in a contrary direction, he would soon be unable to resist the
desire to make himself known to her.

He affected to think of her quite in a family way, since there were
crushing reasons why he should not and could not think of her in any
other.

The first reason was that he was married, and it would be wrong.
The second was that they were cousins.  It was not well for cousins
to fall in love even when circumstances seemed to favour the passion.
The third: even were he free, in a family like his own where marriage
usually meant a tragic sadness, marriage with a blood-relation would
duplicate the adverse conditions, and a tragic sadness might be
intensified to a tragic horror.

Therefore, again, he would have to think of Sue with only a
relation's mutual interest in one belonging to him; regard her in
a practical way as some one to be proud of; to talk and nod to;
later on, to be invited to tea by, the emotion spent on her being
rigorously that of a kinsman and well-wisher.  So would she be to him
a kindly star, an elevating power, a companion in Anglican worship,
a tender friend.




But under the various deterrent influences Jude's instinct was to
approach her timidly, and the next Sunday he went to the morning
service in the Cathedral church of Cardinal College to gain a further
view of her, for he had found that she frequently attended there.

She did not come, and he awaited her in the afternoon, which was
finer.  He knew that if she came at all she would approach the
building along the eastern side of the great green quadrangle from
which it was accessible, and he stood in a corner while the bell was
going.  A few minutes before the hour for service she appeared as
one of the figures walking along under the college walls, and at
sight of her he advanced up the side opposite, and followed her into
the building, more than ever glad that he had not as yet revealed
himself.  To see her, and to be himself unseen and unknown, was
enough for him at present.

He lingered awhile in the vestibule, and the service was some way
advanced when he was put into a seat.  It was a louring, mournful,
still afternoon, when a religion of some sort seems a necessity to
ordinary practical men, and not only a luxury of the emotional
and leisured classes.  In the dim light and the baffling glare of
the clerestory windows he could discern the opposite worshippers
indistinctly only, but he saw that Sue was among them.  He had not
long discovered the exact seat that she occupied when the chanting
of the 119th Psalm in which the choir was engaged reached its second
part, _In quo corriget_, the organ changing to a pathetic Gregorian
tune as the singers gave forth:


   Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?


It was the very question that was engaging Jude's attention at this
moment.  What a wicked worthless fellow he had been to give vent as
he had done to an animal passion for a woman, and allow it to lead
to such disastrous consequences; then to think of putting an end to
himself; then to go recklessly and get drunk.  The great waves of
pedal music tumbled round the choir, and, nursed on the supernatural
as he had been, it is not wonderful that he could hardly believe that
the psalm was not specially set by some regardful Providence for this
moment of his first entry into the solemn building.  And yet it was
the ordinary psalm for the twenty-fourth evening of the month.

The girl for whom he was beginning to nourish an extraordinary
tenderness was at this time ensphered by the same harmonies as those
which floated into his ears; and the thought was a delight to him.
She was probably a frequenter of this place, and, steeped body and
soul in church sentiment as she must be by occupation and habit, had,
no doubt, much in common with him.  To an impressionable and lonely
young man the consciousness of having at last found anchorage for
his thoughts, which promised to supply both social and spiritual
possibilities, was like the dew of Hermon, and he remained throughout
the service in a sustaining atmosphere of ecstasy.

Though he was loth to suspect it, some people might have said to him
that the atmosphere blew as distinctly from Cyprus as from Galilee.

Jude waited till she had left her seat and passed under the screen
before he himself moved.  She did not look towards him, and by the
time he reached the door she was half-way down the broad path.
Being dressed up in his Sunday suit he was inclined to follow her
and reveal himself.  But he was not quite ready; and, alas, ought
he to do so with the kind of feeling that was awakening in him?

For though it had seemed to have an ecclesiastical basis during the
service, and he had persuaded himself that such was the case, he
could not altogether be blind to the real nature of the magnetism.
She was such a stranger that the kinship was affectation, and he
said, "It can't be!  I, a man with a wife, must not know her!"  Still
Sue WAS his own kin, and the fact of his having a wife, even though
she was not in evidence in this hemisphere, might be a help in one
sense.  It would put all thought of a tender wish on his part out
of Sue's mind, and make her intercourse with him free and fearless.
It was with some heartache that he saw how little he cared for the
freedom and fearlessness that would result in her from such
knowledge.



