Jude the Obsure

His aunt would not give him the photograph. But it haunted him; and

ultimately formed a quickening ingredient in his latent intent of

following his friend the school master thither.

He now paused at the top of a crooked and gentle declivity,

and obtained his first near view of the city. Grey-stoned and

dun-roofed, it stood within hail of the Wessex border, and almost

with the tip of one small toe within it, at the northernmost point of

the crinkled line along which the leisurely Thames strokes the fields

of that ancient kingdom. The buildings now lay quiet in the sunset,

a vane here and there on their many spires and domes giving sparkle

to a picture of sober secondary and tertiary hues.

Reaching the bottom he moved along the level way between pollard

willows growing indistinct in the twilight, and soon confronted the

outmost lamps of the town--some of those lamps which had sent into

the sky the gleam and glory that caught his strained gaze in his days

of dreaming, so many years ago. They winked their yellow eyes at him

dubiously, and as if, though they had been awaiting him all these

years in disappointment at his tarrying, they did not much want him

now.

He was a species of Dick Whittington whose spirit was touched to

finer issues than a mere material gain. He went along the outlying

streets with the cautious tread of an explorer. He saw nothing of

the real city in the suburbs on this side. His first want being a

lodging he scrutinized carefully such localities as seemed to offer

on inexpensive terms the modest type of accommodation he demanded;

and after inquiry took a room in a suburb nicknamed "Beersheba,"

though he did not know this at the time. Here he installed himself,

and having had some tea sallied forth.

It was a windy, whispering, moonless night. To guide himself he

opened under a lamp a map he had brought. The breeze ruffled and

fluttered it, but he could see enough to decide on the direction he

should take to reach the heart of the place.

After many turnings he came up to the first ancient mediaeval pile

that he had encountered. It was a college, as he could see by the

gateway. He entered it, walked round, and penetrated to dark corners

which no lamplight reached. Close to this college was another; and

a little further on another; and then he began to be encircled as it

were with the breath and sentiment of the venerable city. When he

passed objects out of harmony with its general expression he allowed

his eyes to slip over them as if he did not see them.