Part Fourth
AT SHASTON
"Whoso prefers either Matrimony or other Ordinance before the Good
of Man and the plain Exigence of Charity, let him profess Papist,
or Protestant, or what he will, he is no better than a Pharisee."--
J. Milton.
I
SHASTON, the ancient British Palladour,
From whose foundation first such strange reports
arise,
(as Drayton sang it), was, and is, in itself the city of a dream.
Vague imaginings of its castle, its three mints, its magnificent
apsidal abbey, the chief glory of South Wessex, its twelve churches,
its shrines, chantries, hospitals, its gabled freestone mansions--
all now ruthlessly swept away--throw the visitor, even against
his will, into a pensive melancholy, which the stimulating
atmosphere and limitless landscape around him can scarcely dispel.
The spot was the burial-place of a king and a queen, of abbots
and abbesses, saints and bishops, knights and squires.
The bones of King Edward "the Martyr," carefully removed hither
for holy preservation, brought Shaston a renown which made it
the resort of pilgrims from every part of Europe, and enabled it
to maintain a reputation extending far beyond English shores.
To this fair creation of the great Middle-Age the Dissolution was,
as historians tell us, the death-knell. With the destruction
of the enormous abbey the whole place collapsed in a general ruin:
the Martyr's bones met with the fate of the sacred pile
that held them, and not a stone is now left to tell where
they lie.
The natural picturesqueness and singularity of the town still remain;
but strange to say these qualities, which were noted by many writers
in ages when scenic beauty is said to have been unappreciated,
are passed over in this, and one of the queerest and quaintest spots
in England stands virtually unvisited to-day.
It has a unique position on the summit of a steep and imposing scarp,
rising on the north, south, and west sides of the borough out of
the deep alluvial Vale of Blackmoor, the view from the Castle Green
over three counties of verdant pasture--South, Mid, and Nether Wessex--
being as sudden a surprise to the unexpectant traveller's eyes
as the medicinal air is to his lungs. Impossible to a railway,
it can best be reached on foot, next best by light vehicles;
and it is hardly accessible to these but by a sort of isthmus on
the north-east, that connects it with the high chalk table-land on
that side.
Such is, and such was, the now world-forgotten Shaston or Palladour.
Its situation rendered water the great want of the town; and within
living memory, horses, donkeys and men may have been seen toiling up
the winding ways to the top of the height, laden with tubs and barrels
filled from the wells beneath the mountain, and hawkers retailing their
contents at the price of a halfpenny a bucketful.
This difficulty in the water supply, together with two other
odd facts, namely, that the chief graveyard slopes up as steeply
as a roof behind the church, and that in former times the town passed
through a curious period of corruption, conventual and domestic,
gave rise to the saying that Shaston was remarkable for three
consolations to man, such as the world afforded not elsewhere.
It was a place where the churchyard lay nearer heaven than
the church steeple, where beer was more plentiful than water,
and where there were more wanton women than honest wives and maids.
It is also said that after the Middle Ages the inhabitants were too
poor to pay their priests, and hence were compelled to pull down
their churches, and refrain altogether from the public worship of God;
a necessity which they bemoaned over their cups in the settles of
their inns on Sunday afternoons. In those days the Shastonians were
apparently not without a sense of humour.
There was another peculiarity--this a modern one--which Shaston appeared
to owe to its site. It was the resting-place and headquarters of
the proprietors of wandering vans, shows, shooting-galleries, and other
itinerant concerns, whose business lay largely at fairs and markets.
As strange wild birds are seen assembled on some lofty promontory,
meditatively pausing for longer flights, or to return by the course they
followed thither, so here, in this cliff-town, stood in stultified silence
the yellow and green caravans bearing names not local, as if surprised
by a change in the landscape so violent as to hinder their further progress;
and here they usually remained all the winter till they turned to seek again
their old tracks in the following spring.
It was to this breezy and whimsical spot that Jude ascended from
the nearest station for the first time in his life about four
o'clock one afternoon, and entering on the summit of the peak
after a toilsome climb, passed the first houses of the aerial town;
and drew towards the school-house. The hour was too early;
the pupils were still in school, humming small, like a swarm of gnats;
and he withdrew a few steps along Abbey Walk, whence he regarded the spot
which fate had made the home of all he loved best in the world.
In front of the schools, which were extensive and stone-built,
grew two enormous beeches with smooth mouse-coloured trunks,
as such trees will only grow on chalk uplands. Within the mullioned
and transomed windows he could see the black, brown, and flaxen crowns
of the scholars over the sills, and to pass the time away he walked
down to the level terrace where the abbey gardens once had spread,
his heart throbbing in spite of him.
Unwilling to enter till the children were dismissed he remained
here till young voices could be heard in the open air,
and girls in white pinafores over red and blue frocks appeared
dancing along the paths which the abbess, prioress, subprioress,
and fifty nuns had demurely paced three centuries earlier.