Some little time before the date of this service in the cathedral the
pretty, liquid-eyed, light-footed young woman, Sue Bridehead, had an
afternoon's holiday, and leaving the ecclesiastical establishment in
which she not only assisted but lodged, took a walk into the country
with a book in her hand.  It was one of those cloudless days which
sometimes occur in Wessex and elsewhere between days of cold and wet,
as if intercalated by caprice of the weather-god.  She went along for
a mile or two until she came to much higher ground than that of the
city she had left behind her.  The road passed between green fields,
and coming to a stile Sue paused there, to finish the page she was
reading, and then looked back at the towers and domes and pinnacles
new and old.

On the other side of the stile, in the footpath, she beheld a
foreigner with black hair and a sallow face, sitting on the grass
beside a large square board whereon were fixed, as closely as they
could stand, a number of plaster statuettes, some of them bronzed,
which he was re-arranging before proceeding with them on his way.
They were in the main reduced copies of ancient marbles, and
comprised divinities of a very different character from those the
girl was accustomed to see portrayed, among them being a Venus of
standard pattern, a Diana, and, of the other sex, Apollo, Bacchus,
and Mars.  Though the figures were many yards away from her the
south-west sun brought them out so brilliantly against the green
herbage that she could discern their contours with luminous
distinctness; and being almost in a line between herself and the
church towers of the city they awoke in her an oddly foreign and
contrasting set of ideas by comparison.  The man rose, and, seeing
her, politely took off his cap, and cried, "I-i-i-mages!" in an accent
that agreed with his appearance.  In a moment he dexterously lifted
upon his knee the great board with its assembled notabilities divine
and human, and raised it to the top of his head, bringing them on to
her and resting the board on the stile.  First he offered her his
smaller wares--the busts of kings and queens, then a minstrel, then
a winged Cupid.  She shook her head.

"How much are these two?" she said, touching with her finger the
Venus and the Apollo--the largest figures on the tray.

He said she should have them for ten shillings.

"I cannot afford that," said Sue.  She offered considerably less,
and to her surprise the image-man drew them from their wire stay and
handed them over the stile.  She clasped them as treasures.

When they were paid for, and the man had gone, she began to be
concerned as to what she should do with them.  They seemed so very
large now that they were in her possession, and so very naked.
Being of a nervous temperament she trembled at her enterprise.
When she handled them the white pipeclay came off on her gloves and
jacket.  After carrying them along a little way openly an idea came
to her, and, pulling some huge burdock leaves, parsley, and other
rank growths from the hedge, she wrapped up her burden as well as she
could in these, so that what she carried appeared to be an enormous
armful of green stuff gathered by a zealous lover of nature.

"Well, anything is better than those everlasting church fallals!" she
said.  But she was still in a trembling state, and seemed almost to
wish she had not bought the figures.

Occasionally peeping inside the leaves to see that Venus's arm was
not broken, she entered with her heathen load into the most Christian
city in the country by an obscure street running parallel to the main
one, and round a corner to the side door of the establishment to
which she was attached.  Her purchases were taken straight up to her
own chamber, and she at once attempted to lock them in a box that was
her very own property; but finding them too cumbersome she wrapped
them in large sheets of brown paper, and stood them on the floor in a
corner.

The mistress of the house, Miss Fontover, was an elderly lady in
spectacles, dressed almost like an abbess; a dab at Ritual, as become
one of her business, and a worshipper at the ceremonial church of St.
Silas, in the suburb of Beersheba before-mentioned, which Jude also
had begun to attend.  She was the daughter of a clergyman in reduced
circumstances, and at his death, which had occurred several years
before this date, she boldly avoided penury by taking over a little
shop of church requisites and developing it to its present creditable
proportions.  She wore a cross and beads round her neck as her only
ornament, and knew the Christian Year by heart.

She now came to call Sue to tea, and, finding that the girl did not
respond for a moment, entered the room just as the other was hastily
putting a string round each parcel.

"Something you have been buying, Miss Bridehead?" she asked,
regarding the enwrapped objects.

"Yes--just something to ornament my room," said Sue.

