"I've had you in mind. Old Miss Marydrew is going home pretty fast and she'll leave a gap. I don't say you can fill it, and single-handed you certainly could not; but along with Jane you might."
Jeremy looked at Jane.
"If I hadn't forgot!" he said. "We met Billy Marydrew back-along, outside his house, and he was just come from his daughter. She's dead, and he was very wisht about it."
"Dead!" said Margery. "Poor Mercy gone!"
"Yes, and William wanted it to be told here, and hoped that Mr. Bullstone would step over," added Jane.
"You ought to have told me before," declared Jacob. "That man is a dear old friend of mine. The sanest, biggest-hearted soul that ever I knew, and much to me ever since I was a child. He'll think I'm hanging back, just because you bird-witted people forgot to tell me."
He rose, but spoke again before he departed.
"Mercy Marydrew was a huckster. She went round in her little cart and collected butter, eggs and poultry from the farms for Plymouth market. And to market she went with her baskets, every Friday of her life for thirty years. Now think of it, Jeremy. How if you did her job round about, and Jane went to market."
"To drive about in the open air! The dream of my life!" said Jeremy.
"You always say it's the dream of your life, when a new opening is found for you," laughed his sister.
"Think of it seriously," urged Jacob. "This also means that Owley Cot, my little house by Owley Farm, is on my hands, and there you'll be in the heart of your job with the farms all around you. But it's up to Jane more than you. Whether she'll make a good market-woman is the question. Now I must be gone for an hour and see that poor chap. This will hit him harder than he thinks for. I'll be back before you leave."
"I can't find words to thank you," declared Jeremy, "but I'll show it in deeds, Jacob. To have my own trap and drive about in the open among my neighbours! It's almost too good to be true."
They turned to Margery and praised her husband when he was gone.
"It's wonderful how life opens out after you're married," said Jane.
"It does," admitted Margery. "It opens but, as you say, Jane, and shows you all sorts of things you never dreamed. And it also shows how every little bit of happiness carries its own worm in the bud. However, you'll find that out for yourself. You know Owley Cot well enough of course?"
"Loved it ever since I was a child," answered Jane. "Mr. Elvin's old mother lived there; and when she died, a game-keeper and his wife was there for a bit; then Miss Marydrew rented it from your husband."
"And nobody ever had a better tenant. She did her part and Jacob did his, and I did mine, which was to plant a lot of roses and nice flowers in the garden. You'll find it perfect, for she had a trick to make everything about her look flame new all the time. A very clever woman and Joe Elvin will miss her, for she was one of the hopeful ones, like her old father, and cheered the man up. He's a grizzler—born so, yet no call to be. He's had his share of luck and Jacob says he's pretty snug, but his health's bad."
"I remember Owley Cot," declared Jeremy. "I used to go up to Owley, to kill rats with my ferret when I was a boy, and I was very friendly with Joe's son, Robert."
"Robert's going to make a better man than Joe," said Margery. "A very nice boy, and seeing his father's so melancholy, he's fought shy of it, and takes a bright view. Jacob says he'll be a tip-top farmer presently."
"Joe used to be kind to me, because he respected mother such a lot—and father," declared Jeremy.
"He's kind to everybody in his mournful way," answered Margery; "but he'd always sooner go to a funeral than a wedding, and when he opens the paper of a morning, so Robert tells me, he always says, 'And who are the lucky ones?' Then you find he's reading the deaths. Yet nobody would hate dying more than him."
Jeremy was full of his prospects. He always expatiated over any new scheme and saw manifold possibilities.
"Of course I'm the last to build castles in the air, or anything like that," he declared, "but, all the same, if only Jacob can lend a hand here with the house and a trap and a horse, he certainly won't regret it. An energetic man like me, with a good horse, should be able to do far greater rounds than poor Miss Marydrew, and I'd work up a connection among the farms for miles and miles round. Then, luckily Jane is used to a shop, and in the market she would do wonders and get all Miss Marydrew's old custom with a lot added. In course of time—probably a very short time—I should pay Jacob's kindness back with large interest, you may be certain. In fact the idea hasn't a weak spot that I can see."
"There's got to be a new huckster for certain," said Jane. "It's not man's work as a rule; but I've known men to do it for their wives."
"It's man's work the way I shall do it," promised Jeremy. "And I shouldn't wonder if I couldn't beat up a good few customers in Plymouth myself when they hear of this. I made a lot of nice friends there."
"Uncle Lawrence might come to you," suggested Margery. She referred to her mother's brother, Mr. Lawrence Pulleyblank, an owner of fishing trawlers and a man after his sister's own heart.
Jeremy's face fell.
"I'm sorry to say it, but Uncle Lawrence doesn't like me very much. You see he got me that last billet, that failed through no fault of mine; and after he found I was giving up and coming home, he said some strong things. But you are all the world to Uncle Lawrence, Margery, and when he hears of this new and much more important step I'm taking, no doubt, if you dropped a word, he'd buy his butter and eggs and so on off me and Jane."
"I'm sorry you fell out with him," said Margery.
"I didn't—I didn't," answered her brother. "I don't fall out with anybody. It was his natural disappointment that I didn't shine in the artificial manure works. He'll always say it was because I was weak and couldn't stand the smells. He hasn't got a nose himself, else he wouldn't live on the Barbican. But I respect him very much and I hope he'll live to respect me. He's looking forward to your visit as usual."
Lawrence Pulleyblank, an old bachelor, regarded Margery as his special joy. She visited him every year, and always took a child with her.
"It's the turn of Peter," she said, "and we go down in August."
"To think of Owley Cot!" murmured Jane. "Too good to be true in my opinion. Its little windows catch the morning light, and the chimney's covered with ivy. Great fir trees with red stems grow over it and there's an upping-stock for horsemen outside the gate."
"You won't know it for roses now," answered Margery. "Poor dear Mercy Marydrew—her heart used to sink when I came along with some new flowers dug up from here. She was all for tidiness, and I do think flowers gave her more pain than pleasure."
"I like them and I'll tend them well," promised Jane.
Her sister-in-law, regarding her with side glances, perceived that she was possessed of childish charm. She was a pleading sort of girl—just the type sure to win Jeremy's affections.
"My own impression is that it's going to mean big money from the first," said the future huckster. "I'm itching to be at it; and I'm very hopeful it may be possible to secure some of Miss Marydrew's furniture, so we can go into Owley Cot as soon as Jacob likes. Father would help there."
"And we shan't fear to rough it neither," continued Jane. "We've said to each other, scores of times, that we don't mind how hard life is, so we share it together."
