The rain came on more heavily, and all who had umbrellas opened them.
Jude was not one of these, and Sue only possessed a small one, half sunshade.
She had grown pale, though Jude did not notice it then.
"Let us go on, dear," she whispered, endeavouring to shelter him.
"We haven't any lodgings yet, remember, and all our things are at the station; and you are by no means well yet.
I am afraid this wet will hurt you!"
"They are coming now.
Just a moment, and I'll go!" said he.
A peal of six bells struck out, human faces began to crowd the windows around, and the procession of heads of houses and new doctors emerged, their red and black gowned forms passing across the field of Jude's vision like inaccessible planets across an object glass.
As they went their names were called by knowing informants, and when they reached the old round theatre of Wren a cheer rose high.
"Let's go that way!" cried Jude, and though it now rained steadily he seemed not to know it, and took them round to the theatre.
Here they stood upon the straw that was laid to drown the discordant noise of wheels, where the quaint and frost-eaten stone busts encircling the building looked with pallid grimness on the proceedings, and in particular at the bedraggled Jude, Sue, and their children, as at ludicrous persons who had no business there.
"I wish I could get in!" he said to her fervidly.
"Listen—I may catch a few words of the Latin speech by staying here; the windows are open."
However, beyond the peals of the organ, and the shouts and hurrahs between each piece of oratory, Jude's standing in the wet did not bring much Latin to his intelligence more than, now and then, a sonorous word in um or ibus.
"Well—I'm an outsider to the end of my days!" he sighed after a while.
"Now I'll go, my patient Sue.
How good of you to wait in the rain all this time—to gratify my infatuation!
I'll never care any more about the infernal cursed place, upon my soul I won't!
But what made you tremble so when we were at the barrier?
And how pale you are, Sue!"
"I saw Richard amongst the people on the other side."
"Ah—did you!"
"He is evidently come up to Jerusalem to see the festival like the rest of us: and on that account is probably living not so very far away.
He had the same hankering for the university that you had, in a milder form.
I don't think he saw me, though he must have heard you speaking to the crowd.
But he seemed not to notice."
"Well—suppose he did.
Your mind is free from worries about him now, my Sue?"
"Yes, I suppose so.
But I am weak.
Although I know it is all right with our plans, I felt a curious dread of him; an awe, or terror, of conventions I don't believe in.
It comes over me at times like a sort of creeping paralysis, and makes me so sad!"
"You are getting tired, Sue.
Oh—I forgot, darling!
Yes, we'll go on at once."
They started in quest of the lodging, and at last found something that seemed to promise well, in Mildew Lane—a spot which to Jude was irresistible—though to Sue it was not so fascinating—a narrow lane close to the back of a college, but having no communication with it.
The little houses were darkened to gloom by the high collegiate buildings, within which life was so far removed from that of the people in the lane as if it had been on opposite sides of the globe; yet only a thickness of wall divided them.
Two or three of the houses had notices of rooms to let, and the newcomers knocked at the door of one, which a woman opened.
"Ah—listen!" said Jude suddenly, instead of addressing her.
"What?"
"Why the bells—what church can that be?
The tones are familiar."
Another peal of bells had begun to sound out at some distance off.
"I don't know!" said the landlady tartly.
"Did you knock to ask that?"
"No; for lodgings," said Jude, coming to himself.
The householder scrutinized Sue's figure a moment.
"We haven't any to let," said she, shutting the door.
Jude looked discomfited, and the boy distressed.