"Well, I should have thought I had put enough here already," said
Miss Fontover, looking round at the Gothic-framed prints of saints,
the Church-text scrolls, and other articles which, having become too
stale to sell, had been used to furnish this obscure chamber.  "What
is it?  How bulky!"  She tore a little hole, about as big as a wafer,
in the brown paper, and tried to peep in.  "Why, statuary?  Two
figures?  Where did you get them?"

"Oh--I bought them of a travelling man who sells casts--"

"Two saints?"

"Yes."

"What ones?"

"St. Peter and St.--St. Mary Magdalen."

"Well--now come down to tea, and go and finish that organ-text, if
there's light enough afterwards."

These little obstacles to the indulgence of what had been the merest
passing fancy created in Sue a great zest for unpacking her objects
and looking at them; and at bedtime, when she was sure of being
undisturbed, she unrobed the divinities in comfort.  Placing the pair
of figures on the chest of drawers, a candle on each side of them,
she withdrew to the bed, flung herself down thereon, and began
reading a book she had taken from her box, which Miss Fontover knew
nothing of.  It was a volume of Gibbon, and she read the chapter
dealing with the reign of Julian the Apostate.  Occasionally she
looked up at the statuettes, which appeared strange and out of place,
there happening to be a Calvary print hanging between them, and,
as if the scene suggested the action, she at length jumped up and
withdrew another book from her box--a volume of verse--and turned to
the familiar poem--


   Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean:
   The world has grown grey from thy breath!


which she read to the end.  Presently she put out the candles,
undressed, and finally extinguished her own light.

She was of an age which usually sleeps soundly, yet to-night she
kept waking up, and every time she opened her eyes there was enough
diffused light from the street to show her the white plaster figures,
standing on the chest of drawers in odd contrast to their environment
of text and martyr, and the Gothic-framed Crucifix-picture that was
only discernible now as a Latin cross, the figure thereon being
obscured by the shades.

On one of these occasions the church clocks struck some small hour.
It fell upon the ears of another person who sat bending over his
books at a not very distant spot in the same city.  Being Saturday
night the morrow was one on which Jude had not set his alarm-clock to
call him at his usually early time, and hence he had stayed up, as
was his custom, two or three hours later than he could afford to do
on any other day of the week.  Just then he was earnestly reading
from his Griesbach's text.  At the very time that Sue was tossing and
staring at her figures, the policeman and belated citizens passing
along under his window might have heard, if they had stood still,
strange syllables mumbled with fervour within--words that had for
Jude an indescribable enchantment: inexplicable sounds something
like these:--

"_All hemin heis Theos ho Pater, ex hou ta panta, kai hemeis eis
auton:_"

Till the sounds rolled with reverent loudness, as a book was heard
to close:--

"_Kai heis Kurios Iesous Christos, di hou ta panta kai hemeis di
autou!_"

 Jude's first concern is a job, though his working is to be done only as a way of supporting himself until he can enter the university. He goes to apply to a stonemason recommended by his employer in Alfredston. While there, he notices that the workmen are doing only copying and patching, not realizing that medieval building is coming to an end. He decides, while waiting to hear about the job, not to look up either Sue or Phillotson as yet. Now actually in Christminster he sees how really far away he is from realizing his dream, but he takes the job when offered and sets to work studying late into the night, as before not knowing what the best way is to go about it. By means of word from his aunt he comes upon Sue working in an ecclesiastical warehouse; though he is struck by her appearance and the work she is doing he doesn't speak to her. Nor does he when he sees her on the street. He decides he must think of Sue only as a relative for several reasons: he is married; it is not good for cousins to fall in love; and the family's bad luck in marriage would be even worse with a blood relative. Though Jude sees Sue at a church service, at the moment feeling repentant of his sensual interest in Arabella, he does not reveal himself to her because he isn't sure of his motives for wanting to know her. Earlier than this incident, while on an afternoon's holiday Sue has bought plaster reproductions of statues of Venus and Apollo. Once home with them -- she lives where she works -- she doesn't know how to conceal them from the very pious woman who is both her employer and landlady. When the lady sees them wrapped in a corner of her room, Sue refers to them as saints. Alone in her room later, she places the figures on a chest of drawers in front of a print of a crucifixion, from time to time looking up at them from her copy of Gibbon. In another part of the city Jude is earnestly reading his Greek Testament.