Retracing his steps he found that he had waited too long, and that
Sue had gone out into the town at the heels of the last scholar,
Mr. Phillotson having been absent all the afternoon at a teachers'
meeting at Shottsford.
Jude went into the empty schoolroom and sat down, the girl who
was sweeping the floor having informed him that Mrs. Phillotson
would be back again in a few minutes. A piano stood near--
actually the old piano that Phillotson had possessed at Marygreen--
and though the dark afternoon almost prevented him seeing
the notes Jude touched them in his humble way, and could
not help modulating into the hymn which had so affected him
in the previous week.
A figure moved behind him, and thinking it was still the girl with the broom
Jude took no notice, till the person came close and laid her fingers lightly
upon his bass hand. The imposed hand was a little one he seemed to know,
and he turned.
"Don't stop," said Sue. "I like it. I learnt it before I left Melchester.
They used to play it in the training school."
"I can't strum before you! Play it for me."
"Oh well--I don't mind."
Sue sat down, and her rendering of the piece, though not remarkable,
seemed divine as compared with his own. She, like him, was evidently touched--
to her own surprise--by the recalled air; and when she had finished,
and he moved his hand towards hers, it met his own half-way. Jude grasped it--
just as he had done before her marriage.
"It is odd," she said, in a voice quite changed, "that I should care
about that air; because----"
"Because what?"
"I am not that sort--quite."
"Not easily moved?"
"I didn't quite mean that."
"Oh, but you ARE one of that sort, for you are just like me at heart!"
"But not at head."
She played on and suddenly turned round; and by an unpremeditated
instinct each clasped the other's hand again.
She uttered a forced little laugh as she relinquished his quickly.
"How funny!" she said. "I wonder what we both did that for?"
"I suppose because we are both alike, as I said before."
"Not in our thoughts! Perhaps a little in our feelings."
"And they rule thoughts.... Isn't it enough to make one blaspheme
that the composer of that hymn is one of the most commonplace men
I ever met!"
"What--you know him?"
"I went to see him."
"Oh, you goose--to do just what I should have done! Why did you?"
"Because we are not alike," he said drily.
"Now we'll have some tea," said Sue. "Shall we have it here
instead of in my house? It is no trouble to get the kettle
and things brought in. We don't live at the school you know,
but in that ancient dwelling across the way called Old-Grove Place.
It is so antique and dismal that it depresses me dreadfully.
Such houses are very well to visit, but not to live in--
I feel crushed into the earth by the weight of so many previous
lives there spent. In a new place like these schools there is only
your own life to support. Sit down, and I'll tell Ada to bring
the tea-things across."
He waited in the light of the stove, the door of which she flung open
before going out, and when she returned, followed by the maiden with tea,
they sat down by the same light, assisted by the blue rays of a spirit-lamp
under the brass kettle on the stand.
"This is one of your wedding-presents to me," she said,
signifying the latter.
"Yes," said Jude.
The kettle of his gift sang with some satire in its note, to his mind;
and to change the subject he said, "Do you know of any good readable
edition of the uncanonical books of the New Testament? You don't read them
in the school I suppose?"
"Oh dear no!--'twould alarm the neighbourhood.... Yes, there is one.
I am not familiar with it now, though I was interested in it when my former
friend was alive. Cowper's APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS."
"That sounds like what I want." His thoughts, however reverted
with a twinge to the "former friend"--by whom she meant,
as he knew, the university comrade of her earlier days.
He wondered if she talked of him to Phillotson.
"The Gospel of Nicodemus is very nice," she went on to keep him from
his jealous thoughts, which she read clearly, as she always did.
Indeed when they talked on an indifferent subject, as now,
there was ever a second silent conversation passing between
their emotions, so perfect was the reciprocity between them.
"It is quite like the genuine article. All cut up into verses, too;
so that it is like one of the other evangelists read in a dream,
when things are the same, yet not the same. But, Jude, do you
take an interest in those questions still? Are you getting
up APOLOGETICA?"
"Yes. I am reading Divinity harder than ever."
She regarded him curiously.
"Why do you look at me like that?" said Jude.
"Oh--why do you want to know?"
"I am sure you can tell me anything I may be ignorant of in that subject.
You must have learnt a lot of everything from your dear dead friend!"
"We won't get on to that now!" she coaxed. "Will you be carving
out at that church again next week, where you learnt the pretty hymn?"
"Yes, perhaps."
"That will be very nice. Shall I come and see you there?
It is in this direction, and I could come any afternoon by train
for half an hour?"
"No. Don't come!"
"What--aren't we going to be friends, then, any longer,
as we used to be?"
"No."
"I didn't know that. I thought you were always going to be kind to me!"
"No, I am not."