"Not hard for you, however," promised Jeremy. "I'm the one to bear the battle and come between you and everything. That's what I'm here for."
Then they went to look at the kennels.
The family reassembled at tea, and Jacob, who had spent an hour with Mr. Marydrew, declared that he was bearing up exceedingly well.
"Too sensible to lose his balance under any trouble," he said.
Bullstone found that Jeremy had already undertaken the new work in spirit and was actually thriving at it, saving money and repaying his debts.
"Trust me," he said, "and be sure of this, that I shall return good measure well pressed down, Jacob. This is the chance of a lifetime, and something tells me my foot is now firm on the ladder."
They parted presently, and while Auna and Avis accompanied them for a mile on their return journey to Brent, Margery thanked her husband.
"It's like you; I'm sure I'm deeply obliged; and father and mother will feel as grateful as I do," she said rather formally.
Jacob laughed.
"For you and yours I do it. But don't be too hopeful. Jeremy isn't built to help on the world—only to be helped on by it."
"Perhaps now he's married——"
"Yes, yes, he'll try valiantly—a most well-meaning chap—but you can't ask putty to take the place of lead. I'll push him and do what I may; and so will you. If manners could make him, he'd be all right; but he's like your rose-bushes—wants a lot of tying up and supporting."
The mind of Barton Gill was exercised, for he had heard painful news and suddenly learned the unsuspected opinion of another man concerning him. He felt shocked and cast down, having never guessed that Jacob Bullstone contemplated the possibility which now confronted Mr. Gill as a fact.
Barton was sixty-eight and, in his own opinion, as active and apprehensive as ever. Looking back he perceived that he had actually outgrown some weaknesses of middle age; while with respect to his knowledge of dogs, no man could deny that it embraced everything of importance.
Returning from Brent, the kennel-man fell in with Adam Winter and revealed his troubles.
"Hast heard the black news, Adam?" he began. "But of course you have not. It only burst upon me yesterday."
"Can it be bettered, or is it one of they fatal things beyond repair?" asked Winter.
It was his solid custom on all occasions to help if harm might be averted, but not to fret unduly at evil accomplished.
"Whether it's going to be fatal remains to be seen; but I don't feel an ounce of hope," said Gill. "In a word—Jacob Bullstone. You know his way. He'll store his thoughts, and smile, and hide what's moving in his head from every eye but his Maker's; and then, when the deed is ripe, he'll do it. And so half his actions come upon people as a great surprise, because they never get a wink of what was leading up to 'em."
"He's always got his reasons, however," argued Adam.
"He may have, or he may not. And it's all one, anyhow, since he never feels called to give 'em. But in my case there ain't a shadow of reason. He's built up a very wrong and mistaken picture of me. He's watched me in secret, which ain't a manly thing to do, and now, like a thunder planet, he's fallen upon me and given me the sack!"
"My stars! You going?"
"Under notice; but never any warning in the rightful sense of the word," explained Barton Gill. "I've been doing my work in season and out at Red House for half a century, and putting the dogs before everything but God Almighty, and helping to make 'em the world-famous creatures they be. And full of zeal for the family, and pouring my knowledge into young Peter. And now to be flung out."
"Why for, Barton?"
"Well may you ax that. For no reason on earth but because I'm too old! And only sixty-eight by this hand, and I wish I may die if a year more."
Adam was cautious. He felt very little doubt that Jacob Bullstone knew his own business best. They had been neighbours for fifteen years and, so far as Winter knew, Jacob regarded him as a good neighbour. They had never quarrelled and not often differed. Indeed they met but seldom and Adam saw Margery Bullstone far oftener than her husband. He had been good to her children and regarded himself as an old friend of the family; but his relations with Bullstone were not intimate.
"What you say about Bullstone's character is very interesting, Barton," he replied. "There are some men that do things on a sudden and hide the reasons. But, if you look, you'll often find, after your surprise dies down, that there's nothing much to be surprised about. I'm sorry if you wanted to stop on. Perhaps, if you was to be content to sing second to a younger man and just milk the goats and potter about for smaller money, he'd be content."
"You say that? Why, that's what he offered me!"
"Not the sack then? You told me you were flung out."
Gill shook his head impatiently.
"You don't know my character seemingly, though you ought to by now. But Bullstone does know it, and well he knows I'd not bide under a younger kennel-keeper. I stop as head man, else I don't stop. And this I say, that to see your faithful life's work forgot is a sad sight. He did ought at least to be decent and let me die in harness, before he talks of changes and new-fangled notions. What the hell more do he want than first prizes again and again, and four awards in the last ten years for the best dog in the show?"
"Youth will be served," said Winter. "I see it more and more. I'm forty-six and not done with yet; but it's no good pretending the younger men don't know more than us. They've got what we can give them, because they're always welcome to our knowledge; but they've got much more than that, along of education, and I'll bet there's scores of men ten and fifteen years younger than me, who know more about the latest in farming; and, of course, there's scores know more than you about the latest in dogs."
"You're a very poor-spirited creature to say so then, and I don't think none the better of you for it," replied Gill warmly. "I ban't one to throw up the sponge before youth, I promise you. I understand the wilful ways of youth a darned sight too well. Hot-headed toads—always dashing at things, to show off their fancied cleverness, and then coming to us, with their tails between their legs, to make good their mistakes. You might just so soon say a puppy's wiser than his sire, than tell me the youths know more than us."
"It's nature," argued Winter. "When we stand still, the younger ones have got to pass us by. And, to the seeing eye, that's the first thing middle age marks—that the young men go past. We think we be trudging along so quick as ever; but we are not. And as for your life's work, you've done your duty we all know and done it very well. You was born to work and you've worked honest and helped on the world of dogs in your time; but nothing stands still and dogs will improve beyond your knowledge no doubt. So I should be dignified about it and go. Nought lasts, and youth's the flood that's always making to drown all."
Barton Gill considered these sentiments, but did not approve of them.
"I had it in mind to ax you to put in a word for me," he answered; "but I see I can't.'
"Not very well, Barton. I don't know enough about it, and nobody has a right to come between master and man."
"Everybody's got a right to throw light on another's darkness. Bullstone's wrong. He might so soon give his right hand notice as me. He's got to take me as an accepted law of nature, and he's worked himself into a silly fancy that a younger man would be what I am, and even more. But it's ignorance; and if I took him at his word and went, he'd be calling out for me on his knees in a week."
"Then you ought to be hopeful," said Adam. "If that was to happen, you'd come back with a flourish of trumpets."
"I don't want no flourish of trumpets and I don't want to go," declared the other. "It's very ill-convenient and unchristian thing to fire me now, and I hope Bullstone will see sense before it's too late."
