The speaker was a man named Jack Stagg, with whom Jude had formerly
worked in repairing the college masonries; Tinker Taylor was seen to
be standing near. Having his attention called the latter cried
across the barriers to Jude: "You've honoured us by coming back
again, my friend!"
Jude nodded.
"An' you don't seem to have done any great things for yourself by
going away?"
Jude assented to this also.
"Except found more mouths to fill!" This came in a new voice, and
Jude recognized its owner to be Uncle Joe, another mason whom he had
known.
Jude replied good-humouredly that he could not dispute it; and from
remark to remark something like a general conversation arose between
him and the crowd of idlers, during which Tinker Taylor asked Jude if
he remembered the Apostles' Creed in Latin still, and the night of
the challenge in the public house.
"But Fortune didn't lie that way?" threw in Joe. "Yer powers wasn't
enough to carry 'ee through?"
"Don't answer them any more!" entreated Sue.
"I don't think I like Christminster!" murmured little Time
mournfully, as he stood submerged and invisible in the crowd.
But finding himself the centre of curiosity, quizzing, and comment,
Jude was not inclined to shrink from open declarations of what he
had no great reason to be ashamed of; and in a little while was
stimulated to say in a loud voice to the listening throng generally: "It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man--that
question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing
at the present moment in these uprising times--whether to follow
uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his
aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and
re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I
failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a
wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though
that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays--I mean, not by their
essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes. If I had
ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that
we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: 'See how
wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!' But
having ended no better than I began they say: 'See what a fool that
fellow was in following a freak of his fancy!' "However it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be
beaten. It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do
in one; and my impulses--affections--vices perhaps they should be
called--were too strong not to hamper a man without advantages; who
should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a
really good chance of being one of his country's worthies. You may
ridicule me--I am quite willing that you should--I am a fit subject,
no doubt. But I think if you knew what I have gone through these
last few years you would rather pity me. And if they knew"--he
nodded towards the college at which the dons were severally
arriving--"it is just possible they would do the same."