Saint Chad

“ Chad, being thus consecrated bishop, began immediately to devote himself to ecclesiastical truth and to chastity; to apply himself to humility, continence, and study; to travel about, not on horseback, but after the manner of the apostles, on foot, to preach the Gospel in towns, the open country, cottages, villages, and castles; for he was one of the disciples of Aidan, and endeavored to instruct his people, by the same actions and behavior, according to his and his brother Cedd's example. ”

“ Chad's cathedral, still his, though the successive churches erected on this site have passed like human generations, each building itself into the next.
St. Chad, hermit and bishop, came from Ireland as an apostle to Mercia in the seventh century. Among his first converts were the king's two sons, martyred for their faith. Even in these far distant days his tradition is revered, and on Holy Thursday the choristers of the cathedral yet go in procession to St. Chad's Well, bearing green boughs and chanting. A century or so ago, the well was adorned with bright garlands for this festival. ”

“ For he lay thinking of Caleb Hazel and listening again to the stories he and the cattle-dealer had told him about the wonderful settlements. "God's Country," the dealer always called it, and such it must be, if what he and the master said was true. By and by the steady beat of feet under him, the swift notes of the banjo, the calls of the prompter and the laughter fused, became inarticulate, distant—ceased. And Chad, as he was wont to do, journeyed on to "God's Country" in his dreams. ”

“ Chad thereupon retired to Lastingham, whence with the permission of Oswio he was summoned by Wulfhere of Mercia to succeed his bishop Jaruman, who died 667. Chad built a monastery at Barrow in Lincolnshire and fixed his see at Lichfield. He died after he had held his bishopric in Mercia two and a half years, and was succeeded by Wynfrith. Bede gives a beautiful character of Chad. ”

“ My good lord is careful in all things to avoid making ill blood with a jealous neighbour. That he has always cast covetous eyes upon Chad is known throughout the countryside; but I trow he would find it something difficult to make good any claim."
"Why, verily!" cried the nurse, with energy. "He could but come as a foul usurper, against whom would every honest hand be raised. But, good my mistress, what is the truth of the whisper I have heard that the Lord of Mortimer has wed his daughter to one who calls himself of the house of Chad? ”

“ The windows of Chad's apartment were open to the balcony—a pair of them lighted; and a figure that had come out and taken up little Bilham's attitude, a figure whose cigarette-spark he could see, leaned on the rail and looked down at him. It denoted, however, no reappearance of his younger friend; it quickly defined itself in the tempered darkness as Chad's more solid shape; so Chad's was the attention that, after he had stepped forward into the street and signalled, he easily engaged: Chad's the voice that, with promptness and seemingly with joy, called him straight up. ”

“ Fate had given Chad the early life of one, and like blood with the other; and, curiously enough, in his own short life, he already epitomized the social development of the nation, from its birth in a log cabin to its swift maturity behind the columns of a Greek portico. Against the uncounted generations of gentlepeople that ran behind him to sunny England, how little could the short sleep of three in the hills count! It may take three generations to make a gentleman, but one is enough, if the blood be there, the heart be right, and the brain and hand come early under discipline. ”

“ Give Brother Emmanuel my message. I would see him here in the forest. And now farewell, boy; go home as fast as thou wilt, and put a bridle on thy forward tongue, lest haply it lead thee one day into trouble."
The monk strode away in the direction of the priory. Julian took the path towards Chad, with many backward glances at the retreating figure, and hardly was it lost in the thick underwood of the forest than he found his brother standing at his side. ”

“ Chad's, into class, and shut him inside her desk, where he settled down quite comfortably, and slept peacefully through the French lesson. But in the middle of algebra, Honor, who hated mathematics, managed to give him a surreptitious pinch, with the result that a long-drawn, impatient, objecting "miau" suddenly resounded through the room. Miss Farrar gave quite a jump, and looked round, but could see nothing. Honor sat bolt upright, with arms folded and eyes fixed attentively on the blackboard, as if she were sublimely unconscious of any noise in her vicinity. ”

“ Chad could always take in the easiest way in the world any ingenious suggestion. “I see. But can I help it? I’m too decent.”
“Yes, you’re too decent!” Strether heavily sighed. And he felt for the moment as if it were the preposterous end of his mission.
It ministered for the time to this temporary effect that Chad made no rejoinder. But he spoke again as they came in sight of the station. “Do you mean to introduce her to Miss Gostrey?” ”

“ Chad—why, boy! How you have grown!" For Chad had grown, and his face was curiously aged and thoughtful. The Major insisted on taking him home, and the school-master, too, who went reluctantly. Miss Lucy was there, looking whiter and more fragile than ever, and she greeted Chad with a sweet kindliness that took the sting from his unjust remembrance of her. And what that failure to understand her must have been Chad better knew when he saw the embarrassed awe, in her presence, of the school-master, for whom all in the mountains had so much reverence. ”

“ Aidan of Lindisfarne, and in due time was recommended by Archbishop Theodore as Bishop of Lichfield. St. Chad was of an ascetic and retiring manner, and went his rounds on foot; but Theodore insisted that he should ride, and gave him a horse, and with his own hands lifted him up to mount. Chad was a busy and careful bishop, but pre-eminently a grave and serious man, and dwelt most on the awful side of religion. Bede says, “He was ever subject to the fear of the Lord, and in all his actions mindful of his end.” Everything in Nature was viewed as a call to sacred employments. ”

“ Chad comfortably remarked, "to be liked."
It gave his companion a moment's thought. "And she's sure Mrs. Pocock will?"
"No, I say that for you. She likes your liking her; it's so much, as it were," Chad laughed, "to the good. How ever, she doesn't despair of Sarah either, and is prepared, on her own side, to go all lengths."
"In the way of appreciation?"
"Yes, and of everything else. In the way of general amiability, hospitality and welcome. She's under arms," Chad laughed again; "she's prepared."
Strether took it in. Then, as if an echo of Miss Barrace were in the air, "She's wonderful." ”