Adam Winter had some experience of the tyranny of old servants and perceived that the kennel-man was not going to leave Red House if he could stop there.
"What does Mrs. Bullstone say?" he asked. "She's a very clever woman."
"For a woman she is," admitted Gill; "and when she calls home what I've been to her young people, I make no doubt she'll see that a very improper thought have come to master. But I haven't sounded her as yet and she may not have the pluck to take my side."
"What did you say to Bullstone?"
"Nothing so far. He burst it on me, as I tell you, and left me and my stomach wambling with the shock. I couldn't let down my dinner after, for the troubled mind tells upon the body instanter. I just axed him if I'd heard aright, and he said I had; and since then I've been turning it over."
They had reached the gate of Shipley Farm on the east bank of Auna, and Adam stood a moment before entering.
"Well, I dare say it will straighten out. Look all round it. You've only got yourself to think of; and if you was to retire, you'd enjoy a restful time, and the respect due to you, and not be sorry to find yourself idle with your work well done."
"I'm not going," answered Barton. "One word's as good as a thousand, and unless the man uses force, I don't go. I've set the age of seventy-five for retirement, and I don't break my word to myself for fifty Bullstones."
In this determined mood he crossed the bridge and proceeded sulkily homeward. A thought struck him and he turned and shouted it back to Adam.
"A man's home is his home, ain't it? And who the devil's going to turn me out of my home?"
Adam did not answer, but laughed to himself. He was still laughing when he entered his kitchen, where his aunt, Amelia Winter, and his brother, Samuel, had just begun their tea.
"I didn't expect you back so soon, my dear," he said to the old woman.
"And I didn't expect to be home so soon," she answered, "and, what's more, I came too soon for my peace, for if I hadn't gone up Church Lane when I did, I shouldn't have seen a very sad sight."
Amelia had worn well. She was upright and stout and strong—the youngest of the party, as Adam always declared. The men resembled each other. Samuel was but a few years older than his brother and Adam stood to him for divinity. He echoed his opinions and bestowed upon him absolute trust. Nothing his younger brother could do was wrong. Sammy's mental eccentricities were considered quite harmless and they had seldom as yet made him a danger to the community. If he ever displayed a spark of passion, it was at any adverse criticism of Adam, and this weakness on his part—once actually manifested, when he fell tooth and nail upon another labourer for laughing at his brother over some trifle—was now respected. In person Samuel appeared a larger edition of Adam, but of gaunt expression and already grey. He was very strong and laboured like a horse. Work kept his mind sweet.
"And what might you have seen to shock you, Aunt?" asked the master of Shipley.
"A sorry sight," she answered. "You mind poor Miss Marydrew's famous hat with the red squirrel's tail? It was a well-known feature—a proper landmark round about; and to-day I've seen it on another woman's head, and you might have knocked me down with a feather. That any female could have the front to flaunt that well-known trophy! And such a female! Sarah Saunders if you please. Properly indecent I call it."
"Her sale fetched very good prices," said Adam. "Old William kept a few of the best things for his house; but they say he's cleared something better than sixty pounds by it."
"He oughtn't to have sold her clothes, and I've told him so," answered Amelia. "Clothes are sacred to the wearer in my opinion, and I'd so soon have seen Mercy's ghost as her hat on that wicked head. It won't bring no luck to anybody concerned."
Adam told how Barton Gill was under notice, and his aunt thought it a hard thing. Samuel waited to hear his brother's opinion, and echoed it.
"Gill's worn out and did ought to make room for a younger man," he said.
He spoke very slowly in a very deep voice.
"Did Mrs. Kingwell's cow come to 'Turk'?" asked Adam.
"She came," answered his brother.
Then the men went out to their evening labours.
No great prosperity marked the farm, but Adam was not ambitious and his future hopes only extended to his brother. He desired to see Samuel safely through life and never at the mercy of unfriendly or indifferent hands. His own needs were of the simplest. He had abandoned any wish to wed, or raise up a family. He was content and his life went uneventfully forward, brightened by various friendships. He was well liked but not well known. To more full-blooded and energetic men he seemed shadowy; yet none ever heard him say a foolish thing. His neighbours knew him for a capable farmer, but they wondered why he stopped on year after year at a place which offered such small opportunity for enterprise as Shipley. Others, however, explained this seclusion as accepted on Samuel's account. Samuel was happier in loneliness.
The subconscious work of grievances and the secret attrition of their fret are dangerous. Margery Bullstone harboured such an ill, and it had wrought inevitable modification of character, for sense of personal wrong, if indulged, must mar quality. She was barely conscious of this buffet, and when she thought upon her life, assured herself that its compensations and disillusions were fairly balanced, for she loved her husband and tried to keep his fine characteristics uppermost in her mind; but she liked him less than of old and her grievance appeared in this: that he hindered her and came between her and many innocent pleasures which would have made her life fuller and happier. She did not understand Jacob save in flashes, and was dimly aware of perils in his nature and chambers, hidden in his heart, which held danger. He told her often that he held no secrets from her, and perhaps he believed it. Regarding temporal matters—his success or failure, his money, his possessions, his plans—it was emphatically true. He liked her to know how he stood, to share his hopes, to sympathise in his disappointments. But this was not all, and Margery knew that in the far deeper secrets of character and conviction, she had not entered the depth of her husband's mind and never would. He was a warm-hearted man and yet, under the warmth, flowed currents hidden from every eye. Sometimes, more by accident than intention, she had dipped for a moment into these currents, been chilled and found herself glad to ascend into the temperate region of their usual communion. She knew he was jealous, yet he seldom said a word to prove it. But she understood him well enough to read his silences and they were unspeakably pregnant. They would sometimes last for several days and frighten her. She had known bitter weeks when Jacob addressed no living thing but the dogs. Then the darkness would drift off and his steadfast and not uncheerful self shine out. Sometimes she was able to discover a reason for such eclipse; sometimes, puzzle as she might, no cause occurred to her mind. If she approached him, expressed grief for his tribulation and prayed to share it, he would put her off. Then she felt the cause, if not the fault, was in herself.
"If you don't know the reason, then no doubt there's no reason," was a cryptic answer he often made, and it left her dumb. She was conscious of a strange sense that somebody beside her husband dwelt unseen at Red House—somebody who watched and noted, but made no comment. The unseen expressed neither pleasure nor displeasure, but concentrated upon her and chronicled her actions and opinions. Jacob seemed to be two personalities, the one obvious, trustworthy, affectionate, the other inscrutable, attentive, vigilant. If one Jacob praised her and seemed to come closer, so that she felt happy, then arose the consciousness of the other Jacob, concerning whom she knew so little, and whose attitude to herself she could not feel was friendly. Had she been able to put a name to it, or analyse her husband's second self, she might have felt easier in some directions; but as yet she had failed to understand. Nor could anybody help her to do so. Perhaps Judith Huxam came nearest to explaining the obscurity. But she refused to give it a name, though her suspicion found vent in cautions to Margery.
