-
关注Ta
-
- 注册时间 2014-02-13
- 最后登录 2024-11-15
- 在线时间1422小时
-
- 发帖4538
- 搜Ta的帖子
- 精华0
- 派派币606
- 威望6384
- 鲜花1361
- 鸡蛋0
- 在线时间1422 小时
-
访问空间加好友用道具
S属性大爆发——swimming！
|
Part 1
AT MARYGREEN
"Yea, many there be that have run out of their wits for women, and become servants for their sakes. Many also have perished, have erred, and sinned, for women.... O ye men, how can it be but women should be strong, seeing they do thus?"--ESDRAS.
“是啊，确有许多人醉心于女人，神魂颠倒，不惜为了她们而当奴仆。还有许多人因女人之故身败名裂，执迷不悟，罪孽深重……啊，难道女人真是这么强大，你们男人只好让她们为所欲为？”
——艾司德拉斯
Part 1 Chapter 1
THE schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry. The miller at Cresscombe lent him the small white tilted cart and horse to carry his goods to the city of his destination, about twenty miles off, such a vehicle proving of quite sufficient size for the departing teacher's effects. For the schoolhouse had been partly furnished by the managers, and the only cumbersome article possessed by the master, in addition to the packing-case of books, was a cottage piano that he had bought at an auction during the year in which he thought of learning instrumental music. But the enthusiasm having waned he had never acquired any skill in playing, and the purchased article had been a perpetual trouble to him ever since in moving house.
The rector had gone away for the day, being a man who disliked the sight of changes. He did not mean to return till the evening, when the new school-teacher would have arrived and settled in, and everything would be smooth again.
The blacksmith, the farm bailiff, and the schoolmaster himself were standing in perplexed attitudes in the parlour before the instrument. The master had remarked that even if he got it into the cart he should not know what to do with it on his arrival at Christminster, the city he was bound for, since he was only going into temporary lodgings just at first.
A little boy of eleven, who had been thoughtfully assisting in the packing, joined the group of men, and as they rubbed their chins he spoke up, blushing at the sound of his own voice: "Aunt have got a great fuel-house, and it could be put there, perhaps, till you've found a place to settle in, sir."
"A proper good notion," said the blacksmith.
It was decided that a deputation should wait on the boy's aunt-- an old maiden resident--and ask her if she would house the piano till Mr. Phillotson should send for it. The smith and the bailiff started to see about the practicability of the suggested shelter, and the boy and the schoolmaster were left standing alone.
"Sorry I am going, Jude?" asked the latter kindly.
Tears rose into the boy's eyes, for he was not among the regular day scholars, who came unromantically close to the schoolmaster's life, but one who had attended the night school only during the present teacher's term of office. The regular scholars, if the truth must be told, stood at the present moment afar off, like certain historic disciples, indisposed to any enthusiastic volunteering of aid.
The boy awkwardly opened the book he held in his hand, which Mr. Phillotson had bestowed on him as a parting gift, and admitted that he was sorry.
"So am I," said Mr. Phillotson.
"Why do you go, sir?" asked the boy.
"Ah--that would be a long story. You wouldn't understand my reasons, Jude. You will, perhaps, when you are older."
"I think I should now, sir."
"Well--don't speak of this everywhere. You know what a university is, and a university degree? It is the necessary hallmark of a man who wants to do anything in teaching. My scheme, or dream, is to be a university graduate, and then to be ordained. By going to live at Christminster, or near it, I shall be at headquarters, so to speak, and if my scheme is practicable at all, I consider that being on the spot will afford me a better chance of carrying it out than I should have elsewhere."
The smith and his companion returned. Old Miss Fawley's fuel-house was dry, and eminently practicable; and she seemed willing to give the instrument standing-room there. It was accordingly left in the school till the evening, when more hands would be available for removing it; and the schoolmaster gave a final glance round.
The boy Jude assisted in loading some small articles, and at nine o'clock Mr. Phillotson mounted 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.
小学老师就要离开村子，人人都显得不大好受。水芹峪开磨坊的把他的白篷小货车连马都借给他，帮他把一应物件运到大约二十英里外他要去的城市。车身容积绰绰有余，老师路上不必担心。校舍家具原来由董事会配置了一部分；老师自己除了书籍，只有一种笨重东西，那是架竖式钢琴，是他当年一时心血来潮想学钢琴，在拍卖会上买到手的，以后那股热劲儿慢慢过去了，一点弹琴技巧也没学好，而每逢搬家，买来的这件东西始终成了他的累赘。
教区长素来不愿意看到变动，所以整天都到外边去了。他总要到晚上才回来，因为那时新教师多半已经到校，诸事安排停当，一切也就平静如常。
铁匠、庄头和老师站在小接待室里的钢琴前面，一筹莫展的样子。老师已经表示过，就算能把它弄到车上，到了他要去的基督堂那个城市，他还是不知道拿它怎么办，因为他初来乍到，只能临时找个地方住住。
一个十一岁的男孩子正帮着扎东西，挺有心事的样子，这时走到大人这边来，趁他们摸着下巴颏的时候，大声说：“姑婆有个好大的柴房哪，你找到地方放它之前，也许能寄放在那里头吧。”他因为说话声音大，脸红了。
“这主意倒真不赖呢。”铁匠说。
于是他们决定派代表去找孩子的姑婆（住在本村的一位老姑娘），跟她商量商量，好不好把钢琴在柴房里先放放，以后费乐生先生再派人来拿。铁匠和庄头马上去看存放的地方合适不合适，孩子和老师就留在那儿站着。
“裘德，我要走啦，你心里不大好受吧？”老师亲切地问他。
孩子立刻眼泪汪汪的，因为他本来不过是在眼下这位老师任职期间上上夜校，算不得是个正规生，而只有正规生才理所当然地跟老师的生活接触密切。如果一定说真话的话，正规生这会儿都站得远远的，就像某些名垂史册的使徒那样袖手旁观，无动于衷，谁也不肯主动过来，热心帮忙。
孩子慢腾腾地翻开费乐生先生当做临别纪念送给他的那本书，承认他心里不好受。
“我也是啊。”费乐生先生说。
“先生，你干吗走呀？”
“哎——这可说来话长啦。裘德呀，你这会儿还不懂我走的道理，等你再大点，你就明白啦。”
“先生，我觉着我这会儿就懂。”
“好吧，不过你可别到处说就是啦。你懂大学是怎么回事儿吗？大学学位是怎么回事儿吗？谁要是打算在教书方面干出点名堂，缺了这个资历可不行。我的计划，也可以说我的理想吧，就是当上个大学生，以后就到教会担任圣职。住在基督堂，要么住在它附近，可以说，我就算到了最高学府啦。要是我的计划真能行得通的话，我觉得人住在当地比在别处实现计划的机会总要多得多呢。”
铁匠和他的同伴回来了。福来老小姐的柴房挺干燥，是个顶刮刮的合适地方。看意思她愿意给钢琴一隅存身之地。这一来就可以把钢琴留在学校里直到晚上，因为那时候搬它的人手就多了。老师又朝四周围看了看。
裘德帮着把小件袋上车。九点钟费乐先生上了车，坐在书籍和行李旁边，向各位朋友道别。
“裘德，我忘不川尔。”马车开走的时候，他笑着说。“别忘了，要做个好孩子；对动物跟鸟儿心要好；你能读到的书都要读。有朝一日，你到了基督堂，看在老交情分儿上，可别忘了想方设法找到我。”
货车吱吱嘎嘎地驶过草地，绕过教区长住宅的拐角就消失了。孩子回到草地边上汲水井那儿，刚才他为帮自己的恩人和老师装车，把水桶撂在那儿。他这会儿嘴唇有点颤，打开井盖，开始要放桶，不过又停住了，脑门和胳臂都靠在井架上，脸上流露出呆呆的神情，这种神情只有他那样爱想事的孩子在小小年纪过早感到人生坎坷时才会有。他往下看的那眼井的历史和村子一样古老，在他这个位置可以看得到井里像是一串串一圈圈透视画，一直到了一百英尺深处，最后形成一个波动不息的闪光的亮盘子。靠近井上端处有层青苔，再往上长着荷叶蕨。
他自言自语，声调里含有富于奇想的孩子才有的感伤味儿：“老师以前不就是这样天天早上打几十遍水吗？以后可再不会啦。我瞧见过他就是跟我一样，打累了，先不把水拎回去，一边休息会儿，一边往底下瞧。不过他人可聪明啦，怎么肯在这儿呆下去呢——这么个死气沉沉的地方啊。”
他的一滴眼泪落到井底。早晨有点雾濛濛的，他哈出来的气，好似更浓的雾，叠在了平静而沉滞的空气上面。猛然间，一声喊叫把他的心思打断了。
“你这个小懒鬼呀，你倒是把水送回来呀！”
喊叫的是个老太婆，她人已经从不远地方对着园子栅栏门的草房门里探出身子来了。孩子赶紧打个手势，表示就来，于是硬凭他那身量使得出来的最大力气，把水桶提上来，先放在地上，然后倒进自己带来的小点的水桶里，又歇了歇，透了口气，就拎着它们穿过水井所在的那片湿漉漉的草地——它大致位于村子（不如说位于马利格林的零落的村户人家）的中央。
那个村子不单地盘小，外边样式也老旧，坐落在毗连北维塞克斯郡丘陵地的一片时起时伏的高地的一个洼子里。不过老归老，旧归旧，那眼井的井身总还是当地历史上唯一一件万古如斯的陈迹。近些年，好多屋顶开天窗的草房都拆掉了，公共草地上好多树也砍伐了。特别值得一提的是，原来那座风格独特的教堂，驼峰屋顶、木构塔楼。形状古怪的斜脊，无不拆得一千二净，拆下来的东西全都敲碎了，一堆堆的，不是给小巷当铺路石，就是给猪圈砌围墙，做园子里的椅凳，当路边隔篱的护脚石，要么是给街坊的花坛堆了假山。取老教堂而代之的是某位历史遗迹摧毁者在新址上，按英国人看不惯的现代哥特式风格设计，鸠工建起的一座高大的新建筑，为此他曾天天从伦敦到马利格林打个来回。原来久已耸立的供奉基督教神祗的圣殿的原址，哪怕是在历经沧桑的教堂墓地改成的青葱平整的草坪上，也休想找到半点痕迹。剩下的只是在荡然无存的坟墓前树过的十八个便士一个、保用五年的铸铁十字架，聊供凭吊而已。
Part 1 Chapter 2
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 conversation to each auditor in turn. "He come from Mellstock, down in South Wessex, about a year ago--worse luck for 'n, Belinda" (turning to the right) "where his father was living, and was took wi' the shakings for death, and died in two days, as you know, Caroline" (turning to the left). "It would ha' been a blessing if Goddy-mighty had took thee too, wi' thy mother and father, poor useless boy! But I've got him here to stay with me till I can see what's to be done with un, though I am obliged to let him earn any penny he can. Just now he's a-scaring of birds for Farmer Troutham. It keeps him out of mischty. Why do ye turn away, Jude?" she continued, as the boy, feeling the impact of their glances like slaps upon his face, moved aside.
The local washerwoman replied that it was perhaps a very good plan of Miss or Mrs. Fawley's (as they called her indifferently) to have him with her--"to kip 'ee company in your loneliness, fetch water, shet the winder-shet-ters o' nights, and help in the bit o' baking."
Miss Fawley doubted it.... "Why didn't ye get the schoolmaster to take 'ee to Christminster wi' un, and make a scholar of 'ee," she continued, in frowning pleasantry. "I'm sure he couldn't ha' took a better one. The boy is crazy for books, that he is. It runs in our family rather. His cousin Sue is just the same-- so I've heard; but I have not seen the child for years, though she was born in this place, within these four walls, as it happened. My niece and her husband, after they were married, didn' get a house of their own for some year or more; and then they only had one till-- Well, I won't go into that. Jude, my child, don't you ever marry. 'Tisn't for the Fawleys to take that step any more. She, their only one, was like a child o' my own, Belinda, till the split come! Ah, that a little maid should know such changes!"
