Jude

by Betty Burton

  There was nothing she could do except replace the vinegar and water press on the delirious Mary’s forehead, and anoint the terrible boils with unguent. She suspected that there was nothing that the doctor could do either.

  At about the time that Lotte and Mary had arrived in Portsmouth, a ship had docked on which – it was later learned – smallpox had broken out. A great number of those on board had died and been put over the side, as had some before they reached death, such was the panic at its outbreak in a confined space with nowhere to run to.

  The ones who were left when the ship docked were mostly those who had received the Turkish treatment. No one knew how the treatment worked – except that a mild form of a similar disease appeared to give protection from the more deadly variety. There were some, though, who had received the Turkish treatment but had not survived; and some who had neither the Turkish treatment nor the disease. It was they who carried the smallpox into the seaport.

  They first heard that there was smallpox in the town at the time of the rift between Lotte and Harry Goodenstone. It was a bad time. The weal that Harry had left across Lotte’s face had become infected, and Molly was frightened that Lotte had picked up the smallpox. They consulted a specialist in pustular disease, who said it looked like the malignant pustule which was thought to come from animals. He wondered whether it had been an animal that had caused the injury, but Lotte said no, it had not been an animal.

  A burning lash. The coarse tassel of animal hair on the riding-crop. The seared and broken skin of her cheek and brow.

  As it turned out, Lotte was fortunate. The boils were not malignant and slowly responded to fomentations, so that eventually her lovely face returned to the condition in which Harry Goodenstone had last seen it – except for a puckered and purpled furrow that ran from the bridge of her nose to the lobe of her left ear.

  This consultant was a specialist in the treatment of smallpox by the Turkish method. There was no doubt that when it worked, it worked well. One received a mild illness and was for ever protected from the worse form. They had both received such a fright about the infected wound that he had no difficulty in persuading them to be treated. They each had a few days of feeling unwell, then Lotte recovered; but the disease raged through Mary until the specialist had to admit that, “There are people who take badly to the treatment,” and yes, there were unfortunates who “did not respond to the point of recovery.”

  “Do you mean she might die of the treatment?”

  “I fear the possibility.”

  And at about the time that Jude and Hanna were going up Howgaite, the doctor’s fears were confirmed and Mary Holly died too delirious to realise that she never got her own back on Bella Estover for turning up that day and marrying her beautiful young master.

  Wood-smoke haze was quivering over the broad chimney-stack of Croud Cantle farmhouse. The house-place door stood ajar. The red tiles were still bright in patches where the damp from Bella’s morning cleaning of them was not yet dry. Everywhere seemed quiet. Jude had half-expected to be greeted by the sight of her mother stumping across the yard with her pails, instead of which she appeared at the door in a clean cap and apron as though it was Sunday morning. For a moment Jude was taken aback, her mother appeared quite changed. She had not realised how much white there was in her mother’s hair, how sunken her mouth was from losing teeth, and how much like other women who had spent their lives yoked to heavy pails she had become in shape. For the first time, Jude realised that her mother was getting old.

  “Well, there you are then,” she said. “I didn’t know what time you might a been coming.”

  Hanna jumped from the donkey and ran to her Grandmother. Bella was obviously pleased, but only with long experience of her expressions would one know that. In response to Hanna holding her hand she said, “Well, what a lot of fuss. Anybody’d think you been gone a twelve-month. Before you gets too excited there’s your animals to see too.” Still, she did not release the child’s hand, but held it and went to where Jude was holding the two donkeys.

  Bella took one of the straps, and looking just over Jude’s shoulder said, “Well, you’re back then. Didn’t you have no trouble, or did you come over Winchester?”

  It was only being away and being able to think, without things being all on top of her, that had enabled Jude to see that Bella’s uncompromising attitude, her frigidity and moods had become worse of late. She had made up her mind that she would try to start off on the right foot, whatever her mother’s mood. Jude would make her peace, but would never again be intimidated by her. And here was Mother, suddenly looking an old woman, going as far as she knew how in trying to be nice.

  They led the donkeys away to be unloaded.

  “We came over Winchester. It seemed sense after what you said about the Dunnock track on Thursday.”

  The mention of Thursday caused them both to hesitate momentarily. The moment passed when either or both of them might have resumed the unspoken animosity of that day: they were acknowledging something. Neither of them could have put into words exactly what: it was emotion of their subconscious. On Bella’s part it was, perhaps, that her powers were subsiding and Jude was in the ascendency; on Jude’s that a trap was being prepared and that if she did not run from it now it was inevitable that she should fall into it. Whilst Bella’s subconscious thoughts were tinged with melancholy, Jude’s had panic and anger involved. She automatically pressed them down.

  She smiled, “We said, if there’s anybody knows when the Dunnock track’s passable, then it’s you.”

  Bella looked properly at Jude. “That’s true.”

  Back in her own room that night, Jude thought how it was that you live day after day after day, with changes happening imperceptibly. Like her mother’s white hairs appearing singly and like her teeth being lost one at a time. The way her own body had changed over the last six or seven years, from the first small swellings beneath her bodice to her present fullness of womanhood. It wasn’t only the small physical changes that went unnoticed either.