Jacob was not secretive in many things, and a habit of his, quite familiar to his wife, might have helped towards elucidation had she been of a synthetic bent. He would sometimes himself harbour grievances for days and then plump out with them. They were generally of a trivial appearance in Margery's eyes, and she often wondered at the difference between the things that annoyed a woman and perturbed a man. He was obstinate and had his own way as a matter of course. She never opposed him, and where alternatives of action presented themselves, Jacob decided; but some things happened that she felt were a permanent bruise to him. They grew out of life and struck the man in his tenderest part. None was responsible for them and they rose from material as subtle and intangible as heredity and character. Margery granted that they were very real facts and would have altered them for her husband's sake had it been possible to do so; but to alter them was not possible, for they rooted in the souls of the four children now swiftly growing up at Red House.
Jacob was a good father, and coming to paternity when already advanced in manhood, he had devoted more personal time and attention to his children, their nurture and formation of character, than a younger parent might have done. From the first Margery perceived that the upbringing of her brood would lie in the will of their father; and since she had cared for him better and glorified him mere during the years when they were born than now, she had not differed from his opinions, even when sometimes prompted from her parents' home to do so. But chance, as though conscious of Jacob's jealousy and his overmastering desire to dominate by love of his children and his wife, had flouted this passion and denied him love.
At first the case centred with Margery herself, and while his boys and girls were little children, he had almost resented the abundant worship they bestowed upon her rather than him; but now the situation had developed, though they were still too young to hide their predilections. Nor did they turn to their father, as he expected the boys at least to do. They had declared frank affection where least he expected it. Their mother was indeed first, and then came in their regard not Jacob, but their grandparents; and he found to his surprise that the Huxams attracted his sons and eldest daughter. It puzzled him, even angered him; but he rarely exhibited his secret annoyance and never to any but Margery.
He was scornful to her occasionally and she admitted, or professed, a kindred astonishment. Indeed she did not know why the boys had not naturally turned to their father, since there existed no reason in his treatment of them to lessen natural affection. He was kind and generous. He supported their youthful hopes and ambitions; he went further in that direction than Margery herself; for she had desired higher education for John Henry and Peter, while their father, to her disappointment, held it worthless, seeing the nature of their hopes and abilities. In a year or two both would be free to leave the secondary school at which they studied, and Jacob held that his eldest son must then take up practical farming under experienced tuition, while Peter was to join a veterinary surgeon for a time, then come back to Red House and the Irish terriers. His decisions troubled Margery and seemed, in her mind, a slight to her sons. For Jacob had been himself well educated and knew the value of learning.
Thus husband and wife developed points of difference at this stage of their united lives, though they lived placidly on the surface and were exemplars of what marriage should be in the eyes of their neighbours. The invisible friction was concealed and all ran smoothly in general opinion.
Jacob Bullstone was exacting in trifles, and Margery, while she had waived certain pleasures that meant much to her in her early married days, always hoped to gratify them when her children were grown out of babyhood and life still beckoned. Now, in sight of their crucial years together, it was too late, and having from the first fallen in with her husband's solitary mode of life, she found it had become impossible to make him more gregarious and sociable. She loved her fellow-creatures and companionship; he preferred loneliness and found the company of his family more than sufficient. She was ambitious to entertain a little and loved to see friends at Red House, or visit them; he cared not for hospitality and could seldom be prevailed upon either to accept it, or offer it. He was always craving for peace, while she found so much solitude to be melancholy, and often sighed for distraction. She was but thirty-four and her cheerful nature and ready sympathy made her popular. He was fifty and regarded the life he liked as more dignified and worthy of respect, excusing his hermit instinct in this manner. She loved to talk of her own and praise her children in the ears of other mothers. He deprecated this desire strongly and was morbidly sensitive about praising anything that belonged to him. At the same time he would grow silent if others took his own cue, or ventured to criticise unfavourably so much as a dog that he esteemed.
Margery concentrated on Jacob's goodness, for she knew that he was good; and at moments of depression, when life looked more grey than usual and its promise but bleak, after her children should be gone, she would remember many incidents to her husband's credit. He was very patient; he worked hard; he helped many a lame dog over a stile; he forgave wrongs; he was slow to think evil. He failed as a judge of character, which was natural in a man of his temperament; but his disappointments bred neither irony nor bitterness. She believed that he thought well of human nature, so long as it did not intrude too much upon his privacy; and she perceived that he took men at their own valuation until they proved that he was wrong to do so.
There was one golden link, and sometimes Margery confessed to her father, though not to her mother, that Auna, the baby of the family, held all together and might be called the little saviour of the situation and the central fact of the home. She was physically her mother again—more like Margery when eighteen, than Margery herself now was. She had her mother's eyes and hair, her long, slim legs, her sudden laugh. She was an attractive child, but very shy with strangers. Yet her good nature made her fight this instinct and she pleased better in her gentle way than her more boisterous sister. Her brothers made Avis their heroine, since she could do all they could themselves and play boys' games; but Auna found this no sorrow. Her father was supreme in her affections and his own regard for her echoed her adoration.
He made no favourites openly, yet the situation could not be hidden and none was jealous of Auna, since none ever had any ground for grievance. His regard for Auna surpassed that for the others, and she loved him far better than they did. Margery would not quarrel with the fact, and Jacob explained it in a manner which left her no cause for complaint.
"It's natural that, after you, she should come first with me," he told his wife privately—indeed he often repeated the sentiment. "She's you over again—you, to every trick and turn—you, even to the tiny fraction your right eyebrow's higher than your left. In body she's you, and in mind she'll be you and me rolled into one. And she loves me more than the others all put together, just as you love me more than they do. So never wonder; and never fear I'll do less than my whole duty to every child of mine."
She never did fear that and was only sorry for him, that life had drawn this difference. With such a man it was inevitable that he would react fiercely in heart, though not out of reason. He was sensitive and knew himself not popular; and when he confessed as much and she told him that the fault was his own, since he would not court his neighbours and give them opportunity to learn his worth, he would laugh and say she was doubtless right. Yet, of the few friends that he had, he was very jealous, and when a man offered friendship and presently cooled off, as sometimes happened, by accident rather than intent, Jacob suffered secretly and puzzled himself to invent explanations, when often enough the other, pressed by a harder life than his own, had merely let him slip a little from force of circumstances, yet still imagined him a friend.
