Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [581]
The expedition returned without any malaria. No sickness at all.
But alas, the same cannot be said for your uncle. I fear my health is failing and I cannot continue here any longer. Indeed Crowther’s descriptions of all he saw in England have made me long to see it once again. I pray that God will spare me long enough to do so.
I was sorry indeed to hear of the death of your dear mother. But God moves in mysterious ways. What a blessing now that you should be at Sarum at our old house, where I trust you will be glad to receive, if I fear somewhat briefly, your loving uncle, Stephen.
P.S. I am to take the next packet which leaves, I understand, not long after this.
She stared at the page in disbelief. Her uncle, the saintly missionary she so revered, was coming – and she was to keep house for him: there was no mistaking his meaning. Nor any doubt, she supposed, about her duty.
Later that day, as she gazed at the railway lines by Milford station, it seemed to her they came together, closing her off.
No nursing. No India. At least for the moment.
But soon, she would get free.
1861
Jane Shockley’s passion began when she was thirty.
She was standing on the steps of the guildhall, a big square building given to the town, like the hospital too, by Lord Radnor. It stood at the east side of the market, a reminder not only of the continuing presence, from their seat near old Clarendon, of the Bouverie family in Sarum’s affairs, but also, it always seemed to Jane, its strong lines reminded the beholder of a certain solid severity that was needed, but usually missing, in Sarum’s affairs.
As if echoing such thoughts, the short, stout man at her side shook his large round head sadly, glanced up at her and announced:
“Moral, not material progress is what is needed in Sarum now, Miss Shockley.”
She nodded. Of course. And if anyone was going to provide it, she had no doubt it would be Mr Daniel Mason, Methodist and temperance enthusiast. She looked down at him fondly.
“I shall convert you to temperance yet, Miss Shockley,” he declared pleasantly. “You see if I don’t.”
And indeed, it was not only the non-conformists – the Wesleyans, Baptists, Congregationalists and others along with the now-tolerated Catholics, abounding in Sarum – who had joined in the mighty temperance cause. Two years before, when Mr Gough the temperance orator had come to Salisbury, no less than fifteen hundred, from every creed and class, had crowded into the markethouse to hear him. “Many of the Anglican clergy in the parishes are worried by the drink problem,” Mason assured her. Evangelicals like the great Shaftesbury with his reforms of factory conditions and public health: aristocrats and Roman Catholics: all, she knew, were equally anxious to take the moral high ground in this new age of progress. Why, Florence Nightingale, returned to England after the war, had read Mr Lees’s tract on prohibition to Queen Victoria herself.
“But reform is never easy,” Mason continued as he gazed around the market place. “Why,” he pointed, “just look at that.”
She looked at the little group he had indicated, a drunken father and two pathetic children.
“It is disgusting,” she agreed.
He glanced at her quickly.
“You agree temperance is needed for them?”
“It certainly appears to be.”
“Come then, Miss Shockley,” he said in triumph. “You shall meet them.”
It was a Tuesday market day at the end of summer. Not a very lively one. It was late afternoon. An air of torpor hung over the area.
Near the middle of the market place a line of cattle stood lethargically, tethered to rail; nearby were half a dozen pens made of hurdles, containing sheep – but the best had all been sold at the big fair in July. Carts, unhitched and resting at strange angles, some