Jude, finding the general attention again centering on himself, went out to the bakehouse, where he ate the cake provided for his breakfast. The end of his spare time had now arrived, and emerging from the garden by getting over the hedge at the back he pursued a path northward, till he came to a wide and lonely depression in the general level of the upland, which was sown as a corn-field. This vast concave was the scene of his labours for Mr Troutham the farmer, and he descended into the midst of it.
The brown surface of the field went right up towards the sky all round, where it was lost by degrees in the mist that shut out the actual verge and accentuated the solitude. The only marks on the uniformity of the scene were a rick of last year's produce standing in the midst of the arable, the rooks that rose at his approach, and the path athwart the fallow by which he had come, trodden now by he hardly knew whom, though once by many of his own dead family.
"How ugly it is here!" he murmured.
The fresh harrow-lines seemed to stretch like the channellings in a piece of new corduroy, lending a meanly utilitarian air to the expanse, taking away its gradations, and depriving it of all history beyond that of the few recent months, though to every clod and stone there really attached associations enough and to spare-- echoes of songs from ancient harvest-days, of spoken words, and of sturdy deeds. Every inch of ground had been the site, first or last, of energy, gaiety, horse-play, bickerings, weariness. Groups of gleaners had squatted in the sun on every square yard. Love-matches that had populated the adjoining hamlet had been made up there between reaping and carrying. Under the hedge which divided the field from a distant plantation girls had given themselves to lovers who would not turn their heads to look at them by the next harvest; and in that ancient cornfield many a man had made love-promises to a woman at whose voice he had trembled by the next seed-time after fulfilling them in the church adjoining. But this neither Jude nor the rooks around him considered. For them it was a lonely place, possessing, in the one view, only the quality of a work-ground, and in the other that of a granary good to feed in.
The boy stood under the rick before mentioned, and every few seconds used his clacker or rattle briskly. At each clack the rooks left off pecking, and rose and went away on their leisurely wings, burnished like tassets of mail, afterwards wheeling back and regarding him warily, and descending to feed at a more respectful distance.
He sounded the clacker till his arm ached, and at length his heart grew sympathetic with the birds' thwarted desires. They seemed, like himself, to be living in a world which did not want them. Why should he frighten them away? They took upon more and more the aspect of gentle friends and pensioners-- the only friends he could claim as being in the least degree interested in him, for his aunt had often told him that she was not. He ceased his rattling, and they alighted anew.
"Poor little dears!" said Jude, aloud. "You SHALL have some dinner-- you shall. There is enough for us all. Farmer Troutham can afford to let you have some. Eat, then my dear little birdies, and make a good meal!"
They stayed and ate, inky spots on the nut-brown soil and Jude enjoyed their appetite. A magic thread of fellow-feeling united his own life with theirs. Puny and sorry as those lives were, they much resembled his own.
His clacker he had by this time thrown away from him, as being a mean and sordid instrument, offensive both to the birds and to himself as their friend. All at once he became conscious of a smart blow upon his buttocks, followed by a loud clack, which announced to his surprised senses that the clacker had been the instrument of offence used. The birds and Jude started up simultaneously, and the dazed eyes of the latter beheld the farmer in person, the great Troutham himself, his red face glaring down upon Jude's cowering frame, the clacker swinging in his hand.
"So it's 'Eat my dear birdies,' is it, young man? 'Eat, dear birdies,' indeed! I'll tickle your breeches, and see if you say, 'Eat, dear birdies,' again in a hurry! And you've been idling at the schoolmaster's too, instead of coming here, ha'n't ye, hey? That's how you earn your sixpence a day for keeping the rooks off my corn!"
Whilst saluting Jude's ears with this impassioned rhetoric, Troutham had seized his left hand with his own left, and swinging his slim frame round him at arm's-length, again struck Jude on the hind parts with the flat side of Jude's own rattle, till the field echoed with the blows, which were delivered once or twice at each revolution.
"Don't 'ee, sir--please don't 'ee!" cried the whirling child, as helpless under the centrifugal tendency of his person as a hooked fish swinging to land, and beholding the hill, the rick, the plantation, the path, and the rooks going round and round him in an amazing circular race. "I--I sir--only meant that--there was a good crop in the ground-- I saw 'em sow it--and the rooks could have a little bit for dinner-- and you wouldn't miss it, sir--and Mr. Phillotson said I was to be kind to 'em--oh, oh, oh!"
This truthful explanation seemed to exasperate the farmer even more than if Jude had stoutly denied saying anything at all, and he still smacked the whirling urchin, the clacks of the instrument continuing to resound all across the field and as far as the ears of distant workers-- who gathered thereupon that Jude was pursuing his business of clacking with great assiduity--and echoing from the brand-new church tower just behind the mist, towards the building of which structure the farmer had largely subscribed, to testify his love for God and man.
Presently Troutham grew tired of his punitive task, and depositing the quivering boy on his legs, took a sixpence from his pocket and gave it him in payment for his day's work, telling him to go home and never let him see him in one of those fields again.
Jude leaped out of arm's reach, and walked along the trackway weeping-- not from the pain, though that was keen enough; not from the perception of the flaw in the terrestrial scheme, by which what was good for God's birds was bad for God's gardener; but with the awful sense that he had wholly disgraced himself before he had been a year in the parish, and hence might be a burden to his great-aunt for life.
With this shadow on his mind he did not care to show himself in the village, and went homeward by a roundabout track behind a high hedge and across a pasture. Here he beheld scores of coupled earthworms lying half their length on the surface of the damp ground, as they always did in such weather at that time of the year. It was impossible to advance in regular steps without crushing some of them at each tread.
Though Farmer Troutham had just hurt him, he was a boy who could not himself bear to hurt anything. He had never brought home a nest of young birds without lying awake in misery half the night after, and often re-instating them and the nest in their original place the next morning. He could scarcely bear to see trees cut down or lopped, from a fancy that it hurt them; and late pruning, when the sap was up and the tree bled profusely, had been a positive grief to him in his infancy. This weakness of character, as it may be called, suggested that he was the sort of man who was born to ache a good deal before the fall of the curtain upon his unnecessary life should signify that all was well with him again. He carefully picked his way on tiptoe among the earthworms, without killing a single one.
On entering the cottage he found his aunt selling a penny loaf to a little girl, and when the customer was gone she said, "Well, how do you come to be back here in the middle of the morning like this?"
"I'm turned away."
"What?"
"Mr. Troutham have turned me away because I let the rooks have a few peckings of corn. And there's my wages--the last I shall ever hae!"
He threw the sixpence tragically on the table.
"Ah!" said his aunt, suspending her breath. And she opened upon him a lecture on how she would now have him all the spring upon her hands doing nothing. "If you can't skeer birds, what can ye do? There! don't ye look so deedy! Farmer Troutham is not so much better than myself, come to that. But 'tis as Job said, 'Now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.' His father was my father's journeyman, anyhow, and I must have been a fool to let 'ee go to work for 'n, which I shouldn't ha' done but to keep 'ee out of mischty."
More angry with Jude for demeaning her by coming there than for dereliction of duty, she rated him primarily from that point of view, and only secondarily from a moral one.
"Not that you should have let the birds eat what Farmer Troutham planted. Of course you was wrong in that. Jude, Jude, why didstn't go off with that schoolmaster of thine to Christminster or somewhere? But, oh no-- poor or'nary child--there never was any sprawl on thy side of the family, and never will be!"
"Where is this beautiful city, Aunt--this place where Mr. Phillotson is gone to?" asked the boy, after meditating in silence.
"Lord! you ought to know where the city of Christminster is. Near a score of miles from here. It is a place much too good for you ever to have much to do with, poor boy, I'm a-thinking."
"And will Mr. Phillotson always be there?"
"How can I tell?"
"Could I go to see him?"
"Lord, no! You didn't grow up hereabout, or you wouldn't ask such as that. We've never had anything to do with folk in Christminster, nor folk in Christminster with we."
Jude went out, and, feeling more than ever his existence to be an undemanded one, he lay down upon his back on a heap of litter near the pig-sty. The fog had by this time become more translucent, and the position of the sun could be seen through it. He pulled his straw hat over his face, and peered through the interstices of the plaiting at the white brightness, vaguely reflecting. Growing up brought responsibilities, he found. Events did not rhyme quite as he had thought. Nature's logic was too horrid for him to care for. That mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another sickened his sense of harmony. As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the centre of your time, and not at a point in its circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped it.
If he could only prevent himself growing up! He did not want to be a man.
Then, like the natural boy, he forgot his despondency, and sprang up. During the remainder of the morning he helped his aunt, and in the afternoon, when there was nothing more to be done, he went into the village. Here he asked a man whereabouts Christminster lay.
"Christminster? Oh, well, out by there yonder; though I've never bin there-- not I. I've never had any business at such a place."
The man pointed north-eastward, in the very direction where lay that field in which Jude had so disgraced himself. There was something unpleasant about the coincidence for the moment, but the fearsomeness of this fact rather increased his curiosity about the city. The farmer had said he was never to be seen in that field again; yet Christminster lay across it, and the path was a public one. So, stealing out of the hamlet, he descended into the same hollow which had witnessed his punishment in the morning, never swerving an inch from the path, and climbing up the long and tedious ascent on the other side till the track joined the highway by a little clump of trees. Here the ploughed land ended, and all before him was bleak open down.
