"Save his own soul he hath no star."--SWINBURNE.

"Notitiam primosque gradus vicinia fecit;

Tempore crevit amor."--OVID.

I

The next noteworthy move in Jude's life was that in which he appeared

gliding steadily onward through a dusky landscape of some three

years' later leafage than had graced his courtship of Arabella,

and the disruption of his coarse conjugal life with her. He was

walking towards Christminster City, at a point a mile or two to the

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south-west of it.

He had at last found himself clear of Marygreen and Alfredston: he

was out of his apprenticeship, and with his tools at his back seemed

to be in the way of making a new start--the start to which, barring

the interruption involved in his intimacy and married experience with

Arabella, he had been looking forward for about ten years.

Jude would now have been described as a young man with a forcible,

meditative, and earnest rather than handsome cast of countenance.

He was of dark complexion, with dark harmonizing eyes, and he wore

a closely trimmed black beard of more advanced growth than is usual

at his age; this, with his great mass of black curly hair, was some

trouble to him in combing and washing out the stone-dust that settled

on it in the pursuit of his trade. His capabilities in the latter,

having been acquired in the country, were of an all-round sort,

including monumental stone-cutting, gothic free-stone work for the

restoration of churches, and carving of a general kind. In London

he would probably have become specialized and have made himself a

"moulding mason," a "foliage sculptor"--perhaps a "statuary."

He had that afternoon driven in a cart from Alfredston to the village

nearest the city in this direction, and was now walking the remaining

four miles rather from choice than from necessity, having always

fancied himself arriving thus.

The ultimate impulse to come had had a curious origin--one more

nearly related to the emotional side of him than to the intellectual,

as is often the case with young men. One day while in lodgings at

Alfredston he had gone to Marygreen to see his old aunt, and had

observed between the brass candlesticks on her mantlepiece the

photograph of a pretty girlish face, in a broad hat with radiating

folds under the brim like the rays of a halo. He had asked who she

was. His grand-aunt had gruffly replied that she was his cousin

Sue Bridehead, of the inimical branch of the family; and on further

questioning the old woman had replied that the girl lived in

Christminster, though she did not know where, or what she was doing.




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