Margery regretted her mother-in-law very heartily, for she had been a valued factor in the home and acted as anodyne of trouble on many occasions. She had taught her son's wife some precious truths concerning Jacob and made her feet firm in certain particulars. She had won the affection of her grandchildren also and she always possessed an art to satisfy Jacob himself. But she was gone and with her much that Margery had only dimly appreciated, but now missed. The wife also tended to forget a point or two that had been wiselier remembered.
Jacob broke out sometimes and said things that must have caused Margery uneasiness, had she not assumed their insignificance. What he spoke in rare fits of anger was always of the surface and unimportant to Margery, yet in another ear, if any had heard him, these speeches might have sounded ominous. Galled sometimes by thoughtlessness in his sons, or at an answer lacking in respect, he would roar harmlessly and even threaten. She had heard him say that, since Auna was the only one who cared a straw for his opinions, and valued his fatherhood in her, she should be the only one he should remember. But these things were summer thunder and lightning to his wife. Whatever his offspring might do, short of open wrong, would never influence Jacob. What was hidden she regarded, indeed, fearfully for its mystery; but that it would ever rise into injustice, folly, madness she denied. He was a man too forthright and fixed in honour and justice to wrong any fellow-creature.
And this she felt despite difference in religious opinion. She had never probed this matter, but was aware that Jacob did not share the convictions she had won in her home. He seldom went to church and seldom, indeed, discussed religion at all; but he never spoke of it without great respect and reverence before his children, though sometimes, to her, he allowed himself an expression that gave her pain.
She did not doubt, however, that under his occasional contempt for her mother's religious practices, Jacob remained a good Christian at heart. Indeed he had never questioned the verities of Christian faith, or regarded himself as anything but a religious man. But his plain dealing and scrupulous honesty sprang from heredity and was an integral part of his nature. He felt no vital prompting to religious observance in public, and his dislike of crowds kept him from church-going save on very rare occasions. Margery knew that he prayed morning and evening, and had indeed reported the fact to her mother, who distrusted Jacob in this matter. For her son-in-law himself Mrs. Huxam did not trouble; but she was much concerned in the salvation of her grandchildren.
Margery wandered down the valley one afternoon when the leaves were falling and the river making riot after a great rain in mid-moor. She always liked these autumnal phases and loved to see the glassy billows of the water roll, as they rolled when she came so near drowning in her marriage year. She proceeded to meet Jacob, who would presently return from Brent, whither he had been to despatch some dogs by train; and now she fell in with Adam Winter, riding home on a pony over Shipley Bridge. She was glad to see him, counting him among her first friends, and he welcomed her and alighted.
"Haven't met this longful time," she said and shook hands. This they never did, but for once the fancy took her and he responded.
"Leaf falling again," replied Adam, "and the autumn rain upon us. A good year, however—middling hay and corn, good roots and good grazing."
"I'm glad then. Weather's nothing to us."
"It makes a difference to your feelings," he argued. "How's things?"
"All right. 'One day followeth another,' as the Book says. And they're all mighty alike at Red House. We don't change half so much as the river. Auna was rolling down like this when I went over the waterfall, and you got wet on my account."
"Sixteen year next month; I haven't forgotten."
"It's a long time to remember anything; but I've not forgot neither. How's my brother, Jeremy, treating you?"
Adam laughed.
"New brooms sweep clean; but he's made a great start, and don't he look a pretty picture in his trap? Up he comes, punctual as postman, every Thursday afternoon for the butter and eggs. Long may it last."
"And Jane's suited too—so far. She gets off to Plymouth market on Friday morning, and has done very clever indeed up to now."
"It was a great start in life for them, and like your husband to give it. A wonderful good thing to do. Jeremy knows his luck I hope. But there—Providence cares for the sparrows, though it over-looks the starlings in a hard winter. Jacob's a good un, Margery."
"So he is then—good as gold."
"And heavy as gold—so a man answered, when I said that very thing about Bullstone not a month ago. But I withstood him there. He's not heavy—only a self-centred man. And why not? With a home and a wife and children and a business, all packed up in the valley so snug and prosperous, why shouldn't he be self-centred? Why does he want to be anything else?"
She shook her head.
"It's narrow for a man," she answered, "and I often wish he'd go in the world more, and welcome the world at Red House for that matter."
"I'm looking at it from his point of view—not yours," replied Adam. "For the minute I was seeing his side. He's not one for neighbouring with people, and I say he don't lose much, because his business don't call for a wide knowledge of humans. He's in clover. He's got a very fine strain of dogs and the people know it and have to give a good price for a good article. So he's not like a farmer, who must make the best he can of open markets and competition. He's all right. But I quite grant it's not just the life you'd choose, because you're a sociable creature. You like fresh faces and new voices and new opinions and new gowns; and if I'd been your husband, you'd have had most of those things anyway."
"I believe I might. You'd make a very good husband, Adam. A good husband wasted. But why? It's not too late. Why don't you take a wife? I should be glad, for it would mean another woman here, and new ideas."
"For your sake I would then," he said. "But the time's past, if it ever came. I've got a bachelor nature and plenty to think upon without a wife."
"Lookers on see most of the game. I'm sure you're a lot cleverer and more understanding than most married men."
"Not much in the way of cleverness, else I wouldn't be puzzled so oft."
"The open mind's a very good thing. I'd sooner be puzzled than always think I knew. Such a lot always think they know; and always know wrong."
"It's the point of view," he said.
"If my Jacob could look at things from outside, same as you do; and not always from inside, same as he does, then he'd see a lot clearer all round life."
"He sees clear enough what he wants to see. He don't waste his time looking at doubtful or uncertain things. What he does see, he sees; and so, on his own ground, he can't be beat. I may see a bit farther and a bit more, but my vision's cloudy. I'm not certain of anything."
"Yes, you are," answered Margery. "You're as certain in religion as I am, or my mother herself. Now just there, in a vital thing like that, Jacob's foggy I believe."
"The fog will lift if fog there is. No man can do the things he does and lack for the Guide, I reckon."
"I'll tell him what you say. Belike it would please him."
"Better not. He's not one to care what I might say. I'm a slight man in his eyes. He might even think it was cheek my praising him."
"He likes praise really, though he'd never admit it."
"Depends where it comes from. We don't set no store on the praise of small people and the humble-minded. The praise we ache for be most times withheld. That is if you are ambitious, like Jacob is. A man spoke well of in newspapers like him—what should he care for me?"