“ Possibly another humanizing and restraining influence that acted silently upon the household was the presence of a young monk, who had been brought not long since from a neighbouring monastery, to act in the capacity of chaplain to the household and tutor to the boys, now fast growing towards man's estate. There was a beautiful little chapel connected with Chad. ”

“ With Egbert also dwelt in the same monastery the celebrated St. Chad, or Cedd, Bishop of Lichfield. Chad is justly regarded, on account of his learning and holiness, as one of the Fathers of the Anglo-Saxon Church. He was one of four brothers, like Egbert himself, of Northumbrian origin, two of whom became bishops, and two were holy priests. Chad was one of that crowd of Northumbrian nobles, who, in the days of Bishops Finan and Colman, flocked to Ireland for instruction in theology and religious discipline. ”

“ The table at Chad always groaned with good things, except at such seasons as the Church decreed a fast, and then the diet was scrupulously kept within the prescribed bounds. Sir Oliver and his wife were both devout and earnest people, and had every reverence for their spiritual superiors. The Benedictine Priory of Chadwater stood only a mile and a half distant, and the prior was on excellent terms with the owner of Chad. Brother Emmanuel had been an inmate of the priory before he was selected by Sir Oliver for the education of his sons. ”

“ Women were thus endlessly absorbent, and to deal with them was to walk on water. What was at bottom the matter with her, embroider as she might and disclaim as she might—what was at bottom the matter with her was simply Chad himself. It was of Chad she was, after all, renewedly afraid; the strange strength of her passion was the very strength of her fear; she clung to him, Lambert Strether, as to a source of safety she had tested, and generous, graceful, truthful as she might try to be, exquisite as she was, she dreaded the term of his being within reach. ”

“ Chad had kept smiling, but its effect in Strether was a shade of dryness. “Don’t leave her before. When you’ve got all that can be got—I don’t say,” he added a trifle grimly. “That will be the proper time. But as, for you, from such a woman, there will always be something to be got, my remark’s not a wrong to her.” Chad let him go on, showing every decent deference, showing perhaps also a candid curiosity for this sharper accent. ”

“ Chad suggested.
“Precisely. And the tune to which this morning Sarah wasn’t delighted—the tune to which, to adopt your metaphor, she refused to drink—leaves us on that side nothing more to hope.”
Chad had a pause, and then as if consolingly: “It was never of course really the least on the cards that they would be ‘delighted.’”
“Well, I don’t know, after all,” Strether mused. “I’ve had to come as far round. However”—he shook it off—“it’s doubtless my performance that’s absurd.”
“There are certainly moments,” said Chad, “when you seem to me too good to be true. ”

“ Chad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made; he might for this purpose have measured him up and down. His conclusion favoured the fact. “You have never needed any one to make you better. There has never been any one good enough. They couldn’t,” the young man declared.
His friend hesitated. “I beg your pardon. They have.”
Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt. “Who then?”
Strether—though a little dimly—smiled at him. “Women—too.”
“‘Two’?”—Chad stared and laughed. “Oh I don’t believe, for such work, in any more than one! So you’re proving too much. ”

“ She is not very well and she is taking care of Harry."
The very station had tragic memories to Chad. There was the long hill which he had twice climbed—once on a lame foot and once on flying Dixie—past the armory and the graveyard. He had seen enough dead since he peered through those iron gates to fill a dozen graveyards the like in size. Going up in the train, he could see the barn where he had slept in the hayloft the first time he came to the Bluegrass, and the creek-bridge where Major Buford had taken him into his carriage. ”

“ They were folded now over the breasts of buried generations; but a flutter or two lived again in the turned page of shock-headed, slouch-hatted loiterers, whose young intensity of type, in the direction of pale acuteness, deepened his vision, and even his appreciation, of racial differences, and whose manipulation of the uncut volume was too often, however, but a listening at closed doors. He reconstructed a possible groping Chad of four or five years before, a Chad who had, after all, simply—for that was the only way to see it—been too vulgar for his privilege. ”

“ I think they are in the tilt yard with Warbel. It is there they are generally to be found in the early hours of the day."
"They be fine, gamesome lads," said the old woman fondly--"chips of the old block, true Chads every one of them;" for the custom with the common people was to call the lord of the manor by the name of his house rather than by his own patronymic, and Sir Oliver was commonly spoken of as "Chad" by his retainers ”

“ This is the sad way with women. After the way of men, Chad proudly marched the old Wilderness Road that led to a big, bright, beautiful world where one had but to do and dare to reach the stars. The men who had trod that road had made that big world beyond, and their life Chad himself had lived so far. Only, where they had lived he had been born—in a log cabin. Their weapons—the axe and the rifle—had been his. He had had the same fight with Nature as they. ”

“ What her visit of inquisition might achieve in other directions was as yet all obscure; but it was not obscure that it would do supremely much to bring two earnest persons together. He had only to listen to Chad at this moment to feel it, for Chad was in the act of remarking to him that they, of course, both counted on him—he himself and the other earnest person—for cheer and support. It was brave to Strether to hear him talk as if the line of wisdom they had struck out was to make things ravishing to the Pococks. No; if Mme. ”

“ But Chad changed his mind suddenly. If they were in doubt about wanting him—he was in no doubt as to what he would do.
"No, I reckon I'd better git on," he said sturdily, and he turned and limped back up the hill to the road—still wondering, and he remembered that, in the mountains, when people wanted to stay all night, they usually stopped before sundown. Travelling after dark was suspicious in the mountains, and perhaps it was in this land, too. ”