别看裘德•福来身子骨单薄，他可是一口气就把满满两桶水拎到了草房。草房门上方有块长方形小蓝匾，上漆黄字：多喜•福来面包房，在铅条嵌住玻璃的窗户（保留这样窗户的人家极少，这是其中之一）紧后面放着五瓶糖果，还有一个柳条图案的盘子，盛着三个小圆面包。
他在屋后把水倒完，听得见门里头他的姑婆，也就是匾上写的多喜，正跟几位乡亲聊得挺欢。她们亲眼瞧着小学教师离开，这会儿正把这件大事的种种细节往一块儿凑，还肆无忌惮地瞎猜他以后会如何如何。
“这是谁呀？”一个有点眼生的女人看见孩子进来就问。
“问得好啊，威廉太太。是我的侄孙子哟，你上回来过之后他才来的。”答话的这位老住户是个个儿又高又干瘦的婆子，什么不值一提的事，她一说就带着哭腔，还要轮流朝每个听她说话的人说上一言半语。“总在一年前吧，他打南维塞克斯南边的麦斯托过来的——命才苦呢，贝林达，”（脸往右边一转）“卡洛琳哪，你都知道呀，他爸爸住在那边儿，得了‘疟子’，两天就没啦。”（脸又转到左边）“要是全能的上帝把他跟他爹娘一块儿叫了去，那倒是挺福气呢，可怜的没点用的孩子哟！可是我把他弄到这儿来啦，跟我住一块儿，总得替他想出个办法，不过这会儿要是办得到，得先叫他赚几个钱。他刚给庄稼汉陶大赶鸟儿，省得他淘气嘛。你干吗走呀，裘德！”她接着说下去，孩子觉着她们瞄着他的眼光那么厉害，就像抽他嘴巴，想躲到旁边去。
本地那个替人洗衣服的女人接过话碴说，福来小姐（叫福来太太也行，随她们怎么称呼，她也无所谓）把他留在身边这个主意还真不赖——“给你做个伴儿，省得你一个人孤单，替你拎拎水，晚上关关百叶窗，烤面包时候也帮点忙，都行嘛。”
福来小姐可是不以为然。“你干吗不求老师带你到基督堂，也让你当学生呀？”她幸灾乐祸地挤眉弄眼，接着说， “我瞧他也找不着比你还好的喽。这孩子看书看得邪乎哪，才邪乎哪。我们家就兴这一套。他有个表姊妹，我听说也这个调调儿，不过那孩子，我没见到她有年数啦，虽说她碰巧在这儿落地，还就在这屋里头。我侄女跟她男人结婚之后，大概一年工夫还没自个儿的房子，后来总算是有了，可又——唉，别提这个啦，裘德，我的孩子哟，你可千万别结婚，福来家的人可不能再走这一步啦。他们就生了苏一个孩子，我拿她就当自个儿的一样，贝林达，后来他们俩吵散了，一个小丫头子真不该知道这些变故哟！”
裘德觉着大伙儿又把注意力集中到他身上来了，于是走到烘房，把原来准备好当早餐的那块烘糕吃了，然后攀过房后的树篱，出了园子，沿着一条小路一直朝北走，最后走到了高地中间一块朝四下铺展的凹陷的宽广而僻静的地方，原来这是撒过种的麦田。他就在这片老大的洼地上给陶大先生干活。他再往前走，到了麦田正中间。
麦田的褐色地面的四周高高隆起，似乎上与天齐，这时由于雾气迷茫，把它的实际边缘笼罩起来了，所以本来的景象也就隐没在雾中，而且使这个地方的孤寂凄凉更为深沉。点缀这刻板划一的景色的醒目东西只有那个上年堆的、至今还立在耕地上的麦垛，一看他走过来就振翅飞走的老鸹和他刚走过的那条直穿麦田的小路。谁在这条路上来往，他这会儿一点不知道，不过他确实知道他家里故世的先人中间有很多曾经走过。
“这儿真够寒碜哪。”他嘴里嘟嘟囔囔的。
新耙过的一排排条沟延伸下去，看起来就像一块新灯芯绒上边的纹路，把这一大片土地的外貌弄得一副既俗不可耐又唯利是图的样子，把它的多层次的色调抽干了，把它的全部历史也都抹掉了；其实那斑斑泥土，累累石块实实在在地尽有着剪不断的未了缘——远古以来的歌唱、欢声笑语和踏踏实实的劳作仍在经久不息地回荡。每英寸土地，不论最早开出来的还是最晚开出来的，都是当年散发着活力、狂欢、喧闹和慵倦的场地。每一码土地上都有一群群拾穗人蹲着晒太阳。在收割和人仓活动的；司歇时候，人们就把毗邻小村子组织起来，玩起找情人游戏。在把麦田同远处人工林隔开的树篱下，姑娘们不惜委身于情人，但是到了下个收获季节，他们就对姑娘们掉头不顾，正眼也不瞧一下。在古老的麦田里，何止一个汉子对娘儿们信誓旦旦，哪想到他在近边教堂里履行诺言之后，到了下个播种期，一听见她声音就发抖。不过裘德也好，他四周的老鸹也好，心里都没盛着这类事。他们只把它当成一块冷清地方，裘德一方以为它的性质纯属供人劳作，对老鸹一方来说它正好是足以填饱肚子的谷仓。
那孩子站在前面提到的麦垛下面，隔几秒就使劲摇他的哗脚板儿。只要哗脚板一响，老鸹就停止啄食，从地上飞起来，接着从容展开摩擦得如同锁子甲叶片一样晶亮的翅膀飞走了；它们转了一圈之后又飞回来，小心翼翼地防着他，随后落到稍远的地方啄食。
他摇哗啷板摇得膀子都酸痛了；到后来对于老鸹觅食愿望受到阻碍，反而同情起来。它们好像跟他一样，活在一个没人理没人要的世界里。他干吗非得把它们吓跑不可呀？它们越来越像是好脾气的朋友，等待着哺食——只有它们才能算在朋友之列，因为它们总还对他有那么点兴趣，因为姑婆不是常对他说，她对他没一点兴趣吗？他没再摇哗啷板，老鸹也就再落到田里。
“可怜的小宝贝儿哟！”裘德大声说，“你们该吃点饭啦——该吃啦。这儿够咱们大伙吃呀。庄稼汉陶大供得起你们吃呀。吃吧，吃吧，亲爱的小鸟哟，美美地吃一顿吧。”
它们就像深褐色土地上一片片黑点子，呆在那儿吃起来，裘德在一边欣赏它们的吃相。一根神奇的同病相怜的细线把他的生命和它们的生命串连起来，这些老鹊的生命无足轻重，不值怜惜，又何异于他自己的遭遇呢！
他连哗啷板儿也扔到一边儿去了，因为那是个卑鄙下贱的工具，对鸟儿和对鸟儿的朋友他自己，都是怀着无限恶意的。猛然间，他觉得屁股上挨了重重一家伙，紧跟着是哗啷啷一声响，这分明是告诉他的受了惊的感官，哗脚板儿正是作恶的工具。老鸹和裘德都吓了一大跳，后者两眼昏昏地瞧见了庄稼汉的形象，原来是伟大的陶大先生驾到了，他那张恶狠狠的脸冲着裘德蜷起来的身子，手里哗啷板儿摇来晃去的。
“这就是‘吃呀，亲爱的小鸟哟’，对不对，小子。‘吃呀，吃呀，亲爱的小鸟哟，’行啊！我要叫你屁股好好尝尝滋味儿，瞧你还急不急着说‘吃呀，亲爱的小鸟哟！’你原先也是在老师家里躲着，不上这儿来，是这么回事儿吧？嘿嘿！你一天拿六便士，就是这样把鸟儿从我的麦子上赶走呀！”
陶大怒气冲冲，恶声恶气，破口大骂，一边拿左手抓住裘德的左手，拽着他瘦弱的身子绕着他自己转圈子，还用裘德的哗啷板儿的平滑面打他的屁股，绕一圈打一两回，连麦田里也响起了抽打的回声。
“先生，别打啦——求求别打啦！”转圈子的孩子哭喊着，他整个身子受到离心力支配，一点没法做主，就跟上了钩的鱼给甩到地上一样，眼前的山冈、麦垛、人工林小路和老鸹怪吓人地围着他一个劲儿地转圈子赛跑。“我——我——先生——我是想地里的收成会怪不错的——我瞧见过下种呀——老鸹吃那么点也可以呀——先生，你没什么损失呀——费乐生先生还嘱咐过，待它们心要好呀——呜！呜！呜！”
裘德要是索性对先头说过的话矢口否认，恐怕反倒好点，可是他这番真心表白似乎把庄稼汉气得更厉害了。他还是一个劲儿啪啪抽打转圈儿的淘气鬼，哗啷哗啷的声音传到了麦田以外，连远处干活儿的人都听见了——还当裘德正不辞劳苦地摇哗啷板儿呢，而且隐在雾中的那座崭新的教堂的塔楼也发出了回声，要知道那位庄稼人为了证明他对上帝和人类的爱，还为建教堂大量捐过款哩。
又过了会儿，陶大对惩罚工作也腻了。他叫浑身哆嗦的孩子好好站着，从衣袋里掏出六便士给他，算是他干一天的工钱，说他得赶快回家，以后哪块麦田也不许他随便来。
裘德蹦开了一点，随即哭哭啼啼沿着小路走了；他哭，倒不是因为打得疼，当然疼得也够厉害；也不是因为领悟到天理人情，顾此就要失彼，对上帝的鸟儿有好处，对上帝的园丁就有坏处；他哭是因为他到这个教区还不满一年就搞得这么丢人现眼而非常痛心，恐怕这以后真要成了姑婆生活里的包袱。
心里既然横着这样的阴影，他不想在村里露面，于是从一道高树篱后面，穿过牧场，住家里走。他瞧见潮湿的地面上有几十对交尾的蚯蚓蜷卧着，它们在一年之中这个季节的这样天气都是这样。要是按平常步子往前走，每跨一步又不把它们踩死，那是办不到的。
虽然庄稼汉陶大刚才伤害他不浅，但是他是个什么东西也不忍伤害的孩子。每回他带一窝小雏儿回家，心里总是难过得大半夜睡不着觉，第二天一大早就把小雏儿连窝一块儿送回原来地方。他一瞧见树给砍伐了或是修剪了，人简直受不了，因为他的幻觉使他感到这样做就是折磨它们；凡到剪伐时候，都正值树汁从根部往上输送，所以树要流出大量汁液，他孩提时见此情景，内心充满了忧伤。性格方面的这种软弱，姑且这么说吧，表明他是注定终生感到大痛苦的那类人，只有到他无用的生命落幕之际，才得以重新得到解脱。他小心翼翼地在蚯蚓中挑着道走，一条也没踩死。
他进了草房，看到姑婆正把一便士面包卖给一个女孩子。顾客走了以后，她说：“你怎么上半天半路儿就回来啦？”
“人家不要我啦。”
“怎么回事儿？”
“我让老鸹啄了点麦粒儿，他就不要我啦。这是工钱——算是最后一回挣的。”
他一副惨样把六便士丢到桌子上。
“唉！”姑婆说，噎住一口气，跟着长篇大论教训起他来，说他一整个春上啥也没干，就赖着她。“要是连鸟儿都赶不了，那你还能干什么呀？哪，别这么一副不在乎的样儿。要说庄稼汉陶大比我也好不到哪儿，不过是半斤八两，约伯不就说过嘛，‘如今比我年轻的人笑话我，我可瞧不起你们的老子哪，我把他们放到给我看羊的狗一块儿啦。’反正他老子给我老子当长工就是啦。我叫你替这家伙干活儿，我真算是糊涂透啦，就为不让你淘气，我干了不该干的事哟。”
她越说越一肚子气，倒不是为裘德没能烙尽职守，而是因为他到陶大那边去，辱没了她；她主要是从这个角度给他定位，至于道德什么的还在其次。
“不是说你该让鸟儿吃庄稼汉陶大的东西，这事儿你本来也错了嘛。裘德呀，裘德，干吗你不跟那位老师一块儿走，到基督堂还是什么地方去呀？不过，不提啦——你这个没出息的孩子哟，你们家这支压根儿没人出去闯荡过，以后也别提喽！”
“姑婆，那个美丽的城市在哪儿呀——就是费乐生先生去的地方？”孩子默默沉思了一会儿问道。
“哎呀，你也该知道基督堂这个城市在哪儿啦。离咱们这儿大概二十英里吧。那地方对你可是太了不起喽，你可没缘分跟它搭上关系呀，可怜的孩子，我就是这么想哟。”
“费乐生先生长远在那边吗？”
“我怎么知道。”
“我能不能去看望看望他？”
“哎呀，不行呀！你还没长大哪，就连这方近左右也还没弄清楚，要不然你怎么瞎问呀。咱们跟基督堂的人向来不搭界，基督堂的人也不跟咱们来往。”
裘德走到外边去了，比平常更加感到他这个人生到世间来真是多余的，随后仰面朝天躺到了猪圈旁的干草堆上。雾已渐转透明，太阳的位置可以看得出来。他把草帽拉到脸上，打草缏间的隙缝往外瞄白晃晃的光，心里在胡思乱想。他发现人要是长大成人了，必定会重任在肩。人间万事并不是他想象的那样彼此合拍共韵，协调一致。天道悠悠，竟然如此狰狞，不禁使他生出反感。对这一群生灵仁慈就是对另一群生灵残忍，这种感想毒害了他万汇归一的和谐感。他深深感到，你慢慢长大了，就觉得你处在生命的中心点上了，再不是你小时候那样觉得是在圆周的某一点上，于是你陷在无端恐怖之中，不寒而栗。你周围老像有什么东西闪闪发光、花里胡哨、哗里哗浪，噪声和强光捶打着你那个叫生命的小小细胞，强烈地震动它，无情地扭曲它。
要是他能拦住自个儿不长大，那该多好啊！他不愿意成个大人。
不过他到底是个一派天真的孩子，等一会儿就把那种颓丧情绪忘掉了。上半天余下的时间，他尽帮姑婆做事，下午没事干，就到村子里去。他在那儿问一个人基督堂在哪一方。
“基督堂吗？哦，对啦，就在那边儿，我可压根儿没到过——压根儿没到过。在那样的地方，我没事儿可干。”
那汉子向东北方向指指，指的正好是裘德刚才蒙受奇耻大辱的麦田那边，虽属巧合，还是叫他一阵子揪然不乐；不过由此而生的畏葸反而更激起他对那座城市的好奇心。庄稼汉固然说过不许他到麦田，可是基督堂正在对面。于是他偷偷溜出了村子，往下走向那块目击他早上受到惩罚的洼地，在它的小路上走，没敢岔出一英寸，随后爬上了另一边坡子，那条小路长得真讨人厌，后来算走到个小树丛旁边它跟大路相接的地方，到此也就没什么经人耕种的田地了。他一眼望去，但见一片荒凉空阔的丘陵地。
Part 1 Chapter 3
NOT a soul was visible on the hedgeless highway, or on either side of it, and the white road seemed to ascend and diminish till it joined the sky. At the very top it was crossed at right angles by a green "ridgeway"--the Ickneild Street and original Roman road through the district. This ancient track ran east and west for many miles, and down almost to within living memory had been used for driving flocks and herds to fairs and markets. But it was now neglected and overgrown.
