"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!"