  Hanna had been not much more than a year old when they brought her to Croud Cantle, but had been developing sides to her nature that were unsuspected – like her buying that blue china bird for a lad who did the rough work. Obviously none of the changes took place in secret, they were simply unobserved. When she thought back she could see that the lad had changed too: from the small boy who had become attached to Croud Cantle in the same way as the cats, pigeons and dogs, to a lad of thirteen or fourteen who had thought to turn the old trough into a day-bed for Jude. It was possible that he would like to have a blue china bird without Jude knowing it: for all that he had been as much part of Croud Cantle as any of them, she had seldom given him much thought. It took something out of the ordinary to happen for one to take a fresh view. It had begun with her fall and continued with being away for a week.

  They went into the house, where Bella had prepared a nice meal for them, with a brew of tea instead of the everyday milk or cider.

  “Wait, Grandmother,” said Hanna, when Bella told them to come on it was all ready.

  “There!” she said, and placed three small packages on the table. “Jude promised to use hers all the time. Will you, too?”

  “You can’t promise things blind.”

  “It won’t hurt. It’s not like, hold your hand out and you gets a rabbit-turd for a joke.”

  “I shouldn’t hope so.”

  “Will you? It a be a bit like Mrs Warren’s.”

  Bella’s expression changed momentarily, and Jude noticed. “Well, let’s open our parcels, and we shall know what it’s all about.”

  When the wrappings were removed, three cups were revealed. Very like Mrs Warren’s, except in quality. Brightly coloured and fanciful roses flourished, and here and there an unintentional blob of paint or a speckle in the glazing told the secret that these were not the pieces that the pottery would want its name attached to, so had sent them to be smashed. Thus sprang a sub-trade between t
he pot-smashers and knick-knack stall traders.

  “An’t they beautiful?” said Hanna. “If I has any money next time then we shall have saucers; then we shall have plates.”

  Jude was afraid that Bella would not be able to stop herself from saying something hurtful. The cups were obviously an unintentional comment by the child upon the way they lived, and Jude could understand it. Croud Cantle contained nothing decorated, glossed or swathed. With the exception of Jude’s own shelves and a few geraniums in the windows, nothing but useful objects were displayed.

  “Let’s use them straight away,” said Jude. “But they’re so beautiful, I reckon it would be a shame to use them all the rime in case they got broke. I reckon they should be holiday cups.”

  Hanna had not thought of the danger to the beautiful cups through use, and she had been a regular breaker of their plain ones.

  Bella’s subconscious was dealing with the infiltration of frivolity and the possibility of treachery by another woman who would woo away this last love of her life. The first had gone to Lotte Holly, the second to Dan Hazelhurst. Jude had inevitably been lost when she had entered into the world of books and ideas which made her different. Now Bella was in danger of losing the most precious of all: the child who had come to her as an unexpected gift with no hurt attached. Bella had indulged the child with the week of nonsense at Plough Fair and Hanna had come back with the kind of fancies that would make her dissatisfied.

  Consciously or unconsciously, Bella put her best face on it and poured tea into the cups. “I must get Dicken to get out some good long nails to hang ’em on.”

  The lives of the inhabitants of the Croud Cantle holding were of varying degrees of interest to several Blackbrook people.

  Mr Carter started a revolution in his own household by insisting that everyone should have a bowl of good fermity to start the day. The cook, who considered herself mistress of unleathery kidneys and non-glutinous kedgeree, was affronted at being asked to deal with such countryfied ingredients as plain wheat and milk, but Mr Carter held the money bags.

  In the Warren household, Peg was no longer attracted to older men and now saw James Carter for the wonderful creature that he was. Sam and Jack had been surprised to find that they missed the little girl who had not been afraid of any of the monsters in bottles they had paid a farthing to see at the fair and who, moreover, had not told that they had been there when they had been forbidden to go. Mrs Warren felt quite at a loss, and wished that Peg would be a bit older soon so that she might be got up in a bit of style and they might go about a bit in a sisterly way, as she and Judeth had done.

  “I don’t understand how that girl can bear it stuck all out there,” she said to Fred on his return. “Why, it was bad enough when we was living in Motte, and that fair gives me the shudders to think of. From what I’ve heard, Cantle is nothing but a hamlet, and you reckon they lives a mile or two outside?”

  “Not a mile or two.”

  “But cut off.”

  “It’s out of the village. But not everybody is like you, Molly. Because you like living in a town, it doesn’t mean everybody does.”

  “She liked it here, you could tell.”

  “Judeth always did like visiting us when I was teaching her, but she always went home happily enough.”

  “Well, she didn’t this time. I think if she could she’d a stopped here.”

  Fred had to admit to himself that he had seen a different side to Judeth this week. He had seen the possibility of her losing that which made her so dear to his heart: the contrasts in her, the conflicting emotions she roused because she was a naive and innocent country girl from the back of beyond who read poetry and political broadsheets; a girl who worked barefoot in the fields or stood on the market by day and compiled information about common people almost in secret. A unique girl in Fred’s eyes. He thought he saw what he had always been unconsciously afraid of happening – that she would not remain his creation hidden away in the hamlet at the foot of the downs.