The boy had never before strayed so far north as this from the nestling hamlet in which he had been deposited by the carrier from a railway station southward, one dark evening some few months earlier, and till now he had had no suspicion that such a wide, flat, low-lying country lay so near at hand, under the very verge of his upland world. The whole northern semicircle between east and west, to a distance of forty or fifty miles, spread itself before him; a bluer, moister atmosphere, evidently, than that he breathed up here.
Not far from the road stood a weather-beaten old barn of reddish-grey brick and tile. It was known as the Brown House by the people of the locality. He was about to pass it when he perceived a ladder against the eaves; and the reflection that the higher he got, the further he could see, led Jude to stand and regard it. On the slope of the roof two men were repairing the tiling. He turned into the ridgeway and drew towards the barn.
When he had wistfully watched the workmen for some time he took courage, and ascended the ladder till he stood beside them.
"Well, my lad, and what may you want up here?"
"I wanted to know where the city of Christminster is, if you please."
"Christminster is out across there, by that clump. You can see it-- at least you can on a clear day. Ah, no, you can't now."
The other tiler, glad of any kind of diversion from the monotony of his labour, had also turned to look towards the quarter designated. "You can't often see it in weather like this," he said. "The time I've noticed it is when the sun is going down in a blaze of flame, and it looks like--I don't know what."
"The heavenly Jerusalem," suggested the serious urchin.
"Ay--though I should never ha' thought of it myself.... But I can't see no Christminster to-day."
The boy strained his eyes also; yet neither could he see the far-off city. He descended from the barn, and abandoning Christminster with the versatility of his age he walked along the ridge-track, looking for any natural objects of interest that might lie in the banks thereabout. When he repassed the barn to go back to Marygreen he observed that the ladder was still in its place, but that the men had finished their day's work and gone away.
It was waning towards evening; there was still a faint mist, but it had cleared a little except in the damper tracts of subjacent country and along the river-courses. He thought again of Christminster, and wished, since he had come two or three miles from his aunt's house on purpose, that he could have seen for once this attractive city of which he had been told. But even if he waited here it was hardly likely that the air would clear before night. Yet he was loth to leave the spot, for the northern expanse became lost to view on retreating towards the village only a few hundred yards.
He ascended the ladder to have one more look at the point the men had designated, and perched himself on the highest rung, overlying the tiles. He might not be able to come so far as this for many days. Perhaps if he prayed, the wish to see Christminster might be forwarded. People said that, if you prayed, things sometimes came to you, even though they sometimes did not. He had read in a tract that a man who had begun to build a church, and had no money to finish it, knelt down and prayed, and the money came in by the next post. Another man tried the same experiment, and the money did not come; but he found afterwards that the breeches he knelt in were made by a wicked Jew. This was not discouraging, and turning on the ladder Jude knelt on the third rung, where, resting against those above it, he prayed that the mist might rise.
He then seated himself again, and waited. In the course of ten or fifteen minutes the thinning mist dissolved altogether from the northern horizon, as it had already done elsewhere, and about a quarter of an hour before the time of sunset the westward clouds parted, the sun's position being partially uncovered, and the beams streaming out in visible lines between two bars of slaty cloud. The boy immediately looked back in the old direction.
Some way within the limits of the stretch of landscape, points of light like the topaz gleamed. The air increased in transparency with the lapse of minutes, till the topaz points showed themselves to be the vanes, windows, wet roof slates, and other shining spots upon the spires, domes, freestone-work, and varied outlines that were faintly revealed. It was Christminster, unquestionably; either directly seen, or miraged in the peculiar atmosphere.
The spectator gazed on and on till the windows and vanes lost their shine, going out almost suddenly like extinguished candles. The vague city became veiled in mist. Turning to the west, he saw that the sun had disappeared. The foreground of the scene had grown funereally dark, and near objects put on the hues and shapes of chimaeras.
He anxiously descended the ladder, and started homewards at a run, trying not to think of giants, Herne the Hunter, Apollyon lying in wait for Christian, or of the captain with the bleeding hole in his forehead and the corpses round him that remutinied every night on board the bewitched ship. He knew that he had grown out of belief in these horrors, yet he was glad when he saw the church tower and the lights in the cottage windows, even though this was not the home of his birth, and his great-aunt did not care much about him.
Inside and round about that old woman's "shop" window, with its twenty-four little panes set in lead-work, the glass of some of them oxidized with age, so that you could hardly see the poor penny articles exhibited within, and forming part of a stock which a strong man could have carried, Jude had his outer being for some long tideless time. But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.
Through the solid barrier of cold cretaceous upland to the northward he was always beholding a gorgeous city--the fancied place he had likened to the new Jerusalem, though there was perhaps more of the painter's imagination and less of the diamond merchant's in his dreams thereof than in those of the Apocalyptic writer. And the city acquired a tangibility, a permanence, a hold on his life, mainly from the one nucleus of fact that the man for whose knowledge and purposes he had so much reverence was actually living there; not only so, but living among the more thoughtful and mentally shining ones therein.
In sad wet seasons, though he knew it must rain at Christminster too, he could hardly believe that it rained so drearily there. Whenever he could get away from the confines of the hamlet for an hour or two, which was not often, he would steal off to the Brown House on the hill and strain his eyes persistently; sometimes to be rewarded by the sight of a dome or spire, at other times by a little smoke, which in his estimate had some of the mysticism of incense.
Then the day came when it suddenly occurred to him that if he ascended to the point of view after dark, or possibly went a mile or two further, he would see the night lights of the city. It would be necessary to come back alone, but even that consideration did not deter him, for he could throw a little manliness into his mood, no doubt.
The project was duly executed. It was not late when he arrived at the place of outlook, only just after dusk, but a black north-east sky, accompanied by a wind from the same quarter, made the occasion dark enough. He was rewarded; but what he saw was not the lamps in rows, as he had half expected. No individual light was visible, only a halo or glow-fog over-arching the place against the black heavens behind it, making the light and the city seem distant but a mile or so.
He set himself to wonder on the exact point in the glow where the schoolmaster might be--he who never communicated with anybody at Marygreen now; who was as if dead to them here. In the glow he seemed to see Phillotson promenading at ease, like one of the forms in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace.
He had heard that breezes travelled at the rate of ten miles an hour, and the fact now came into his mind. He parted his lips as he faced the north-east, and drew in the wind as if it were a sweet liquor.
"You," he said, addressing the breeze caressingly "were in Christminster city between one and two hours ago, floating along the streets, pulling round the weather-cocks, touching Mr. Phillotson's face, being breathed by him; and now you are here, breathed by me--you, the very same."
Suddenly there came along this wind something towards him-- a message from the place--from some soul residing there, it seemed. Surely it was the sound of bells, the voice of the city, faint and musical, calling to him, "We are happy here!"
He had become entirely lost to his bodily situation during this mental leap, and only got back to it by a rough recalling. A few yards below the brow of the hill on which he paused a team of horses made its appearance, having reached the place by dint of half an hour's serpentine progress from the bottom of the immense declivity. They had a load of coals behind them-- a fuel that could only be got into the upland by this particular route. They were accompanied by a carter, a second man, and a boy, who now kicked a large stone behind one of the wheels, and allowed the panting animals to have a long rest, while those in charge took a flagon off the load and indulged in a drink round.
They were elderly men, and had genial voices. Jude addressed them, inquiring if they had come from Christminster.
"Heaven forbid, with this load!" said they.
"The place I mean is that one yonder." He was getting so romantically attached to Christminster that, like a young lover alluding to his mistress, he felt bashful at mentioning its name again. He pointed to the light in the sky--hardly perceptible to their older eyes.
"Yes. There do seem a spot a bit brighter in the nor'-east than elsewhere, though I shouldn't ha' noticed it myself, and no doubt it med be Christminster."
Here a little book of tales which Jude had tucked up under his arm, having brought them to read on his way hither before it grew dark, slipped and fell into the road. The carter eyed him while he picked it up and straightened the leaves.
"Ah, young man," he observed, "you'd have to get your head screwed on t'other way before you could read what they read there."
"Why?" asked the boy.
"Oh, they never look at anything that folks like we can understand," the carter continued, by way of passing the time. "On'y foreign tongues used in the days of the Tower of Babel, when no two families spoke alike. They read that sort of thing as fast as a night-hawk will whir. 'Tis all learning there-- nothing but learning, except religion. And that's learning too, for I never could understand it. Yes, 'tis a serious-minded place. Not but there's wenches in the streets o' nights.... You know, I suppose, that they raise pa'sons there like radishes in a bed? And though it do take--how many years, Bob?--five years to turn a lirruping hobble-de-hoy chap into a solemn preaching man with no corrupt passions, they'll do it, if it can be done, and polish un off like the workmen they be, and turn un out wi' a long face, and a long black coat and waistcoat, and a religious collar and hat, same as they used to wear in the Scriptures, so that his own mother wouldn't know un sometimes.... There, 'tis their business, like anybody else's."
"But how should you know"
"Now don't you interrupt, my boy. Never interrupt your senyers. Move the fore hoss aside, Bobby; here's som'at coming.... You must mind that I be a-talking of the college life. 'Em lives on a lofty level; there's no gainsaying it, though I myself med not think much of 'em. As we be here in our bodies on this high ground, so be they in their minds-- noble-minded men enough, no doubt--some on 'em--able to earn hundreds by thinking out loud. And some on 'em be strong young fellows that can earn a'most as much in silver cups. As for music, there's beautiful music everywhere in Christminster. You med be religious, or you med not, but you can't help striking in your homely note with the rest. And there's a street in the place--the main street--that ha'n't another like it in the world. I should think I did know a little about Christminster!"
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."
