By this time the horses had recovered breath and bent to their
collars again. Jude, throwing a last adoring look at the distant
halo, turned and walked beside his remarkably well-informed friend,
who had no objection to telling him as they moved on more yet of
the city--its towers and halls and churches. The waggon turned
into a cross-road, whereupon Jude thanked the carter warmly for his
information, and said he only wished he could talk half as well about
Christminster as he.
"Well, 'tis oonly what has come in my way," said the carter
unboastfully. "I've never been there, no more than you; but I've
picked up the knowledge here and there, and you be welcome to it.
A-getting about the world as I do, and mixing with all classes of
society, one can't help hearing of things. A friend o' mine, that
used to clane the boots at the Crozier Hotel in Christminster when he
was in his prime, why, I knowed un as well as my own brother in his
later years."
Jude continued his walk homeward alone, pondering so deeply that
he forgot to feel timid. He suddenly grew older. It had been the
yearning of his heart to find something to anchor on, to cling
to--for some place which he could call admirable. Should he find
that place in this city if he could get there? Would it be a spot in
which, without fear of farmers, or hindrance, or ridicule, he could
watch and wait, and set himself to some mighty undertaking like the
men of old of whom he had heard? As the halo had been to his eyes
when gazing at it a quarter of an hour earlier, so was the spot
mentally to him as he pursued his dark way.
"It is a city of light," he said to himself.
"The tree of knowledge grows there," he added a few steps further on.
"It is a place that teachers of men spring from and go to."
"It is what you may call a castle, manned by scholarship and
religion."
After this figure he was silent a long while, till he added: "It would just suit me."
IV
Walking somewhat slowly by reason of his concentration, the boy--an
ancient man in some phases of thought, much younger than his years
in others--was overtaken by a light-footed pedestrian, whom,
notwithstanding the gloom, he could perceive to be wearing an
extraordinarily tall hat, a swallow-tailed coat, and a watch-chain
that danced madly and threw around scintillations of sky-light as
its owner swung along upon a pair of thin legs and noiseless boots.
Jude, beginning to feel lonely, endeavoured to keep up with him.