  But it was he who had suggested the visit, so there was no one to blame, and if eventually she was going to come into touch with people in a social way then it was better that his hand was still guiding her. Also, it had been a pleasure to see her so flushed with enjoyment, surprising herself and everyone else with her unexpected ease of manner.

  Will had the greatest interest in the inhabitants of Croud Cantle. Whereas Fred had taken the raw clay of the young Jude and wedged, shaped, fired and now glazed it into the woman, Will saw the finished object.

  He had sown wild oats with several pretty girls whose bodies were strong from hard labour, and he had been enchanted by one or two daughters of vicars who could read and enter into a theological discussion; but the idea of the two within the one woman compounded her attraction for him.

  Although most of his doubts about the scene in his superior’s office had been put from his mind, now that he had observed the two of them together during Fair week he still needed to know of any complication. He hoped that his first opinion of her would be confirmed: that she was emotionally untouched, yet, because of what she must know from reading Shakespearian passion, emotionally sophisticated at the same time.

  His relationship with Fred Warren was not straightforward. Had they been equals, Will might have asked a direct question. But although Fred had befriended Will – had offered first name terms, invited him into their home as an equal and discussed more of business than was normal between employer and employee – the fact remained that Fred was a partner in White’s and Will was very much a junior both in position and in years.

  On the Monday after Jude had returned home, Fred and Will were riding together in the direction of Salisbury.

  “I have to go to see the Manager at Berol about the malting grain, if you remember. I thought I’d call in on the Croud Cantle place . . .” He hesitated, searching for what reason he should give for calling, feeling slightly ridiculous – there was no need to explain. “I said I would be going through Cantle.”

  Fred’s expression was bland. “You’re honoured. They don’t have many visitors at the farm.”

  “Have they always lived like that? Just the mother, living outside the village? They seem to be shut away.”

  “Not entirely shut away. They come to Blackbrook when the roads are passable. That’s a good many weeks.”

  “That leaves a good many when they don’t, though. And I didn’t mean shut away in that sense – I reckon we were more cut off than that in Ireland – it is rather that I get the impression their isolation is from choice.”

  “Mrs Nugent is an excellent woman. From what I know of things, she was left alone to run the farm – well, it is really only a smallholding. It provides them with a living, though. They work very hard for it.”

  “I believe Judeth cannot go on living like that. She ought to meet people with ideas. She is an intelligent young woman.”

  Fred did not immediately reply, but rode on, gazing at the perked, chestnut ears of his horse.

  “Intelligent, yes.” He withdrew again.

  He did not know when it had first begun, but for some while Fred had been thinking about Judeth in the years ahead. He was never able to imagine her in a satisfactory situation. His mind rejected the thought of her running their farm, as it rejected the idea of her with a husband and family. The only image that he could accept was of her sitting at a desk in a book-lined room. He could not even fathom what she would be doing there.

  For a while he had thought that she might follow her interest in recording a history of rural life, but she was doing that as a simple hobby. Recently, when he had discovered that she had been writing, he had temporarily felt satisfied that he had perhaps created a woman novelist. But he had come to realise that to progress with that art she needed a great deal more experience and learning than she already had or he would be able to give her.

  He had watched her with Molly, enjoying the dressing-up and that kind of thing. It was a part of Molly th
at he had always found attractive to him. She bathed everyone with her good spirits when she was engaged in satisfying her appetite for pleasure, colour and comfort, and in seeing that others were likewise fed. But Molly’s qualities were not at all like Judeth’s. The thought of her living the life of a wife and mother as Molly did, was incongruous.

  When he first encountered her enormous enthusiasm, he had responded, feeding her with some of his ideals and feeding his ideals upon her. Peg and Freddie were now of the age Judeth had been then, and for all his parental pride, he could see that they did not approach her in keenness of mind and ability to think. He had been carried away. Instead of leaving it at reading and writing, he had primed her enquiring mind. He had not realised how concerned he would feel, or what a responsibility he was beginning to feel. If she could not find a way to use her intelligence in a way satisfactory to her, Fred would be guilty of offering a starving person a morsel then removing the dish.

  He felt a sudden need to talk about it, and Will’s remarks gave him an opportunity.

  Will had begun to think that Fred would say no more.

  “Intelligent. But what is that going to do for her? As she is now she’s neither fish nor fowl.”

  Will’s spontaneous response surprised himself. “I want to marry her.”

  That response surprised Fred also. He had seen them together at the supper last Monday, where they had conversed in a friendly way. Fred had been pleased: he had thought at first that Will had seemed off-hand with her, then at the party they had appeared to be getting on well. But he had not realised that Will had any serious intentions towards Jude. “Does she know that?” he asked.

  “No, I hardly knew it myself until now. But I am sure of it. She is the most remarkable woman I have ever met. I look at her hands – it is her hands I think that . . . I can hardly explain what I mean . . . it is her hands . . .”