在没设边篱的大路上和它的两旁，连个人影也看不见。白晃晃的大路仿佛朝上延伸，越高越窄，远接天际，恰好在最高处，一条贯穿这一带地方的绿油油的“山脊路”——原属古罗马驰道的伊克内尔德大道横插过来，同它呈十字交叉。这古道自东向西延伸好多英里，人们至今还多少记得早年赶牛羊上庙会和集市都利用它。不过眼下已经没人过问它了，所以蔓草丛生，掩覆了路面。
几个月前一个黑沉沉的晚上，一个运货人把他从南下的火车站带到他要去寄居的那个簇拥在一起的小村落。自那以后，他根本没闲逛到这么远，再说在这之前也万没想到紧靠他的高地世界下方，竟是那么辽阔的地势低平的荒野的边缘。在他眼前，北面的东西两至之间大约四五十英里、整个呈半圆形的地面，向四处铺开；那边的大气显然比他在高地这边呼吸的更蓝，更潮润。
离大路不远地方有座历经风雨剥蚀的暗红色砖瓦盖成的谷仓，当地人管它叫栋房子。他刚要打谷仓边走过去，忽然眼一亮，看见仓檐边靠着一个梯子。裘德陡地想到了登得高就望得远的话，就停下来对梯子端详了一会儿。房顶斜坡上，有两个人正修瓦顶。于是他转身上了山脊路，向谷仓走去。
他朝工人望了会儿，露出有所希求的神情，随即鼓起勇气，爬上梯子，站到他们近边上。
“嗨，小子，你跑上来干吗呀？”
“劳驾，我想知道基督堂在哪儿？”
“基督堂在那边儿，从这儿过去，就是那片树旁边儿。你大概能看得见，那可得晴天才行哪。哦，这会儿不行，你没法看见啦。”
另一个瓦工，只要能暂时摆脱一下单调乏味的活儿就高兴，也转过脸去望刚说到的地方。“这样的天气，你就不大能看得见啦，”他说，“我那回看见它的时候，正好是太阳下山，一片火红，就像是——我可形容不上来。”
“就像是天上的耶路撒冷哪。”满脸正经的小淘气想起来就说。
“哦——我可压根儿没这么想过……反正我今儿瞧不见基督堂就是啦。”
孩子极力睁大了眼睛瞧，可是怎么也看不到远处的那座城市。他从谷仓上下来。他那个年纪，心思容易变，在古道的旧迹上走着的时候，也就把基督堂撂到一边了，又在路两边的土堆上寻找自然生长出来的好玩的东西。在回到马利格林的路上，再次经过谷仓时候，他注意到梯子还在原处，那两个人干完活走了。
天色已晚，渐渐昏暗，仍旧有一片薄雾，不过除了荒野靠下方的比较潮湿的地段和河道两岸，其他地方的雾气多少散了点。这时他又想到了基督堂，既然眼巴巴地从姑婆家出来已经走了两三英里，总希望看见一回人家跟他说的那个富有吸引力的城市什么样呀。不过就算他一直在这儿等下去，入夜之前，大气也未必完全开朗吧。可是他绝不甘心离开这儿，因为他要是转回那个村子，只要再走几百码，北方的空；周地带就从眼界里消失了。
他爬上了梯子，想再看看那两人指给他看的地方，一上到梯子顶高的一档，就拿身子靠着谷仓的瓦檐，好站稳了。像今天走得这么远，恐怕以后多少天也别打算啊。也许你要是祈祷的话，说不定想看见基督堂的心愿会实现呢。人家不是讲过吗，你要是祷告，有时候就能如愿以偿，当然有时候也不一定行。他念过一篇劝世文，里边说某人开始造教堂，可造还没造完就没钱了，他就跪下来祷告，下趟邮班果然把钱带来啦。还有一个人也想把这经验照搬一回，钱可没来；不过他后来发现他下跪时穿的裤子原来是个邪恶的犹太人做的。这并没叫人泄气，所以裘德还是把身子转过来，跪在第三档上，身子靠住上边两档，祷告雾气往上散开。
然后他坐稳了等着。大约过了十或十五分钟，越来越稀薄的雾从北方地平线上，就像先前在别的地方那样，全都散净了。夕阳西下前一刻钟光景，朝西飘移的云层倏然分开，太阳的位置露出了一部分，在两块云团之间，阳光奔涌而出，光束明晰。孩子立刻回过身来，朝原来的方向望去。
在那一望连绵的景色的范围内，有个地方的黄玉般光点不断闪烁。随着时间的推移，空气的透明度愈见增强，而黄玉般光点终于显露了原形，它们是风信旗、窗户和潮湿的石板屋顶，以及塔尖。圆屋顶和沙石装饰物的闪亮的部位。形态各异的建筑物轮廓若隐若现，隐约可见。那就是基督堂啊；若不是眼见为实，那它必定是在特殊的大气氛围中映现的海市蜃楼了。
这位观赏者一直目不转睛地凝视着，到后来窗户和风信旗几乎像烛光熄灭一样骤然失去了光亮。迷茫的城市宛如披上了轻薄的雾毅。他转向西方，太阳早已西沉了。画面的前景变得阴森可怖，近处无一不是开米拉般妖物的奇形怪状，五颜六色。
他慌慌张张从梯子上溜下来，开始往家里跑，哪儿还敢再想什么巨人呀、猎手赫恩呀、伺机杀害克里斯梯安的恶魔亚坡伦呀、在闹鬼的船上脑门有个窟窿一直往外冒血的船长和夜夜围着他翻来覆去地造反的尸体呀。他也知道自己已经长大了，不该再信什么妖魔鬼怪了，可是他还是直到看见了教堂塔楼和自家窗户里的灯光，才定下心，高兴起来，哪怕这并不是他呱呱堕地的地方，他站婆待他也不怎么样。
老太婆的“店”的窗户装着二十四块嵌在铅条框子里的小玻璃，年深日久，有些经过氧化，已经模糊，所以你休想隔着玻璃看清楚屋里陈列着的那些可怜巴巴的只值一便士的食品，它们是整个货仓的一部分，其实只要一个壮汉一拎，就可以把所有的东西都拿走了。裘德就在这个窗户里边和窗户这头那头呆着，相当长的一段时间内他外表安详，似乎心无所动。但是他所处的环境是那么委琐不堪，相比之下，他所抱的理想实在是大而无当。
他老是没完没了地透过寒冷的白垩质高地构成的坚固屏障，神往于那座熠熠生辉的城市——他在想象中把它比做新耶路撒冷的地方，不过他这份想象可跟《启示录》作者的构思大不相同，因为其中多的是画家的精思妙诣，少的是珠宝商人的痴心妄想。对他的生命来说，那个城市形成了具体的事物、永恒的存在和无上的权威，而究其起因，不能不主要归之于一件事的深远影响，就是那个在学识与志向方面使他深为敬仰的人确实住到了那个地方；非但如此，他还生活在思想更为深刻，才智更为卓越的人们中间。
在凄凉多雨的季节，他虽然知道基督堂那边也下雨，但是他不肯信那儿的雨会也下得那么叫人意绪消沉。只要他能够得闲，把小村子摆脱一两个钟头（机会是难得的），他就偷偷溜到小山上的棕房子，一直眼睛睁得大大的，有时候碰运气能瞧见一个圆屋顶或塔尖，这在他就算不虚此行了；也间或瞧见一缕轻烟，就猜想大概是因为烧香引来了神启吧。
其后有那么一天，他突然想到，要是天黑以后登上那个能眺望的地方，要么再多走上一两英里，准能看得到城市夜晚的灯光。不过回家路上就会只剩他一个人了。但是即使这样的顾虑也没吓住他，因为毫无疑问，在他身上是不难拿出几分大丈夫气概的。
计划当下就实行了。他到达纵览景色的地方还不算晚，刚过了黄昏时分；不过东北方上空已经完全暗下来，加上从同一方向吹过来的一阵风，此时此刻也真够暗了。功夫不负苦心人哪；可惜他所看到的不是一行行灯光，像他期望的那样；没有一盏灯光灼然可辨，极目所至，只有一片光晕或是闪亮的薄雾在黑暗的夜空中笼罩着那地方，使灯光和城市显得离他只有一英里左右。
他仔细琢磨起来：在这片亮光中间，老师究竟住在什么地方——他到现在也没跟马利格林哪个人联络过，对那儿的人来说，他就跟死了一样。他好像看见费乐生先生正在亮光中悠然自得地散步，好比是尼布甲尼撒的窑里烧不死的人里头的一个。
他以前就听说过微风按一小时十英里速度吹拂；他这样一想，就面朝东北，张开嘴，在风中大口呼吸，如饮琼浆。
“你啊，”他满怀柔情向风倾诉，“一两个钟头之前，你还在基督堂哪，你飘过长街，绕着风信旗转悠，轻轻抚摸费乐生先生的脸，让他呼吸过，你这会儿上这儿来啦，让我呼吸啦——你啊，就是这样啊。”
突然间，随着风吹，好像有什么信息向他传过来了——从那儿，好像由住在那儿的某个精灵把信息传过来了。对啦，那是钟声，是那座城市的声音，轻微而悦耳，向他发出了呼唤：“我们这儿多快活啊！”
他心骛神驰，看人了迷，到了浑然忘我的地步，幸亏像梦中一样一阵极力挣扎，才清醒过来。只见离他站的高冈下面几码远的地方，冒出一队车马，它们是从极其陡峻的坡子底下，在曲里拐弯的路上转了半个钟头，才到这地方的。马车拉的是煤，是高地绝不可少的燃料，也只有靠这条路才好运进去。随车的有车把式，还有个伙计跟男孩儿。那孩子直往前端一块大石头，要用它顶住一个车轮，好让喘吁吁的畜牲多歇息一阵子。两个运货的打煤堆里取出个大肚子酒瓶，轮流喝起来。
那两人都上了年纪，说话声音听着挺和气的。裘德就走过去，跟他们搭话，打听他们是不是从基督堂来的。
“没影儿的事，怎么好带这样的货去！”他们说。
“我是说那边儿的那个。”他对基督堂一往情深，如同年轻的恋人暗自提起意中人名字时候，深恐再说一遍就唐突伊人似的。他指着半天空的灯光，不过他们的老花眼看不大清楚。
“是喽，东北边儿上是有个地方，仿佛比别处亮点，我先例没注意呢，不错，就是基督堂啦。”
裘德腋下本来夹着一本小本子故事书，留着天黑之前在路上看，这会儿滑到了地上。车把式在他把书拣起来抹抹好的时候，直盯着看他。
“哎，小子，”他认真地说，“你要是想念他们念的书，可先得想法子换个脑筋才行哪。”
“干吗呀？”裘德问。
“哎，咱们这号人懂得的东西，他们向来是正眼不看哪。”车把式接着往下说，借此消磨消磨时间。“只有巴别塔那个时代的外国话才用得上哪，那会儿连两家说一样话的都没有。他们念那种东西就跟夜鹰扇翅膀一样快。那儿到处是学问——没别的，除了学问还是学问，还不算宗教，可那也是学问呀，反正我根本就不懂。是喽，是个思想纯得很的地方喽。可别怪，到夜里，街上一样有坏娘儿们转悠呢。我看你也知道他们那边造就办教的吧？好比菜地种萝卜。虽说他们得花上——多少年呀，鲍勃？——五年，才把一个整天啥事没干、蠢头蠢脑的家伙变成一个满脸正经、没邪念头的讲道的，可他们还是非这么干不行，只要干得成就干嘛，再说还得把他打磨一番，让他样儿又文雅又能干，够得上要当的那号人，然后就让他出师啦，脸拉得老长老长的，黑袍子黑背心也是老长老长的，戴着出家人的领子跟帽子，跟《圣经》里那些人穿戴得没两样，这一来连他妈也认不得这家伙啦……哪，这就是他们做的生意，反正谁都得有自个儿的生意嘛。”
“可你居然知道——”
“别打岔，孩子，大人说话，不许打岔。鲍勃，把前头马往边儿上拉拉，什么东西过来啦。你可要注意，我要讲讲学院生活啦。他们过的日子才高尚呢，这没什么好议论的，不过我本人不大瞧得起他们。要是说咱们是身子站在这高处，那他们就是思想站在高处——十足的思想高尚的人嘛，这可没什么好怀疑的。他们里头有些人只要把脑子里的东西说出来，一挣就好几百呢。还有些家伙，年轻力壮，赚的钱跟银杯里盛的一样多呀。要说音乐嘛，基督堂到处有刮刮叫的音乐。你信教也好，不信教也好，可你免不了也跟大伙儿一块儿唱那家喻户晓的调子。那儿有条街——是条主要街道——世界难有其匹哪。我自间知道点基督堂的名堂就是了。”
这时候马匹歇过来了，重新驾好辕。裘德最后一次怀着敬畏的心情，向远处的光晕望了一回，然后傍着那位消息极为灵通的朋友一块儿离开了，那人路上也没拒绝再跟裘德聊聊那座城市——它的塔楼、会堂和教堂。运货马车到了岔路口，裘德因为车把式给他讲了那么多，对他千恩万谢，还说但愿他自己也能像他一样说基督堂，哪怕能讲出一半也就行了。
“我这也不过偶尔听说的。”车把式说，没一点自吹自擂的样子。“那儿我压根儿没去过，跟你一样，不过我东听点，西听点，也就知道个大概啦。你爱听，这就挺好嘛。我这人到处闯荡，跟社会上哪个路道的都有来往，就算不想听也听了。我一个朋友年轻力壮那阵子，常在基督堂的权杖旅馆擦皮鞋，哎哎，他上了年纪以后，我待他就跟亲哥儿俩一样哪。”
裘德一个人继续往家走，一路上仔细想个没完，这一来反倒一点顾不上害怕了。他一直心向往之的是一个身心得以完全托庇，精神得以信守不渝的对象——一个他自以为令人崇敬的地方。如果他能在那座城市找到这样的地方，那他究竟是去得成呢，还是去不成？在那儿，用不着害怕庄稼汉的骄横，用不着害怕有人对他横加阻挠，用不着害怕别人讥笑嘲骂，他能不能像他以前听说的古人那样，静观慎守，把整个身心都投入到一项伟大事业中呢？正如一刻钟前他凝视着的光晕对他的眼睛发生的作用，这会儿摸黑赶路，那地方对他的心灵也有了启示。
“那是光明之城。”他自言自语。
“知识之树在那儿生长。”他往前走了几步又说。
“那儿既造就也延揽学问精深的人类导师。”
“你可以叫它是由学问和宗教守护的城堡。”
说过这个比喻，他沉默良久，然后说出了一句：
“那是个对我完全合适的地方。”
Part 1 Chapter 4
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.