"He thinks well of you and says it's a fine thing the way you work."
"No, no—think twice, Margery. You're inventing now—to please me. He's got a very good knowledge of what's worth praise; and a man that does his own duty without flinching, like your man, isn't going to admire them who only do the same. I do no more than that, and the time hasn't come yet when we pat a man on the back for doing his duty; though perhaps it will be a rare sight in the next generation."
"I wish we could look forward. There's some things I'd dearly like to know," said Margery.
"Lord! What a lot we should do to fight for ourselves and them we care about if we could do that," he answered. "If we could look on ten years even and see how we had changed—how habits had grown up and fastened on us, how faith in our neighbours had gone, perhaps, and how, with the years, we'd got more cunning, and harder and more out for Number One—how we'd set to work to fight ourselves—eh?"
"We ought to live so that we shouldn't be afraid to look on ten years," she assured him. "Why not so live that your heart will be bigger and your hope higher and your faith purer in ten years?"
"That's your mother," he answered.
"It's you," she said. "It's you, Adam. You don't need to fear the years. But I do. I'm different, because I've got children. It's for them I'd love to look on, so as I might head off the dangers, if dangers showed!"
"None have less to dread than you in that direction. Wonderful children—healthy, hearty, sensible. You and Jacob have made a very good blend for the next generation, and that's something to be thankful for. If marriage is a lottery—then what are childer? Look at my family. Who'd have dreamed that my fine mother and my good, sane father should have had Samuel, and Minnie, now in her grave, and me—me—only better than Samuel by a hair, and often quite as mad as him! But there it was. The poison was hid away in my mother's family, and they never told father till after he was wedded. A very wicked thing and ought to be criminal—eh? My mother went off her head after Sam was born and had to be put away for a bit. But she recovered and never got queer again."
"I'd like to see you on one of your mad days," she said. "But now it's you telling fibs, not me. Never was a saner man than you; and if you weren't so sane, you'd be sad. But if you're sad, you don't show it. When I'm sad, I can't hide my feelings."
"Much pleasanter not to hide 'em, if you've got somebody close at hand to understand 'em. That's one of the compensations of a good marriage—to share sorrow and halve the weight of it."
She looked at him whimsically.
"Sounds all right," she said. "Perhaps, after all, there's some things we married ones know better than you that bide single."
"For certain. Practice knocks the bottom out of a lot of fine theories."
"The things that you can share with another person don't amount to much," she told him. "The sorrow that can be shared, and so lessened, is only small. If one of my children was to die, would it make it better for me because Jacob took on? No."
A child appeared at this moment and Auna approached from the abode of Mr. Marydrew. Her father's movements were not often hidden from the little girl and she was now about to plunge down the woody lane under Shipley Tor by which he must soon return.
"And how's old Billy, my duck?" asked Margery.
"His cough has gone," said Auna, "and he gave me this brave stick of barley sugar."
She held the sweetmeat up to her mother.
"I haven't sucked it yet," she said. "I won't suck it till father's had a bit."
"He'll be along in a minute, my dinky dear, and give you a ride home."
Auna went her way.
"Billy's terrible fond of her, ever since she went in once, unbeknownst to us, to cheer him up when poor Mercy died. She popped in like a mouse, and sat beside him, and told him what she'd come for; and he liked it."
"A good old pattern of man and wise enough to care for childer about him."
"And who cares for them better than you? A fine father you would have been, and I tell you again it's not too late."
"I've got Sammy—and a very good child too, when he's not crossed. But he can be ugly."
She was thoughtful.
"Small blame to you for not marrying," she said, "I chaff you, Adam; but very well I know why for you didn't."
They relapsed into a lighter mood, and it happened that Winter had just uttered a sharp comment on one of Margery's speeches, which made her pretend to be angry. They were both laughing and she had given him a push backwards, when Jacob came round the corner in his cart with Auna beside him. He had seen the gesture and Margery perceived that he must have done so; but Adam's back was turned and he did not know that Bullstone had appeared.
He was going now, holding his patient horse by the bridle, but Margery stopped him.
"There's Jacob—don't bolt, else he'll think you've seen him and want to avoid him," she said.
The man stopped, therefore, till Bullstone's trap was beside them. Jacob smiled genially and Auna asked her mother to ascend and be driven home. A few words passed. Margery told how her brother was shining as huckster, and Adam hoped that Jeremy had now settled down at last and was on the way to prosperity. Jacob smiled again and hoped so too, and then Margery climbed into the trap.
She spoke of Adam when they had left him, but her husband paid no heed to this matter. He was anxious to know if two letters had reached Red House.
Then he told Auna how good the dogs had been, and she, hardened to these partings, was glad they had gone bravely.
Jacob appeared to be as usual and the contents of his letters served to put him in a good temper; yet Margery was sharply conscious of the hidden watcher that night and, after some hesitation, she decided upon returning to the subject of Adam Winter.
When they were alone she did so, though in doubt to the last moment whether it was expedient. The thing she designed to say might merely serve to remind Jacob of a trifling incident he had already forgotten; but she knew the contrary was far more likely to be the case. The significance of the matter would possibly be lessened by a few words concerning it. She was heartily sorry that the thing had happened; and yet felt it hard and absurd that such a trifle should cause her sorrow. Thus she was in an uncertain mood when she did address him—a mood not indifferent or scornful of the incident, otherwise she had not returned to it at all; but a mood a little regretful for herself, and in no sense tinctured with that repentance, which alone would have made it really desirable to speak.
She waited for some time to see if Jacob himself would allude to it—a fact that showed how little she really grasped the inner nature of the man; for past experience might well have taught her that his silence was assured. He did not mention Winter at all, but spoke placidly of his children and declared that now the holidays were done and the boys back at school, he missed Peter in the kennels. He then proceeded to tell her that he was glad he had decided to keep Barton Gill in his old, responsible position a little longer. These things drifted past Margery's ear, and then, just before Jacob finished his glass of spirits and rose to lock up, she spoke.
"I'm sorry you saw me push Adam this afternoon. It was a silly thing; but he was poking fun at me, and you know how I'll respond to a challenge. Just an impulse, because I couldn't think of a sharp answer."
"Are you sorry you did it, or only sorry I saw you do it?" he asked, but did not wait for a reply. "No matter—you needn't answer. You keep so young for your age, though you always say you're old for it."
"I'm sorry. I grant it was foolish. But Winter's an old friend, and I feel as if we might almost be brother and sister sometimes. He's good to the children too."
"We'll go to bed," he said.
"Not till you've forgiven me."
"If you know you did a vulgar thing, that's to the good."
She flushed.
