Chapter: On their arrival the station was lively with straw-hatted young men,
welcoming young girls who bore a remarkable family likeness to their
welcomers, and who were dressed up in the brightest and lightest of
raiment.

"The place seems gay," said Sue.  "Why--it is Remembrance
Day!--Jude--how sly of you--you came to-day on purpose!"

"Yes," said Jude quietly, as he took charge of the small child, and
told Arabella's boy to keep close to them, Sue attending to their own
eldest.  "I thought we might as well come to-day as on any other."

"But I am afraid it will depress you!" she said, looking anxiously at
him up and down.

"Oh, I mustn't let it interfere with our business; and we have a good
deal to do before we shall be settled here.  The first thing is
lodgings."

Having left their luggage and his tools at the station they proceeded
on foot up the familiar street, the holiday people all drifting in
the same direction.  Reaching the Fourways they were about to turn
off to where accommodation was likely to be found when, looking at
the clock and the hurrying crowd, Jude said: "Let us go and see the
procession, and never mind the lodgings just now.  We can get them
afterwards."

"Oughtn't we to get a house over our heads first?" she asked.

But his soul seemed full of the anniversary, and together they went
down Chief Street, their smallest child in Jude's arms, Sue leading
her little girl, and Arabella's boy walking thoughtfully and silently
beside them.  Crowds of pretty sisters in airy costumes, and meekly
ignorant parents who had known no college in their youth, were under
convoy in the same direction by brothers and sons bearing the opinion
written large on them that no properly qualified human beings had
lived on earth till they came to grace it here and now.

"My failure is reflected on me by every one of those young
fellows," said Jude.  "A lesson on presumption is awaiting me
to-day!--Humiliation Day for me! ...  If you, my dear darling, hadn't
come to my rescue, I should have gone to the dogs with despair!"

She saw from his face that he was getting into one of his
tempestuous, self-harrowing moods.  "It would have been better if we
had gone at once about our own affairs, dear," she answered.  "I am
sure this sight will awaken old sorrows in you, and do no good!"

"Well--we are near; we will see it now," said he.

They turned in on the left by the church with the Italian porch,
whose helical columns were heavily draped with creepers, and pursued
the lane till there arose on Jude's sight the circular theatre with
that well-known lantern above it, which stood in his mind as the sad
symbol of his abandoned hopes, for it was from that outlook that he
had finally surveyed the City of Colleges on the afternoon of his
great meditation, which convinced him at last of the futility of his
attempt to be a son of the university.

To-day, in the open space stretching between this building and the
nearest college, stood a crowd of expectant people.  A passage was
kept clear through their midst by two barriers of timber, extending
from the door of the college to the door of the large building
between it and the theatre.

"Here is the place--they are just going to pass!" cried Jude in
sudden excitement.  And pushing his way to the front he took up a
position close to the barrier, still hugging the youngest child in
his arms, while Sue and the others kept immediately behind him.
The crowd filled in at their back, and fell to talking, joking, and
laughing as carriage after carriage drew up at the lower door of
the college, and solemn stately figures in blood-red robes began to
alight.  The sky had grown overcast and livid, and thunder rumbled
now and then.

Father Time shuddered.  "It do seem like the Judgment Day!" he
whispered.

"They are only learned Doctors," said Sue.

While they waited big drops of rain fell on their heads and
shoulders, and the delay grew tedious.  Sue again wished not to stay.

"They won't be long now," said Jude, without turning his head.

But the procession did not come forth, and somebody in the crowd, to
pass the time, looked at the facade of the nearest college, and said
he wondered what was meant by the Latin inscription in its midst.
Jude, who stood near the inquirer, explained it, and finding that
the people all round him were listening with interest, went on to
describe the carving of the frieze (which he had studied years
before), and to criticize some details of masonry in other college
fronts about the city.

The idle crowd, including the two policemen at the doors, stared like
the Lycaonians at Paul, for Jude was apt to get too enthusiastic over
any subject in hand, and they seemed to wonder how the stranger
should know more about the buildings of their town than they
themselves did; till one of them said: "Why, I know that man; he used
to work here years ago--Jude Fawley, that's his name!  Don't you mind
he used to be nicknamed Tutor of St. Slums, d'ye mind?--because he
aimed at that line o' business?  He's married, I suppose, then, and
that's his child he's carrying.  Taylor would know him, as he knows
everybody."

