Part 72 (1/2)
”Stupid fancies. I see, in a way, those spirits of the dead again, on this my last walk, that I saw when I first walked here!”
”What a curious chap you are!”
”I seem to see them, and almost hear them rustling. But I don't revere all of them as I did then. I don't believe in half of them. The theologians, the apologists, and their kin the metaphysicians, the high-handed statesmen, and others, no longer interest me. All that has been spoilt for me by the grind of stern reality!”
The expression of Jude's corpselike face in the watery lamplight was indeed as if he saw people where there was n.o.body. At moments he stood still by an archway, like one watching a figure walk out; then he would look at a window like one discerning a familiar face behind it. He seemed to hear voices, whose words he repeated as if to gather their meaning.
”They seem laughing at me!”
”Who?”
”Oh-I was talking to myself! The phantoms all about here, in the college archways, and windows. They used to look friendly in the old days, particularly Addison, and Gibbon, and Johnson, and Dr. Browne, and Bishop Ken-”
”Come along do! Phantoms! There's neither living nor dead hereabouts except a d.a.m.n 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 a.s.sist 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!”
”Pshoo-you've got no body to speak of! You put me more in mind of a sperrit. But there seems something wrong to-night, my dear. Husband cross?”
”No. He never is. He's gone to bed early.”
”Then what is it?”