"What have I done, then? I am sure I thought we two----
" The TREMOLO in her voice caused her to break off.
"Sue, I sometimes think you are a flirt," said he abruptly.
There was a momentary pause, till she suddenly jumped up;
and to his surprise he saw by the kettle-flame that her face
was flushed.
"I can't talk to you any longer, Jude!" she said, the tragic
contralto note having come back as of old. "It is getting
too dark to stay together like this, after playing morbid
Good Friday tunes that make one feel what one shouldn't! ...
We mustn't sit and talk in this way any more. Yes--you must
go away, for you mistake me! I am very much the reverse of
what you say so cruelly--Oh, Jude, it WAS cruel to say that!
Yet I can't tell you the truth--I should shock you by letting
you know how I give way to my impulses, and how much I feel
that I shouldn't have been provided with attractiveness unless
it were meant to be exercised! Some women's love of being
loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving;
and in the last case they may find that they can't give it
continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop's
licence to receive it. But you are so straightforward,
Jude, that you can't understand me! ... Now you must go.
I am sorry my husband is not at home."
"Are you?"
"I perceive I have said that in mere convention! Honestly I
don't think I am sorry. It does not matter, either way,
sad to say!"
As they had overdone the grasp of hands some time sooner,
she touched his fingers but lightly when he went out now.
He had hardly gone from the door when, with a dissatisfied look,
she jumped on a form and opened the iron casement of a
window beneath which he was passing in the path without.
"When do you leave here to catch your train, Jude?"
she asked.
He looked up in some surprise. "The coach that runs to meet
it goes in three-quarters of an hour or so."
"What will you do with yourself for the time?"
"Oh--wander about, I suppose. Perhaps I shall go and sit in the old church."
"It does seem hard of me to pack you off so! You have thought enough
of churches, Heaven knows, without going into one in the dark.
Stay there."
"Where?"
"Where you are. I can talk to you better like this than when you were
inside.... It was so kind and tender of you to give up half a day's work
to come to see me! ... You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude.
And a tragic Don Quixote. And sometimes you are St. Stephen, who, while they
were stoning him, could see Heaven opened. Oh, my poor friend and comrade,
you'll suffer yet!"
Now that the high window-sill was between them, so that he could
not get at her, she seemed not to mind indulging in a frankness
she had feared at close quarters.
"I have been thinking," she continued, still in the tone of one
brimful of feeling, "that the social moulds civilization fits us
into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional
shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am
called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my
counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson,
but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions,
and unaccountable antipathies.... Now you mustn't wait longer,
or you will lose the coach. Come and see me again. You must come
to the house then."
"Yes!" said Jude. "When shall it be?"
"To-morrow week. Good-bye--good-bye!" She stretched out
her hand and stroked his forehead pitifully--just once.
Jude said good-bye, and went away into the darkness.
Passing along Bimport Street he thought he heard the wheels
of the coach departing, and, truly enough, when he reached
the Duke's Arms in the Market Place the coach had gone.
It was impossible for him to get to the station on foot in time
for this train, and he settled himself perforce to wait for the next--
the last to Melchester that night.
He wandered about awhile, obtained something to eat; and then,
having another half-hour on his hands, his feet involuntarily
took him through the venerable graveyard of Trinity Church,
with its avenues of limes, in the direction of the schools again.
They were entirely in darkness. She had said she lived over the way
at Old-Grove Place, a house which he soon discovered from her
description of its antiquity.
A glimmering candlelight shone from a front window, the shutters
being yet unclosed. He could see the interior clearly--
the floor sinking a couple of steps below the road without,
which had become raised during the centuries since the house
was built. Sue, evidently just come in, as standing with her
hat on in this front parlour or sitting-room, whose walls
were lined with wainscoting of panelled oak reaching from
floor to ceiling, the latter being crossed by huge moulded
beams only a little way above her head. The mantelpiece was
of the same heavy description, carved with Jacobean pilasters
and scroll-work. The centuries did, indeed, ponderously overhang
a young wife who passed her time here.
She had opened a rosewood work-box, and was looking at a photograph.
Having contemplated it a little while she pressed it against her bosom,
and put it again in its place.
Then becoming aware that she had not obscured the windows she
came forward to do so, candle in hand. It was too dark for her
to see Jude without, but he could see her face distinctly,
and there was an unmistakable tearfulness about the dark,
long-lashed eyes.
She closed the shutters, and Jude turned away to pursue his solitary
journey home. "Whose photograph was she looking at?" he said.
He had once given her his; but she had others, he knew. Yet it
was his, surely?
He knew he should go to see her again, according to her invitation.
Those earnest men he read of, the saints, whom Sue, with gentle irreverence,
called his demi-gods, would have shunned such encounters if they
doubted their own strength. But he could not. He might fast and pray
during the whole interval, but the human was more powerful in him than
the Divine.