The speaker was a man named Jack Stagg, with whom Jude had formerly
worked in repairing the college masonries; Tinker Taylor was seen to
be standing near.  Having his attention called the latter cried
across the barriers to Jude: "You've honoured us by coming back
again, my friend!"

Jude nodded.

"An' you don't seem to have done any great things for yourself by
going away?"

Jude assented to this also.

"Except found more mouths to fill!"  This came in a new voice, and
Jude recognized its owner to be Uncle Joe, another mason whom he had
known.

Jude replied good-humouredly that he could not dispute it; and from
remark to remark something like a general conversation arose between
him and the crowd of idlers, during which Tinker Taylor asked Jude if
he remembered the Apostles' Creed in Latin still, and the night of
the challenge in the public house.

"But Fortune didn't lie that way?" threw in Joe.  "Yer powers wasn't
enough to carry 'ee through?"

"Don't answer them any more!" entreated Sue.

"I don't think I like Christminster!" murmured little Time
mournfully, as he stood submerged and invisible in the crowd.

But finding himself the centre of curiosity, quizzing, and comment,
Jude was not inclined to shrink from open declarations of what he
had no great reason to be ashamed of; and in a little while was
stimulated to say in a loud voice to the listening throng generally:

"It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man--that
question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing
at the present moment in these uprising times--whether to follow
uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his
aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and
re-shape his course accordingly.  I tried to do the latter, and I
failed.  But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a
wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though
that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays--I mean, not by their
essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes.  If I had
ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that
we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: 'See how
wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!'  But
having ended no better than I began they say: 'See what a fool that
fellow was in following a freak of his fancy!'

"However it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be
beaten.  It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do
in one; and my impulses--affections--vices perhaps they should be
called--were too strong not to hamper a man without advantages; who
should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a
really good chance of being one of his country's worthies.  You may
ridicule me--I am quite willing that you should--I am a fit subject,
no doubt.  But I think if you knew what I have gone through these
last few years you would rather pity me.  And if they knew"--he
nodded towards the college at which the dons were severally
arriving--"it is just possible they would do the same."

"He do look ill and worn-out, it is true!" said a woman.

Sue's face grew more emotional; but though she stood close to Jude
she was screened.

"I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a
frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral
story," continued Jude, beginning to grow bitter, though he had
opened serenely enough.  "I was, perhaps, after all, a paltry victim
to the spirit of mental and social restlessness that makes so many
unhappy in these days!"

"Don't tell them that!" whispered Sue with tears, at perceiving
Jude's state of mind.  "You weren't that.  You struggled nobly to
acquire knowledge, and only the meanest souls in the world would
blame you!"

Jude shifted the child into a more easy position on his arm, and
concluded: "And what I appear, a sick and poor man, is not the worst
of me.  I am in a chaos of principles--groping in the dark--acting by
instinct and not after example.  Eight or nine years ago when I came
here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped
away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am.  I doubt
if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following
inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give
pleasure to those I love best.  There, gentlemen, since you wanted to
know how I was getting on, I have told you.  Much good may it do you!
I cannot explain further here.  I perceive there is something wrong
somewhere in our social formulas: what it is can only be discovered
by men or women with greater insight than mine--if, indeed, they ever
discover it--at least in our time.  'For who knoweth what is good for
man in this life?--and who can tell a man what shall be after him
under the sun?'"

"Hear, hear," said the populace.

"Well preached!" said Tinker Taylor.  And privately to his
neighbours: "Why, one of them jobbing pa'sons swarming about here,
that takes the services when our head reverends want a holiday,
wouldn't ha' discoursed such doctrine for less than a guinea down.
Hey?  I'll take my oath not one o' 'em would!  And then he must have
had it wrote down for 'n.  And this only a working-man!"

As a sort of objective commentary on Jude's remarks there drove up
at this moment with a belated Doctor, robed and panting, a cab whose
horse failed to stop at the exact point required for setting down the
hirer, who jumped out and entered the door.  The driver, alighting,
began to kick the animal in the belly.

"If that can be done," said Jude, "at college gates in the most
religious and educational city in the world, what shall we say as to
how far we've got?"

