Jude the Obscure | Page 4

beside his box of books and other
IMPEDIMENTA, and bade his friends good-bye.
"I shan't forget you, Jude," he said, smiling, as the cart moved off. "Be
a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all
you can. And if ever you come to Christminster remember you hunt me
out for old acquaintance' sake."
The cart creaked across the green, and disappeared round the corner by
the rectory-house. The boy returned to the draw-well at the edge of the

greensward, where he had left his buckets when he went to help his
patron and teacher in the loading. There was a quiver in his lip now and
after opening the well-cover to begin lowering the bucket he paused
and leant with his forehead and arms against the framework, his face
wearing the fixity of a thoughtful child's who has felt the pricks of life
somewhat before his time. The well into which he was looking was as
ancient as the village itself, and from his present position appeared as a
long circular perspective ending in a shining disk of quivering water at
a distance of a hundred feet down. There was a lining of green moss
near the top, and nearer still the hart's-tongue fern.
He said to himself, in the melodramatic tones of a whimsical boy, that
the schoolmaster had drawn at that well scores of times on a morning
like this, and would never draw there any more. "I've seen him look
down into it, when he was tired with his drawing, just as I do now, and
when he rested a bit before carrying the buckets home! But he was too
clever to bide here any longer-- a small sleepy place like this!"
A tear rolled from his eye into the depths of the well. The morning was
a little foggy, and the boy's breathing unfurled itself as a thicker fog
upon the still and heavy air. His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden
outcry:
"Bring on that water, will ye, you idle young harlican!"
It came from an old woman who had emerged from her door towards
the garden gate of a green-thatched cottage not far off. The boy quickly
waved a signal of assent, drew the water with what was a great effort
for one of his stature, landed and emptied the big bucket into his own
pair of smaller ones, and pausing a moment for breath, started with
them across the patch of clammy greensward whereon the well stood--
nearly in the centre of the little village, or rather hamlet of Marygreen.
It was as old-fashioned as it was small, and it rested in the lap of an
undulating upland adjoining the North Wessex downs. Old as it was,
however, the well-shaft was probably the only relic of the local history
that remained absolutely unchanged. Many of the thatched and
dormered dwelling-houses had been pulled down of late years, and

many trees felled on the green. Above all, the original church,
hump-backed, wood-turreted, and quaintly hipped, had been taken
down, and either cracked up into heaps of road-metal in the lane, or
utilized as pig-sty walls, garden seats, guard-stones to fences, and
rockeries in the flower-beds of the neighbourhood. In place of it a tall
new building of modern Gothic design, unfamiliar to English eyes, had
been erected on a new piece of ground by a certain obliterator of
historic records who had run down from London and back in a day. The
site whereon so long had stood the ancient temple to the Christian
divinities was not even recorded on the green and level grass-plot that
had immemorially been the churchyard, the obliterated graves being
commemorated by eighteen-penny castiron crosses warranted to last
five years.

II
SLENDER as was Jude Fawley's frame he bore the two brimming
house-buckets of water to the cottage without resting. Over the door
was a little rectangular piece of blue board, on which was painted in
yellow letters, "Drusilla Fawley, Baker." Within the little lead panes of
the window--this being one of the few old houses left--were five bottles
of sweets, and three buns on a plate of the willow pattern.
While emptying the buckets at the back of the house he could hear an
animated conversation in progress within-doors between his great-aunt,
the Drusilla of the sign-board, and some other villagers. Having seen
the school-master depart, they were summing up particulars of the
event, and indulging in predictions of his future.
"And who's he?" asked one, comparatively a stranger, when the boy
entered.
"Well ye med ask it, Mrs. Williams. He's my great-nephew--come since
you was last this way." The old inhabitant who answered was a tall,
gaunt woman, who spoke tragically on the most trivial subject, and
gave a phrase of her