"Of course not. I fondly thought at first that you felt as I do
about that, as you were so mixed up in Christminster Anglicanism.
And Mr. Phillotson--"
"I have no respect for Christminster whatever, except, in a qualified
degree, on its intellectual side," said Sue Bridehead earnestly. "My
friend I spoke of took that out of me. He was the most irreligious
man I ever knew, and the most moral. And intellect at Christminster
is new wine in old bottles. The mediaevalism of Christminster must
go, be sloughed off, or Christminster itself will have to go. To
be sure, at times one couldn't help having a sneaking liking for
the traditions of the old faith, as preserved by a section of the
thinkers there in touching and simple sincerity; but when I was in my
saddest, rightest mind I always felt,
'O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!'"...
"Sue, you are not a good friend of mine to talk like that!"
"Then I won't, dear Jude!" The emotional throat-note had come back,
and she turned her face away.
"I still think Christminster has much that is glorious; though I
was resentful because I couldn't get there." He spoke gently, and
resisted his impulse to pique her on to tears.
"It is an ignorant place, except as to the townspeople, artizans,
drunkards, and paupers," she said, perverse still at his differing
from her. "THEY see life as it is, of course; but few of the people
in the colleges do. You prove it in your own person. You are one
of the very men Christminster was intended for when the colleges
were founded; a man with a passion for learning, but no money, or
opportunities, or friends. But you were elbowed off the pavement
by the millionaires' sons."
"Well, I can do without what it confers. I care for something
higher."
"And I for something broader, truer," she insisted. "At present
intellect in Christminster is pushing one way, and religion the
other; and so they stand stock-still, like two rams butting each
other."
"What would Mr. Phillotson--"
"It is a place full of fetishists and ghost-seers!"
He noticed that whenever he tried to speak of the schoolmaster she
turned the conversation to some generalizations about the offending
university. Jude was extremely, morbidly, curious about her life as
Phillotson's _protegee_ and betrothed; yet she would not enlighten
him.
"Well, that's just what I am, too," he said. "I am fearful of life,
spectre-seeing always."