"I wish somebody had saved your life," she said, "then you'd find that you never can feel to that person same as you feel to other people."
"Christ's blood!" he swore, but hissed it and did not raise his voice to be heard beyond the room. "When are we going to hear the end of that?"
She was alarmed, and echoes of a similar incident, now some years old, came to her memory. She stared at him, then banished her fear, put her arms round his shoulders and kissed him.
"I'm so sorry, dear. I seem to get so clumsy."
He, too, was sorry, though for something other than he now declared. He apologised and blamed himself for being a fool; while in his heart he felt that his folly lay, not in his anger, but the display of it. The watcher had lifted a corner and peered from its concealment; the banked fires had broken into a visible flame. He had been betrayed by the accident of her apology, and shown her something he had no desire to show her.
Her next word accentuated his error.
"I hoped you would have mentioned it and given me a talking to. I deserved it."
"Seeing that I've never chidden you for anything on God's earth in my life, it wasn't very likely I should begin to-night, was it?"
"I might be happier if you did chide me. I dare say I do many things you hate; if you told me so, I wouldn't do them again."
"You may be right; but it's contrary to my nature to play schoolmaster. Where I don't like a thing and can change it myself, I do; but where others are concerned, if it's not my place to order, I don't order."
"I know; but if you'd order oftener, or express an opinion as you have to-night, we might all be quicker to do your will."
"Women like tyrants, it's said," he replied. "But I'm not built that way, and if wit and love can't see to please without being ordered—so much the worse. Forget it; forget it."
"No," she answered. "I'll take very good care not to forget it, Jacob."
"So you think; but true memory comes from the heart, not the head."
He was unusually silent for many days, as she knew he would be. Then he grew cheerful again and spoke of Shipley and the Winters in his customary, indifferent fashion.
On a winter's morning the Red House children were playing in a great ruin which stood near their home. Clay works had brought a busy company to Shipley vale in past times; but now only the walls of the drying houses and the stack of the furnace still stood, while above them, on the hill, large pits, whither had flowed the liquid clay from its bed on the high moor, were now filled with herbage, foxgloves, blackberries and sapling trees.
This famous playground found a small company of children and dogs assembled, and among them, as cheerful as any, was an ancient man. Old Billy Marydrew delighted in young people, and they found him more understanding than the middle-aged.
Children and red dogs romped over ground sparkling with frost, and Billy sat on a stone and enjoyed the entertainment. Auna fetched and carried; Avis issued orders, John Henry with some condescension, took his part. And then he quarrelled with his brother about a terrier that he was trying to teach a trick.
"He shall do it; I'll larn him," vowed John Henry hotly.
"He can't do it—no Irish terrier could do it," answered Peter.
They argued over the ability of the bewildered bitch, and Peter appealed to Billy; whereupon Mr. Marydrew agreed that John Henry was demanding impossibilities.
"When I was as young as you, John Henry," he said, "my father gave me some silkworms for a present, and I was a determined nipper and thought I'd train 'em up in the way they should go. And I gave 'em some very fine poplar leaves, which other worms be fond of. But my father warned me and said they must have lettuce. 'No, father,' I told him. 'They shall eat the poplar, because I will it. I won't have no caterpillars setting up their wills against mine.'"
"Did you make 'em, Mr. Marydrew?" asked Auna.
"I did not, my pretty. Instead, I found out that, though a small boy can put a worm on a leaf, the whole round world won't make the worm eat it—not if it isn't his food."
"And nobody won't make 'Nixie' stand on her head," vowed Peter, "because it's contrary to her nature to do such foolishness. They French poodles will larn any silly thing; but not an English dog."
John argued to the contrary; Avis and Auna tried to teach the puppies to slide on a frozen pond and John Henry, quite unconvinced, turned to pursue 'Nixie's' studies. But that wise dog had bolted home.
Then came along Jacob Bullstone, and hearing his children's voices, he turned off the road and entered the ruin. He joined the games for a few minutes; then Avis and Peter, who were in charge of the dogs, went homeward, and John Henry followed with Auna, while their father proceeded to the road beside old William.
"I've been to Owley," he said. "My brother-in-law's weakening. Doesn't like this cold weather."
The ancient laughed.
"He'll stand to it a bit longer yet. The pinch be going to come when the babby does. Then he'll have to work for the pair of 'em, and go to market instead of his wife."
"What's the matter with the man?"
"Nothing. A very ordinary sort of man, and if he'd been a lord, or a landed proprietor, or any sort of chap called to spend money instead of earn it, he'd have been a great success. Don't we know scores of the upper people like him? But he wants a thick-set hedge of money between him and real life. Even as it is, he has had a good bit of yours, not to say his father's. Afore Jeremy Huxam can shine, he must have the mercy and good-will of his neighbours. Their good-will he's got, and their mercy he'll surely want, if there ever comes a time when he's got to stand alone. But a charming chap I'm sure, and not an enemy. Same as your wife, without her pluck and sense, Jacob. Your boys are more like their grandmother than her own son be."
"So I've heard, and don't want to hear it again," answered Bullstone. "Judith Huxam's no great heroine of mine, Billy, as you know. I see myself in my sons, and who more likely to be in them?"
"They're a very fine pair of dear boys, and their fortunes are on their foreheads," said Mr. Marydrew. "Born to command is John Henry. Peter's most like you in my judgment—got your painstaking care for details. He's larning all there is to know about the dogs."
"From me."
"Who else? And why for don't you see all the way with Judith Huxam? My late daughter thought the world of her."
"Too much hell-fire," answered Jacob. "She's narrow and self-righteous, and I don't want any child of mine to grow up either one, or the other."
"A pinch of hell-fire doctrine don't hurt the young," declared Billy. "'Tis true that you and me know the fire's cold; but a lively sense of the dangers of wrong-doing be a good tonic for the girls and boys. I keep in touch with the rising generation, because they believe in me in a way I can't expect you middle-aged folks to do. And I see what they want—discipline. That ain't your strong suit, nor yet your wife's. You go in for example; but that's not enough. You know what's good for a puppy, though I wouldn't say you know so well what's good for a little human."
Jacob laughed.
"You're a wise old bird—to call you 'old.' But how do you keep so young in your mind, William? Is it just character, or do you try for it?"
"I try for it," answered Billy. "Yes, I try for it. You can't keep young-minded at my age without an effort. And this I do. I never look back, Jacob. I don't drag the past after me, and I'm lucky, maybe, because I haven't got much in my past to drag. What is it—what is most of the past—but a garment that makes you discomfortable, a boot that galls? Let the past bury the past and always look forward."
