by Thomas Hardy
IX
On the platform stood Arabella. She looked him up and down.
"You've been to see her?" she asked.
"I have," said Jude, literally tottering with cold and lassitude.
"Well, now you'd best march along home."
The water ran out of him as he went, and he was compelled to leanagainst the wall to support himself while coughing.
"You've done for yourself by this, young man," said she. "I don'tknow whether you know it."
"Of course I do. I meant to do for myself."
"What--to commit suicide?"
"Certainly."
"Well, I'm blest! Kill yourself for a woman."
"Listen to me, Arabella. You think you are the stronger; and soyou are, in a physical sense, now. You could push me over like anine-pin. You did not send that letter the other day, and I couldnot resent your conduct. But I am not so weak in another way asyou think. I made up my mind that a man confined to his room byinflammation of the lungs, a fellow who had only two wishes left inthe world, to see a particular woman, and then to die, could neatlyaccomplish those two wishes at one stroke by taking this journey inthe rain. That I've done. I have seen her for the last time, andI've finished myself--put an end to a feverish life which ought neverto have been begun!"
"Lord--you do talk lofty! Won't you have something warm to drink?"
"No thank you. Let's get home."
They went along by the silent colleges, and Jude kept stopping.
"What are you looking at?"
"Stupid fancies. I see, in a way, those spirits of the dead again,on this my last walk, that I saw when I first walked here!"
"What a curious chap you are!"
"I seem to see them, and almost hear them rustling. But I don'trevere all of them as I did then. I don't believe in half of them.The theologians, the apologists, and their kin the metaphysicians,the high-handed statesmen, and others, no longer interest me. Allthat has been spoilt for me by the grind of stern reality!"
The expression of Jude's corpselike face in the watery lamplight wasindeed as if he saw people where there was nobody. At moments hestood still by an archway, like one watching a figure walk out; thenhe would look at a window like one discerning a familiar face behindit. He seemed to hear voices, whose words he repeated as if togather their meaning.
"They seem laughing at me!"
"Who?"
"Oh--I was talking to myself! The phantoms all about here, in thecollege archways, and windows. They used to look friendly in the olddays, particularly Addison, and Gibbon, and Johnson, and Dr. Browne,and Bishop Ken--"
"Come along do! Phantoms! There's neither living nor deadhereabouts except a damn policeman! I never saw the streetsemptier."
"Fancy! The Poet of Liberty used to walk here, and the greatDissector of Melancholy there!"
"I don't want to hear about 'em! They bore me."
"Walter Raleigh is beckoning to me from that lane--Wycliffe--Harvey--Hooker--Arnold--and a whole crowd of Tractarian Shades--"
"I DON'T WANT to know their names, I tell you! What do I care aboutfolk dead and gone? Upon my soul you are more sober when you've beendrinking than when you have not!"
"I must rest a moment," he said; and as he paused, holding to therailings, he measured with his eye the height of a college front."This is old Rubric. And that Sarcophagus; and up that lane Crozierand Tudor: and all down there is Cardinal with its long front, andits windows with lifted eyebrows, representing the polite surprise ofthe university at the efforts of such as I."
"Come along, and I'll treat you!"
"Very well. It will help me home, for I feel the chilly fog fromthe meadows of Cardinal as if death-claws were grabbing me throughand through. As Antigone said, I am neither a dweller among men norghosts. But, Arabella, when I am dead, you'll see my spirit flittingup and down here among these!"
"Pooh! You mayn't die after all. You are tough enough yet, oldman."