"Well, my man! I'm in a hurry, so you'll have to walk pretty fast if you keep alongside of me. Do you know who I am?"
"Yes, I think. Physician Vilbert?"
"Ah--I'm known everywhere, I see! That comes of being a public benefactor."
Vilbert was an itinerant quack-doctor, well known to the rustic population, and absolutely unknown to anybody else, as he, indeed, took care to be, to avoid inconvenient investigations. Cottagers formed his only patients, and his Wessex-wide repute was among them alone. His position was humbler and his field more obscure than those of the quacks with capital and an organized system of advertising. He was, in fact, a survival. The distances he traversed on foot were enormous, and extended nearly the whole length and breadth of Wessex. Jude had one day seen him selling a pot of coloured lard to an old woman as a certain cure for a bad leg, the woman arranging to pay a guinea, in instalments of a shilling a fortnight, for the precious salve, which, according to the physician, could only be obtained from a particular animal which grazed on Mount Sinai, and was to be captured only at great risk to life and limb. Jude, though he already had his doubts about this gentleman's medicines, felt him to be unquestionably a travelled personage, and one who might be a trustworthy source of information on matters not strictly professional.
"I s'pose you've been to Christminster, Physician?"
"I have--many times," replied the long thin man. "That's one of my centres."
"It's a wonderful city for scholarship and religion?"
"You'd say so, my boy, if you'd seen it. Why, the very sons of the old women who do the washing of the colleges can talk in Latin--not good Latin, that I admit, as a critic: dog-Latin--cat-Latin, as we used to call it in my undergraduate days."
"And Greek?"
"Well--that's more for the men who are in training for bishops, that they may be able to read the New Testament in the original."
"I want to learn Latin and Greek myself."
"A lofty desire. You must get a grammar of each tongue."
"I mean to go to Christminster some day."
"Whenever you do, you say that Physician Vilbert is the only proprietor of those celebrated pills that infallibly cure all disorders of the alimentary system, as well as asthma and shortness of breath. Two and threepence a box--specially licensed by the government stamp."
"Can you get me the grammars if I promise to say it hereabout?"
"I'll sell you mine with pleasure--those I used as a student."
"Oh, thank you, sir!" said Jude gratefully, but in gasps, for the amazing speed of the physician's walk kept him in a dog-trot which was giving him a stitch in the side. "I think you'd better drop behind, my young man. Now I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll get you the grammars, and give you a first lesson, if you'll remember, at every house in the village, to recommend Physician Vilbert's golden ointment, life-drops, and female pills."
"Where will you be with the grammars?"
"I shall be passing here this day fortnight at precisely this hour of five-and-twenty minutes past seven. My movements are as truly timed as those of the planets in their courses."
"Here I'll be to meet you," said Jude.
"With orders for my medicines?"
"Yes, Physician."
Jude then dropped behind, waited a few minutes to recover breath, and went home with a consciousness of having struck a blow for Christminster.
Through the intervening fortnight he ran about and smiled outwardly at his inward thoughts, as if they were people meeting and nodding to him-- smiled with that singularly beautiful irradiation which is seen to spread on young faces at the inception of some glorious idea, as if a supernatural lamp were held inside their transparent natures, giving rise to the flattering fancy that heaven lies about them then.
He honestly performed his promise to the man of many cures, in whom he now sincerely believed, walking miles hither and thither among the surrounding hamlets as the Physician's agent in advance. On the evening appointed he stood motionless on the plateau, at the place where he had parted from Vilbert, and there awaited his approach. The road-physician was fairly up to time; but, to the surprise of Jude on striking into his pace, which the pedestrian did not diminish by a single unit of force, the latter seemed hardly to recognize his young companion, though with the lapse of the fortnight the evenings had grown light. Jude thought it might perhaps be owing to his wearing another hat, and he saluted the physician with dignity.
"Well, my boy?" said the latter abstractedly.
"I've come," said Jude.
"You? who are you? Oh yes--to be sure! Got any orders, lad?"
"Yes." And Jude told him the names and addresses of the cottagers who were willing to test the virtues of the world-renowned pills and salve. The quack mentally registered these with great care.
"And the Latin and Greek grammars?" Jude's voice trembled with anxiety.
"What about them?"
"You were to bring me yours, that you used before you took your degree."
"Ah, yes, yes! Forgot all about it--all! So many lives depending on my attention, you see, my man, that I can't give so much thought as I would like to other things."
Jude controlled himself sufficiently long to make sure of the truth; and he repeated, in a voice of dry misery, "You haven't brought 'em!"
"No. But you must get me some more orders from sick people, and I'll bring the grammars next time."
Jude dropped behind. He was an unsophisticated boy, but the gift of sudden insight which is sometimes vouchsafed to children showed him all at once what shoddy humanity the quack was made of. There was to be no intellectual light from this source. The leaves dropped from his imaginary crown of laurel; he turned to a gate, leant against it, and cried bitterly.
The disappointment was followed by an interval of blankness. He might, perhaps, have obtained grammars from Alfredston, but to do that required money, and a knowledge of what books to order; and though physically comfortable, he was in such absolute dependence as to be without a farthing of his own.
At this date Mr. Phillotson sent for his pianoforte, and it gave Jude a lead. Why should he not write to the schoolmaster, and ask him to be so kind as to get him the grammars in Christminster? He might slip a letter inside the case of the instrument, and it would be sure to reach the desired eyes. Why not ask him to send any old second-hand copies, which would have the charm of being mellowed by the university atmosphere?
To tell his aunt of his intention would be to defeat it. It was necessary to act alone.
After a further consideration of a few days he did act, and on the day of the piano's departure, which happened to be his next birthday, clandestinely placed the letter inside the packing-case, directed to his much-admired friend, being afraid to reveal the operation to his aunt Drusilla, lest she should discover his motive, and compel him to abandon his scheme.
The piano was despatched, and Jude waited days and weeks, calling every morning at the cottage post office before his great-aunt was stirring. At last a packet did indeed arrive at the village, and he saw from the ends of it that it contained two thin books. He took it away into a lonely place, and sat down on a felled elm to open it.
Ever since his first ecstasy or vision of Christminster and its possibilities, Jude had meditated much and curiously on the probable sort of process that was involved in turning the expressions of one language into those of another. He concluded that a grammar of the required tongue would contain, primarily, a rule, prescription, or clue of the nature of a secret cipher, which, once known, would enable him, by merely applying it, to change at will all words of his own speech into those of the foreign one. His childish idea was, in fact, a pushing to the extremity of mathematical precision what is everywhere known as Grimm's Law-- an aggrandizement of rough rules to ideal completeness. Thus he assumed that the words of the required language were always to be found somewhere latent in the words of the given language by those who had the art to uncover them, such art being furnished by the books aforesaid.
When, therefore, having noted that the packet bore the postmark of Christminster, he cut the string, opened the volumes, and turned to the Latin grammar, which chanced to come uppermost, he could scarcely believe his eyes.
The book was an old one--thirty years old, soiled, scribbled wantonly over with a strange name in every variety of enmity to the letterpress, and marked at random with dates twenty years earlier than his own day. But this was not the cause of Jude's amazement. He learnt for the first time that there was no law of transmutation, as in his innocence he had supposed (there was, in some degree, but the grammarian did not recognize it), but that every word in both Latin and Greek was to be individually committed to memory at the cost of years of plodding.
Jude flung down the books, lay backward along the broad trunk of the elm, and was an utterly miserable boy for the space of a quarter of an hour. As he had often done before, he pulled his hat over his face and watched the sun peering insidiously at him through the interstices of the straw. This was Latin and Greek, then, was it this grand delusion! The charm he had supposed in store for him was really a labour like that of Israel in Egypt.
What brains they must have in Christminster and the great schools, he presently thought, to learn words one by one up to tens of thousands! There were no brains in his head equal to this business; and as the little sun-rays continued to stream in through his hat at him, he wished he had never seen a book, that he might never see another, that he had never been born.
Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.
