Jude the Obscure | Page 8

had so disgraced himself. There was something
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, stealing 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.

III
NOT 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 Ickneild 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 earlier, 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-grey
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 reflection that the higher he got, the further 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."
"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-off city.
He descended from the barn, and abandoning Christminster with the
versatility of his age he walked along the ridge-track, looking 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 forwarded. People
said that, if you prayed, things sometimes came to you, even though
they sometimes did not. He had read in a tract that