"Order!" said one of the policemen, who had been engaged with a
comrade in opening the large doors opposite the college.  "Keep yer
tongue quiet, my man, while the procession passes."  The rain came on
more heavily, and all who had umbrellas opened them.  Jude was not
one of these, and Sue only possessed a small one, half sunshade.  She
had grown pale, though Jude did not notice it then.

"Let us go on, dear," she whispered, endeavouring to shelter him.
"We haven't any lodgings yet, remember, and all our things are at the
station; and you are by no means well yet.  I am afraid this wet will
hurt you!"

"They are coming now.  Just a moment, and I'll go!" said he.

A peal of six bells struck out, human faces began to crowd the
windows around, and the procession of heads of houses and new Doctors
emerged, their red and black gowned forms passing across the field of
Jude's vision like inaccessible planets across an object-glass.

As they went their names were called by knowing informants, and when
they reached the old round theatre of Wren a cheer rose high.

"Let's go that way!" cried Jude, and though it now rained steadily
he seemed not to know it, and took them round to the theatre.  Here
they stood upon the straw that was laid to drown the discordant noise
of wheels, where the quaint and frost-eaten stone busts encircling
the building looked with pallid grimness on the proceedings, and in
particular at the bedraggled Jude, Sue, and their children, as at
ludicrous persons who had no business there.

"I wish I could get in!" he said to her fervidly.  "Listen--I may
catch a few words of the Latin speech by staying here; the windows
are open."

However, beyond the peals of the organ, and the shouts and hurrahs
between each piece of oratory, Jude's standing in the wet did not
bring much Latin to his intelligence more than, now and then, a
sonorous word in _um_ or _ibus_.

"Well--I'm an outsider to the end of my days!" he sighed after a
while.  "Now I'll go, my patient Sue.  How good of you to wait in the
rain all this time--to gratify my infatuation!  I'll never care any
more about the infernal cursed place, upon my soul I won't!  But what
made you tremble so when we were at the barrier?  And how pale you
are, Sue!"

"I saw Richard amongst the people on the other side."

"Ah--did you!"

"He is evidently come up to Jerusalem to see the festival like the
rest of us: and on that account is probably living not so very far
away.  He had the same hankering for the university that you had, in
a milder form.  I don't think he saw me, though he must have heard
you speaking to the crowd.  But he seemed not to notice."

"Well--suppose he did.  Your mind is free from worries about him now,
my Sue?"

"Yes, I suppose so.  But I am weak.  Although I know it is all right
with our plans, I felt a curious dread of him; an awe, or terror, of
conventions I don't believe in.  It comes over me at times like a
sort of creeping paralysis, and makes me so sad!"

"You are getting tired, Sue.  Oh--I forgot, darling!  Yes, we'll go
on at once."

They started in quest of the lodging, and at last found something
that seemed to promise well, in Mildew Lane--a spot which to Jude was
irresistible--though to Sue it was not so fascinating--a narrow lane
close to the back of a college, but having no communication with
it.  The little houses were darkened to gloom by the high collegiate
buildings, within which life was so far removed from that of the
people in the lane as if it had been on opposite sides of the globe;
yet only a thickness of wall divided them.  Two or three of the
houses had notices of rooms to let, and the newcomers knocked at the
door of one, which a woman opened.

"Ah--listen!" said Jude suddenly, instead of addressing her.

"What?"

"Why the bells--what church can that be?  The tones are familiar."

Another peal of bells had begun to sound out at some distance off.

"I don't know!" said the landlady tartly.  "Did you knock to ask
that?"

"No; for lodgings," said Jude, coming to himself.

The householder scrutinized Sue's figure a moment.  "We haven't any
to let," said she, shutting the door.

Jude looked discomfited, and the boy distressed.  "Now, Jude," said
Sue, "let me try.  You don't know the way."

They found a second place hard by; but here the occupier, observing
not only Sue, but the boy and the small children, said civilly, "I am
sorry to say we don't let where there are children"; and also closed
the door.

The small child squared its mouth and cried silently, with an
instinct that trouble loomed.  The boy sighed.  "I don't like
Christminster!" he said.  "Are the great old houses gaols?"

"No; colleges," said Jude; "which perhaps you'll study in some day."

"I'd rather not!" the boy rejoined.

"Now we'll try again," said Sue.  "I'll pull my cloak more round
me...  Leaving Kennetbridge for this place is like coming from
Caiaphas to Pilate! ...  How do I look now, dear?"