这个孩子，按思想发展的某些状况说，是个古时候人，可是在另一些方面又比他的实际年龄幼稚许多。他这会儿一个劲儿想心事，走路就慢多了，也就让一个脚底下轻快的人赶了过去。天已昏暗，不过他多少看得出来那人头戴一顶特高的礼帽，身穿一件燕尾服，配着一根表链，脚上一双没响声的靴子。他的两条细腿甩开大步朝前闯，那根表链也就随之狂跳不已，把天光星星点点折射出来。裘德本已开始觉得孤单，一心想追上他。
“嗨，你这家伙！我赶路哪，你要想追上我，得快走才行啊。你知道我是谁吗？”
“我想我知道。你不就是韦伯大夫吗？”
“哈哈——我是尽人皆知哪，因为我时时刻刻给人办好事啊。”
韦伯是个卖假药的江湖郎中，因为他一向小心谨慎，不露马脚，免得惹出是非，引人盘查，所以只有乡里人熟识他，其他人就对他一无所知了。又因为只有草房住户才向他求医问药，所以在维塞克斯郡，也只在这类人中间有名气。他比那些既有大本钱、又有一整套广告班子替他招摇撞骗的骗子手，未免寒酸许多，病家也更卑贱。实际上他是勉强混日子。他足迹遍及维塞克斯郡，东西南北，称得上无远弗届。裘德以前有一天瞧见他把一罐子上色的猪油卖给一个老太婆，说是专治腿脚病的。老太婆得为那珍贵的药膏出一几尼，按分期付款办法，一回交一先令。大夫自称只能从西奈山上一种吃草的神兽身上提取到这药，要抓到它，非冒送掉性命和残肢败体的严重危险不可。裘德固然老早就对这位绅士的药品信不过，不过觉得拿他当个同路人也没什么关系，况且在纯属他那行当之外，也许还能提供点可信的材料呢。
“大夫，你到没到过基督堂呀？”
“到过——到过好多回啦，”又高又瘦的郎中回答，“我在那儿还办了个治疗中心呢。”
“那是个了不起的讲学术跟宗教的城市吧，对不对呀？”
“孩子，你要是瞧见它，准这么说啊。啊，连大学里头洗衣服的老太婆的儿子都说拉丁文——照我看，可不能说这拉丁文说得地道，什么狗拉丁——猫拉丁，我念大学时候就这么叫它。”
“希腊文呢？”
“呃——那是专替经过训练，以后当主教的人开的课，他们以后就能够念《新约全书》的原文啦。”
“我很想学拉丁文跟希腊文。”
“这志气可不得了。你得先每样儿弄本文法书才行哪。”
“我打算哪一天上基督堂呢。”
“随便你哪天去，你见了人都要说，韦伯大夫独家制造经营的那些著名的药丸子，专治肠胃不调、多年抖索、中气不接，功效如神。两先令一便士一盒——印花为凭，特准行销。”
“要是我答应你在方近左右传名的话，你还能给我弄到文法书？”
“我倒乐意把我的卖给你呢——是我当学生时候用的。”
“哦，谢谢啦，先生。”裘德说，显出感激不尽的样子，不过他有点上气不接下气了，因为他得小跑才跟得上郎中走路的惊人速度，累得他两肋都扎得慌。
“小伙子，我看你顶好别跟在我后边啦。我这会儿就跟你说说我打算怎么办。我要给你弄到文法书，还给你上头一课，不过你别忘了在村子里挨家挨户推销韦伯大夫的金药膏、长寿液跟妇道调荣丸。”
“那你把文法书带到哪儿呢？”
“再过两个礼拜，还是今儿个这样，我准打这儿过，准时七点五十二分，分秒不错。我一活动起来，跟行星在轨道上运行一个样儿，时间十分精确。”
“我就在这儿等你好啦。”裘德说。
“哪家订了药也带来吗？”
“那还用说，大夫。”
裘德就留在后头，歇了几分钟缓缓气。到家的时候，心里觉着已经为到基督堂办了件大事。
这中间两个礼拜，他随处走，对于自己内心蕴藏的思想，不时展露笑容，仿佛那些思想就是他平时见到的、井且对他打招呼的人。他的笑容有着那样非凡美丽的光彩，因为只要内心吸取了灿烂辉煌的思想，这样的光彩就会泛现在年轻的面庞上，如同一盏神灯把他们天生纯净澄澈的心胜照映出来，激发起令人快慰的幻念：天堂就近在身边啊。
他真心相信那个包治百病的家伙，老老实实履行了对他的承诺，作为郎中派出的代理人，在周围的村子东跑西颠了好多英里。在约好的那晚上，他站在上次同韦伯分手时的高冈上，木然不动，静候他到来。江湖郎中还算守时，可是令裘德大惑不解的是，当他过去同郎中齐步走时，他却一步也没放松，似乎没认出这年轻伙伴，尽管只过了两个礼拜，再说天也黑得晚了些。裘德以为这大概因为自己换了帽子，于是规规矩矩向他行个礼。
“呃，孩子？”后者心不在焉地说。
“我来啦！”裘德说。
“你？你是谁呀？哦，对啦，不错不错！小子，带单子没有？”
“带来啦。”裘德接着把愿意试用他的名满世界、功效如神的九药和青子的草房住户的姓名、住址一一报给他听。江湖郎中聚精会神记在心里。
“拉丁文跟希腊文的文法书呢？”裘德焦急地问，声音都发抖了。
“什么文法书呀？”
“你要把你的带来给我，你从前念学位时候用的。”
“哎，是啊，是啊！忘得一干二净啦——一干二净啦！你瞧，那么多人的命得靠我关照哪，就算我想得起来，可哪儿来那么多心思管别的事呀！”
裘德隐忍了好半天，想弄明白到底怎么回事，这才又说了一遍，声音饱含着委屈，“你没把文法书带来嘛！”
“没带来。不过你还得拉点病人来，那我下回就把文法书带来。”
裘德没再跟着他。他是个天真烂漫的孩子，哪里懂什么机诈。但是孩子有一种不期而至的天赋直觉，这使他立刻看穿卖假药的是个人面兽心的东西。从这方面是再休想得到心智方面的启发了，想象中的桂冠的叶子纷纷凋落下来；他倚在一个篱笆门上，失声痛哭。
这次失望之后是一段无精打采、无所作为的时期。或许他能从阿尔夫瑞顿买到文法书吧，可是那得有钱才行啊，再说该买什么样的书也不知道呀；何况他虽然不愁吃穿，终归是寄人篱下，自个儿是一文不名啊。
说来也巧，这时费乐生先生派人来取钢琴，裘德灵机一动：何不写信给老师，求他关照，帮他在基督堂弄到文法书呢？他不妨把信放在装钢琴的箱子里，老师收到钢琴，一定看得到。何不求他寄点什么用过的书来呢？那书里准有日薰月染的大学气氛的魅力呀。
经过几天反复考虑，他果真行动起来。运走钢琴那天正巧是他生日，他人不知鬼不觉地把信放进了装琴的箱子，寄给由衷敬仰的朋友；他生怕这件事露了馅，让他多喜姑婆知道，因为她一经发现，非逼他放弃不可。
钢琴运走后，裘德等了一天又一天，一个礼拜又一个礼拜，天天一大早趁姑婆没起床，就到草房邮政所打听。后来果然有包裹寄到村子，他从包裹两头看出来里面是薄薄两本书。他拿到一个僻静地方，坐在一棵砍倒的榆树干上，把包裹打开。
自从基督堂和它可能有的种种景象第一次使他为之欣喜若狂或想入非非以来，裘德一直潜心思索，大发奇想，以为说不定有那么一种路数足以把一种语言的词语转译为另一种语言的词语。他得出结论是：要学的语言的文法可能包含一种密码性质的定则、验方或线索，一经对这种定则。验方或线索掌握，只要通过实际应用，就能使他随心所欲地把他自己的语言的全部单词译成外国语言的单词。他这种孩子气的构想其实是把名传遐迩的格里姆定律推阐到数学意味的精确的极致，从而在各个方面使本属粗疏的法则改进、充实到理想的完善程度。因此他才设想要学的语言一定能在已经掌握的语言当中找到潜在的对应词，这需要具备一定技巧的人来揭示，而这种技巧正是由上面说的文法书提供的。
他看到包裹上盖的是基督堂邮戳，就把绳子扯断，打开包封，首先取出的恰好是放在上面的拉丁文法。他简直不敢相信自己的眼、是本旧书一出版、十年了，挺脏的，上面东涂西抹，狼藉满纸，到处有眼生的名字，好像对于有插图的正文怀有深仇大恨才这么干的，还乱七八糟地标着许多比他自己生年还早二十年的日期。但这还不是使他一下子呆若木鸡的原因。而是他到这会儿才头一次明白过来，根本没什么由他天真无知设想出来的两种语言之间彼此可以置换的法则（某种程度上，有是有，不过文法家不予认可），而要把所有拉丁文和希腊文的单词一个个记到脑子里去，那得耗尽多少艰苦卓绝的努力哟。
裘德把文法书甩到了一边，在粗壮的榆树干旁边仰面朝天躺下来，有一刻钟光景伤心以极。他习以为常，把帽子拉到脸上，眼对着从草帽缏隙缝射进来的不怀好意地觑着他的阳光。这就是拉丁文和希腊文吗？唉，真是个大骗局哟！他先前想象出来的等着他的魔力到头来竟然跟以色列人在埃及做的苦工没两样啊！
他立刻想到基督堂和大学里边的人该有怎样不同寻常的头脑，把那几万几万个词逐一学会呀！他脑袋里可没装着干这样事的脑子啊；在细微的光芒继续穿过草帽照着他时候，他但愿当初压根没见过书才好，以后永远也别见到书才好，但愿自己压根儿没生到世上来才好呢。
倘若有人路过此处，或许问问他为什么这样苦恼；听了之后，会说他的想法比他的文法家的想法还高一筹呢，以此来给他鼓劲打气。但是谁也没来，就算有人来了，也不会这样干。裘德承认他是因为犯了弥天大错而一败涂地了，继续希望离开人世。
Part 1 Chapter 5
DURING the three or four succeeding years a quaint and singular vehicle might have been discerned moving along the lanes and by-roads near Marygreen, driven in a quaint and singular way.
In the course of a month or two after the receipt of the books Jude had grown callous to the shabby trick played him by the dead languages. In fact, his disappointment at the nature of those tongues had, after a while, been the means of still further glorifying the erudition of Christminster. To acquire languages, departed or living in spite of such obstinacies as he now knew them inherently to possess, was a herculean performance which gradually led him on to a greater interest in it than in the presupposed patent process. The mountain-weight of material under which the ideas lay in those dusty volumes called the classics piqued him into a dogged, mouselike subtlety of attempt to move it piecemeal.
He had endeavoured to make his presence tolerable to his crusty maiden aunt by assisting her to the best of his ability, and the business of the little cottage bakery had grown in consequence. An aged horse with a hanging head had been purchased for eight pounds at a sale, a creaking cart with a whity-brown tilt obtained for a few pounds more, and in this turn-out it became Jude's business thrice a week to carry loaves of bread to the villagers and solitary cotters immediately round Marygreen.
The singularity aforesaid lay, after all, less in the conveyance itself than in Jude's manner of conducting it along its route. Its interior was the scene of most of Jude's education by "private study." As soon as the horse had learnt the road and the houses at which he was to pause awhile, the boy, seated in front, would slip the reins over his arm, ingeniously fix open, by means of a strap attached to the tilt, the volume he was reading, spread the dictionary on his knees, and plunge into the simpler passages from Caesar, Virgil, or Horace, as the case might be, in his purblind stumbling way, and with an expenditure of labour that would have made a tender-hearted pedagogue shed tears; yet somehow getting at the meaning of what he read, and divining rather than beholding the spirit of the original, which often to his mind was something else than that which he was taught to look for.
The only copies he had been able to lay hands on were old Delphin editions, because they were superseded, and therefore cheap. But, bad for idle schoolboys, it did so happen that they were passably good for him. The hampered and lonely itinerant conscientiously covered up the marginal readings, and used them merely on points of construction, as he would have used a comrade or tutor who should have happened to be passing by. And though Jude may have had little chance of becoming a scholar by these rough and ready means, he was in the way of getting into the groove he wished to follow.
While he was busied with these ancient pages, which had already been thumbed by hands possibly in the grave, digging out the thoughts of these minds so remote yet so near, the bony old horse pursued his rounds, and Jude would be aroused from the woes of Dido by the stoppage of his cart and the voice of some old woman crying, "Two to-day, baker, and I return this stale one."
He was frequently met in the lanes by pedestrians and others without his seeing them, and by degrees the people of the neighbourhood began to talk about his method of combining work and play (such they considered his reading to be), which, though probably convenient enough to himself, was not altogether a safe proceeding for other travellers along the same roads. There were murmurs. Then a private resident of an adjoining place informed the local policeman that the baker's boy should not be allowed to read while driving, and insisted that it was the constable's duty to catch him in the act, and take him to the police court at Alfredston, and get him fined for dangerous practices on the highway. The policeman thereupon lay in wait for Jude, and one day accosted him and cautioned him.
As Jude had to get up at three o'clock in the morning to heat the oven, and mix and set in the bread that he distributed later in the day, he was obliged to go to bed at night immediately after laying the sponge; so that if he could not read his classics on the highways he could hardly study at all. The only thing to be done was, therefore, to keep a sharp eye ahead and around him as well as he could in the circumstances, and slip away his books as soon as anybody loomed in the distance, the policeman in particular. To do that official justice, he did not put himself much in the way of Jude's bread-cart, considering that in such a lonely district the chief danger was to Jude himself, and often on seeing the white tilt over the hedges he would move in another direction.
On a day when Fawley was getting quite advanced, being now about sixteen, and had been stumbling through the "Carmen Saeculare," on his way home, he found himself to be passing over the high edge of the plateau by the Brown House. The light had changed, and it was the sense of this which had caused him to look up. The sun was going down, and the full moon was rising simultaneously behind the woods in the opposite quarter. His mind had become so impregnated with the poem that, in a moment of the same impulsive emotion which years before had caused him to kneel on the ladder, he stopped the horse, alighted, and glancing round to see that nobody was in sight, knelt down on the roadside bank with open book. He turned first to the shiny goddess, who seemed to look so softly and critically at his doings, then to the disappearing luminary on the other hand, as he began:
"Phoebe silvarumque potens Diana!"
