Jude the Obsure

"Come along do! Phantoms! There's neither living nor dead

hereabouts except a damn policeman! I never saw the streets

emptier."

"Fancy! The Poet of Liberty used to walk here, and the great

Dissector of Melancholy there!"

"I don't want to hear about 'em! They bore me."

"Walter Raleigh is beckoning to me from that lane--Wycliffe--Harvey--

Hooker--Arnold--and a whole crowd of Tractarian Shades--"

"I DON'T WANT to know their names, I tell you! What do I care about

folk dead and gone? Upon my soul you are more sober when you've been

drinking than when you have not!"

"I must rest a moment," he said; and as he paused, holding to the

railings, he measured with his eye the height of a college front.

"This is old Rubric. And that Sarcophagus; and Up that lane Crozier

and Tudor: and all down there is Cardinal with its long front, and

its windows with lifted eyebrows, representing the polite surprise of

the university at the efforts of such as I."

"Come along, and I'll treat you!"

"Very well. It will help me home, for I feel the chilly fog from

the meadows of Cardinal as if death-claws were grabbing me through

and through. As Antigone said, I am neither a dweller among men nor

ghosts. But, Arabella, when I am dead, you'll see my spirit flitting

up and down here among these!"

"Pooh! You mayn't die after all. You are tough enough yet, old

man."

It was night at Marygreen, and the rain of the afternoon showed no

sign of abatement. About the time at which Jude and Arabella were

walking the streets of Christminster homeward, the Widow Edlin

crossed the green, and opened the back door of the schoolmaster's

dwelling, which she often did now before bedtime, to assist Sue in

putting things away.

Sue was muddling helplessly in the kitchen, for she was not a good

housewife, though she tried to be, and grew impatient of domestic

details.

"Lord love 'ee, what do ye do that yourself for, when I've come o'

purpose! You knew I should come."

"Oh--I don't know--I forgot! No, I didn't forget. I did it to

discipline myself. I have scrubbed the stairs since eight o'clock.

I MUST practise myself in my household duties. I've shamefully

neglected them!"

"Why should ye? He'll get a better school, perhaps be a parson, in

time, and you'll keep two servants. 'Tis a pity to spoil them pretty

hands."

"Don't talk of my pretty hands, Mrs. Edlin. This pretty body of mine

has been the ruin of me already!"