"Nobody would notice it now," said Jude.

There was one other house, and they tried a third time.  The woman
here was more amiable; but she had little room to spare, and could
only agree to take in Sue and the children if her husband could go
elsewhere.  This arrangement they perforce adopted, in the stress
from delaying their search till so late.  They came to terms with
her, though her price was rather high for their pockets.  But they
could not afford to be critical till Jude had time to get a more
permanent abode; and in this house Sue took possession of a back room
on the second floor with an inner closet-room for the children.  Jude
stayed and had a cup of tea; and was pleased to find that the window
commanded the back of another of the colleges.  Kissing all four he
went to get a few necessaries and look for lodgings for himself.

When he was gone the landlady came up to talk a little with Sue, and
gather something of the circumstances of the family she had taken in.
Sue had not the art of prevarication, and, after admitting several
facts as to their late difficulties and wanderings, she was startled
by the landlady saying suddenly:

"Are you really a married woman?"

Sue hesitated; and then impulsively told the woman that her husband
and herself had each been unhappy in their first marriages, after
which, terrified at the thought of a second irrevocable union, and
lest the conditions of the contract should kill their love, yet
wishing to be together, they had literally not found the courage
to repeat it, though they had attempted it two or three times.
Therefore, though in her own sense of the words she was a married
woman, in the landlady's sense she was not.

The housewife looked embarrassed, and went downstairs.  Sue sat by
the window in a reverie, watching the rain.  Her quiet was broken by
the noise of someone entering the house, and then the voices of a
man and woman in conversation in the passage below.  The landlady's
husband had arrived, and she was explaining to him the incoming of
the lodgers during his absence.

His voice rose in sudden anger.  "Now who wants such a woman here?
and perhaps a confinement! ...  Besides, didn't I say I wouldn't have
children?  The hall and stairs fresh painted, to be kicked about by
them!  You must have known all was not straight with 'em--coming like
that.  Taking in a family when I said a single man."

The wife expostulated, but, as it seemed, the husband insisted on
his point; for presently a tap came to Sue's door, and the woman
appeared.

"I am sorry to tell you, ma'am," she said, "that I can't let you have
the room for the week after all.  My husband objects; and therefore
I must ask you to go.  I don't mind your staying over to-night, as
it is getting late in the afternoon; but I shall be glad if you can
leave early in the morning."

Though she knew that she was entitled to the lodging for a week, Sue
did not wish to create a disturbance between the wife and husband,
and she said she would leave as requested.  When the landlady had
gone Sue looked out of the window again.  Finding that the rain had
ceased she proposed to the boy that, after putting the little ones
to bed, they should go out and search about for another place, and
bespeak it for the morrow, so as not to be so hard-driven then as
they had been that day.

Therefore, instead of unpacking her boxes, which had just been sent
on from the station by Jude, they sallied out into the damp though
not unpleasant streets, Sue resolving not to disturb her husband
with the news of her notice to quit while he was perhaps worried
in obtaining a lodging for himself.  In the company of the boy she
wandered into this street and into that; but though she tried a dozen
different houses she fared far worse alone than she had fared in
Jude's company, and could get nobody to promise her a room for the
following day.  Every householder looked askance at such a woman and
child inquiring for accommodation in the gloom.

"I ought not to be born, ought I?" said the boy with misgiving.

Thoroughly tired at last Sue returned to the place where she was
not welcome, but where at least she had temporary shelter.  In her
absence Jude had left his address; but knowing how weak he still was
she adhered to her determination not to disturb him till the next
day.

 Over two years have passed. Jude and Sue lead a wandering life, stopping wherever Jude can find work as a mason. However, he refuses to do any church work. At the little town of Kennetbridge, Arabella and Anny arrive one day. Arabella is now widowed and is in mourning and has come to Kennetbridge to see the laying of a foundation stone of a new chapel. She claims that she has now turned to religion for consolation. She suddenly spots Sue and Little Father Time selling cakes and gingerbread at a stall at the fair. She questions Sue and learns that Jude was very ill that winter, and they have therefore tried their hand at baking in an attempt to earn a living. Sue now has two children of her own and is expecting a third. The cakes Jude makes are shaped like Christminster colleges, with towers and pinnacles and traceried windows, indicating that Jude still has a passion for Christminster.