The horse stood still till he had finished the hymn, which Jude repeated under the sway of a polytheistic fancy that he would never have thought of humouring in broad daylight.
Reaching home, he mused over his curious superstition, innate or acquired, in doing this, and the strange forgetfulness which had led to such a lapse from common sense and custom in one who wished, next to being a scholar, to be a Christian divine. It had all come of reading heathen works exclusively. The more he thought of it the more convinced he was of his inconsistency. He began to wonder whether he could be reading quite the right books for his object in life. Certainly there seemed little harmony between this pagan literature and the mediaeval colleges at Christminster, that ecclesiastical romance in stone.
Ultimately he decided that in his sheer love of reading he had taken up a wrong emotion for a Christian young man. He had dabbled in Clarke's Homer, but had never yet worked much at the New Testament in the Greek, though he possessed a copy, obtained by post from a second-hand bookseller. He abandoned the now familiar Ionic for a new dialect, and for a long time onward limited his reading almost entirely to the Gospels and Epistles in Griesbach's text. Moreover, on going into Alfredston one day, he was introduced to patristic literature by finding at the bookseller's some volumes of the Fathers which had been left behind by an insolvent clergyman of the neighbourhood.
As another outcome of this change of groove he visited on Sundays all the churches within a walk, and deciphered the Latin inscriptions on fifteenth-century brasses and tombs. On one of these pilgrimages he met with a hunch-backed old woman of great intelligence, who read everything she could lay her hands on, and she told him more yet of the romantic charms of the city of light and lore. Thither he resolved as firmly as ever to go.
But how live in that city? At present he had no income at all. He had no trade or calling of any dignity or stability whatever on which he could subsist while carrying out an intellectual labour which might spread over many years.
What was most required by citizens? Food, clothing, and shelter. An income from any work in preparing the first would be too meagre; for making the second he felt a distaste; the preparation of the third requisite he inclined to. They built in a city; therefore he would learn to build. He thought of his unknown uncle, his cousin Susanna's father, an ecclesiastical worker in metal, and somehow mediaeval art in any material was a trade for which he had rather a fancy. He could not go far wrong in following his uncle's footsteps, and engaging himself awhile with the carcases that contained the scholar souls.
As a preliminary he obtained some small blocks of freestone, metal not being available, and suspending his studies awhile, occupied his spare half-hours in copying the heads and capitals in his parish church.
There was a stone-mason of a humble kind in Alfredston, and as soon as he had found a substitute for himself in his aunt's little business, he offered his services to this man for a trifling wage. Here Jude had the opportunity of learning at least the rudiments of freestone-working. Some time later he went to a church-builder in the same place, and under the architect's direction became handy at restoring the dilapidated masonries of several village churches round about.
Not forgetting that he was only following up this handicraft as a prop to lean on while he prepared those greater engines which he flattered himself would be better fitted for him, he yet was interested in his pursuit on its own account. He now had lodgings during the week in the little town, whence he returned to Marygreen village every Saturday evening. And thus he reached and passed his nineteenth year.
其后连续三四年光景，在马利格林附近的篱路和少人走的乡下小道上，常常看到一辆样子希奇古怪的老旧运货小马车来来去去，赶车的样子也希奇古怪。
裘德收到文法书之后头一两月，对死了的语言捉弄他的卑鄙伎俩抱着深恶痛绝的态度。但是，他这种情绪实际上并没能维持多久。两种语言本身的特性固然令他失望，而失望转而促使他对心目中的基督堂的博大精深更加崇敬。现在他对死去的或者活着的语言的邃密艰深已经有所了解，可是真要掌握语言，那就非得有一股子“力拔山兮气盖世”的魄力不可。正是由于这样的认识逐渐引导他不再那么斤斤于先人为主、自以为独得之秘的路数，而是对语言本身产生莫大兴趣。在浩如烟海的载籍中有号称经典之作的尘封的书卷，其中蕴藏着往哲先贤的思想，这催他感激奋发，决心要学老鼠啃东西那样，精细人微而又坚持不懈地把那些著作一小块一小块地啃完方肯罢休。
他尽己所能帮姑婆做事，省得那位脾气不好的老处女老看他不顺眼。小房子的面包生意也就日渐兴隆了。在集市上大甩卖时候，他们花八英镑买了一匹耷拉着脑袋的老马，又花了几镑搞到一辆棕色篷子已经发白的嘎吱吱的运货小马车。经过这番变化，裘德一礼拜得三回给紧挨马利格林一带的乡亲和单身汉送面包。
前面说到希奇古怪，倒不一定限于那辆旧车，主要还是说裘德一路驾车的样子。车身子成了裘德通过“自学”方式受到教育的主要阵地。一等到老马识途，还知道该在哪家门口停下来，这孩子就在前座上坐定，缓绳挂在胳臂上，再拿一根带子，一头系在篷子上，一头把他念的书巧妙地固定好，然后把词典摊在膝头上，一路颠簸着，埋头读起恺撒、维吉尔和贺拉斯的比较容易点的篇章。那股子争分夺妙、苦苦用功的劲头，要是叫心肠软的教书先生看到，真要泫然涕下。他多少懂得了念的东西的大意，也多少估摸到而不是理解了原著的精义，可是就他在思想方面一般获得的东西而言，同书里教他一意寻绎的内容，还是颇有差距的。
他弄到的几本书都是陈旧的德尔芬版，因为早已过时，由新版取而代之，所以不值钱。不过对懒学生是坏事，对他却有好处，这话也说到家了。这个走村串户、独来独往的送面包的伙计，把书边上的批注细心盖住，不遇上句子结构方面的难题，决不移开看，其情形正类似路上过来一位同好或老师，他就恭身请教。单凭这种粗疏而又简便的方法，裘德固然没什么机会当上学者，不过他到底按自己的愿望人了门，慢慢做到心领神会。
正当他全神贯注念那些古书（它们以前大概早经墓中人翻过了），瘦骨嶙峋的老马也一心当班的时候，只听得一位老太婆大声喊，“送面包的，今儿两个，把这个退给你。”一下子把沉浸在戴多的悲痛中的裘德惊醒过来了。
好多行人和别的人常常碰到他，他却没看见他们。前后左右的居民对他这种把干活儿跟开心玩儿（在他们眼里，念书就是开心玩儿）结合起来的驾车方式开始议论起来了，因为这样于他自己也许挺方便，可是对同一条路上来往的行人就不安全了，因此引发了群情不满，附近地方有位居民向当地警察报告，说不得允许面包房的孩子一边赶车，一边念书；还一而再、再而三地要求把他抓起来，送到阿尔夫瑞顿警察所，尽到警员应有的责任；并且要对他在路上危害治安行为课以罚款，云云。警察只好躲在一边，等着裘德，总算有一大把他一举擒获，对他予以警诫。
裘德凌晨三点就得起床，催好烘炉的火，把面和好了，做好当天稍晚点要分送的面包，所以他只好头天晚上先发面，再睡觉。要是他没法在路上读古典著作，那他就根本学不成了。在这样情势的逼迫之下，他唯一办得到的事，就是一路上留神，东张西望，万一远处有了人影，特别是警察，就赶快把书掖起来。警察那边呢，倒也做到了官家的公平合理，没有想方设法去阻截裘德的面包车，因为遇上危险的主要还是裘德自己，所以他每当看到发白的篷子一在树篱高头露出来，就自动朝另一个方向开步走了。
福来渐渐长大，到现在快十六岁了。有一天在回家路上，正似懂非懂地念着《颂歌》，无意中发觉自己原来正擦着栋房子旁边的高丘的地势很高的边缘一带过去。天光有异，也正因觉察到这个变化，他才抬起头来看。只见夕阳西下之际，一轮圆月正从相对方向的密林上空升起。那首诗把他浸润得如此之深，几年前那次使他跪在梯子上的感情冲动重又油然而生。他勒住马，下了车，四顾无人，就把书打开了，跪在了路边土堆上。他先是转过身来，面朝光明女神，她好像既温和、又带着批评意味地注视着他这会儿的一举一动；他随又转身对着那个渐渐隐没的光球，开始大声念起来：
菲波斯和林中女王戴亚娜啊！
马静静站着，直到他把颂歌读完；他因为受到多神教的幻念的强大有力的支配，一时间朗诵不已；倘若平时在光天化日之下，他断乎不会一时兴起，如此宣泄自己的感情。
到家后，他陷入了沉思：他怎么会有这样荒诞不经、不论是先天固有的还是后天儒染的迷信，以致干出来这等事呢？他发愿要当上学者，退一步也要做基督教神职人员，又怎么会这样莫名其妙地忘乎所以，导致了有悖常识和习俗的背教行为呢？原来这是他一味耽读异教徒著作的结果啊。他越往下想，越认定自己的确是用志不专，信教不诚，所以才如此不胜矛盾。他对自己究竟能不能为追求终生目标的实现，慎择与之完全适宜的书籍，开始发生怀疑。看来异教文学与基督堂的学院（石头也记载着教会种种动人事迹）之间断乎没有调和的余地啊。
想到最后，他终于下了个定论：他在读书的狂热中产生了一种对一个基督教的信徒来说绝对无益的情感。他涉猎过克拉克版的《荷马诗集》，对希腊文原本的《新约全书》却根本没下过工夫，尽管他已经用邮寄方式，从一家旧书店买到一本。结果他决定搁置眼下已经熟谙的爱奥尼语，转而学一种新的希腊方言，此后很长一个时期，他把阅读几乎完全限于格莱斯巴赫编订的《福音》和《使徒书》。不仅如此，有一天他去阿尔夫瑞顿，在书店里恰好发现几卷神父文集，是当地一位破产的牧师遗留的，从此他得以接触早期基督教会领袖的著作。
他原来的癖好改变之后还有一个结果，就是逢到礼拜天必到邻近所有教堂瞻仰，细心解读十五世纪铜版和墓碑上的拉丁铭文。其中一次朝拜过程中，他幸遇一位背驼了的、智慧非凡的老太婆，凡是能弄到手的书，她就非一一读过不可。她给他讲了更多的有关那座具启智之灵光和集学问之大成的城市的动人心弦的魅力。他听过之后，越发矢志不移，必求到那地方而后已。
但是他到那座城市又怎样生活呢？眼下他一点进项也没有，他既没有一手手艺，也没有体面的或固定的职业，以维持生计，便于他日后从事或许要延续好多年的精神劳动。
城市里的居民不可或缺的东西是哪些？吃饭、穿衣和住房。第一类活儿是给人做饭，肯定收入菲薄；第二类活儿是给人做衣服，他一想就倒胃口；第三类生活必需品，他倒挺中意，想于。反正城里头得盖房子，他就学这一行好了。他想到了那位从未有一面之缘的姑父，表姊妹苏珊娜的父亲，他是做教会金属圣物的工匠。裘德也有个奇想，要学到中古时期用各种材料制作器物的工艺。他要是步姑父后尘，一时把工夫花在装学问家灵魂的壳子一类东西上，想来出不了什么大纸漏吧。
金属材料一时还找不到，他弄到些小块易切石，乘每次半个钟头的空闲，就到自己的教区的教堂去模刻柱顶和柱头，作为学手艺的第一步，至于读书做学问暂时先放一放。
阿尔夫瑞顿有个没名气的石匠，裘德一给姑婆的面包生意找到自己的替工，就上他那儿去打杂，只拿一点点工钱。不过在那儿总算有机会学到练到基本功了。过了一段时间，他又在同一地方的一家教堂营造商那儿找到差使，在建筑师指导下，为周围几座乡村教堂修复颓圮的石造物，由此把本事练出来了。
他当然没忘他学这门手艺无非做暂时糊口之计，他还要为将来伟大的事业做准备，而且自命不凡，堪当如此重任；不过对眼下求个职业，他的确也兴味浓厚。每个礼拜干活儿那几天，他住在镇上自己的地方；逢礼拜六晚上就回马利格林。就这样他到了十九岁，又过了十九岁。 |
|