Jacob considered and struck his gaitered leg with his walking-stick.
"The mind no doubt works healthiest when it's working forward," he admitted. "I know that much. Even the best of the past makes you turn to sadness rather than happiness. Because the good time has gone, I suppose, and never can come back no more."
"That's why business be such a blessing to some minds. Business always means looking forward—so your father used to say."
"He looked forward sure enough, and I've got to thank him for no little that he did," replied Bullstone. "A rare man of business, and nobody ever cut a loss and put it behind him quicker and cleaner than he did. All for land, and pretty well the last thing he said in my ear was, 'Buy in Brent.' He knew Brent to be on the up grade in his time, and he'd always buy when he could. Some nice parcels I've got for building, Billy; but most of them are not up to my selling price yet."
They talked of Brent and then Jacob looked at his watch.
"Toddle up the valley and have dinner with us."
"Not to-day. I've promised your missis to come Sunday," said William.
That winter passed without event and life at Red House offered no incident of apparent significance whence to date—no upraised point from which the past might be measured, or the future explored. The days repeated themselves until spring, returning, accelerated all pulses and unconsciously increased vitality and will to live and enjoy.
Bullstone's lads neared the end of their studies, and when summer came again, John Henry, in sight of seventeen, prepared for apprenticeship to the business of his choice.
To-day he was riding over the Moor, with his father and a farmer, to see sheep, while Margery and the others made pilgrimage for Huntingdon Warren. They carried their lunch and baskets for the whortleberrries, now growing ripe again; while more than their own food they took, for there had come a baby at Huntingdon and Margery conveyed certain delicacies for the wife of Benny Veale. Old Frederick Veale was dead; but Benny still worked the warrens; though rumour announced that he had nearly done with them and, at his wife's entreaty, intended soon to desert the waste and return into civilisation.
Peter and Auna ran this way and that as they climbed slowly aloft. They met the goats browsing together presently and played with them a while, then hastened after the retreating figures of their mother and sister. And then they played a new game, at the inspiration of Auna, and dyed their faces and hands with whortleberry juice. They were now Indians and, sticking a few feathers from a dead carrion crow into their hair, and brandishing spears, represented by Peter's fishing-rod, they rushed screaming upon Margery and Avis and demanded food at the point of their weapons.
Presently they returned to the river beyond Zeal Plains, where Auna and her brother washed the berry juice from their faces. Then Peter fished and caught some small trout with a worm. An hour later they tramped forward to Huntingdon Cross, ate their pasties and cake beside it and so proceeded to the Warren House.
Red Benny saw them from afar and came to meet Margery. He was now a stalwart man of forty, and claimed to get more out of the rabbits than any warrener before him; but that, he vowed, was because he worked harder than his predecessors. He was lean and immensely strong, and his wife seemed cut in his own pattern. The unexpected arrival of visitors excited them, for few ever called at their home. Tourists saw it afar, like a white eye under the tumulus on the hill behind it; but it seldom happened that anything but the wild Scotch cattle, or a moorman on a pony, came near the spot.
Sally Veale's second child was six weeks old, and Sally was by no means an invalid. She laughed at the nice things Margery had brought and displayed her baby.
"Red—red," she said. "The daps of Benny."
While Auna and Avis gazed fearfully upon the remains of a dead horse, and Peter played with Mr. Veale's lean lurchers, despising them in secret, Sally prattled to her visitor and declared her hatred of the Warren.
"No place for a woman and two babies," she declared; "and my husband's of my mind. He's pretty well fed up. I want to go to the in-country and for Benny to be a gamekeeper; and Mr. Blake, to Beggar's Bush, would take him on next fall, when his head man stops; but Benny's all for foreign parts and more trapping. He says that in the far north of Canada, a man like him could face the winters and catch creatures whose fur be worth their weight in gold. But if he does that, it will be out of the frying-pan into the fire for me I reckon."
"Work on him to go to Beggar's Bush," advised Margery. "Then you'll come down to Brent and have your neighbours about you. It's cruel and unnatural for us women to be shut off from the world."
"That's what I say. But he's all for the wilds again."
Margery talked of the past. Huntingdon had been a spot on her great holiday pilgrimage with Jacob, before they were wed, and every feature of that long day's ramble her mind held precious still. The old radiance of the image was long departed, yet force of a habit, that had extended through years, still woke an afterglow of interest in certain scenes when she came among them.
She talked of Benny's father, whom Sally had not known.
Tea was prepared and, while they were eating it, Bullstone and his son arrived on horseback. They joined the meal and presently, when the young people were off again, Benny repeated his determination to depart.
Jacob heard the alternative courses and advised him to stop in England, for the sake of his family. Then he said a thing that surprised Margery.
"So like as not I'll lease the warrens when you go—if ever you really do go. I'm very much set on Huntingdon. It's the sort of lonely spot that does me good. If I were to take it, I'd employ a couple of men to live here and keep a room for myself—for sake of health and peace."
"Easier to say you'll employ men than to do it," answered Benny, "Took me a month of Sundays to find a boy. The warrens are very near played out in my opinion. There's not the head of rabbits used to run in my father's time. Nobody will ever lease 'em again if you don't."
Jacob discoursed of Benny's two boys and asked their names. Then Margery was shocked.
"Haven't got names yet," confessed Benny. "We can't come to no agreement. Missis wants a grand sort of name, like 'Fortescue' or 'Champernowne,' and I say 'Fred' after father, or 'Thomas' or 'Richard.' No good giving children silly names."
"I lived along with the Champernownes as under housemaid," explained Sally; "and 'tis a valiant name."
"It doesn't go with Veale, however," confessed Jacob.
"But if they're not named, they're not baptized!" exclaimed Margery.
"They are not," admitted their father, "and none the worse so far as I know."
"They're not Christians then—oh, Benny!"
"No more ain't I," answered the warrener. "It's no good pretending nothing. No man can breathe a word against me, but I've not got religion and never felt the want of it. More haven't Sally."
His wife contradicted him, declaring that she had always gone to church in her maiden days; and Margery was too troubled to speak.
"Duty's duty and I do it; and if ever I've got time, I'll go into religion also," explained Benny; "but so far time's lacked."
"You must have them baptized whatever you believe, or don't believe," declared Jacob. "You can't let your sons be nameless and outside the pale. That's wrong, Veale, and I hope you'll mend it."
"Don't think I've got anything against religion," replied the other. "It shall be done, if you reckon it ought, Mr. Bullstone. And I'll name one, and my wife shall have her way with the other."
"Haven't you heard about original sin?" asked Margery.
"No, never," replied Benny. "But there's no pride in me and my wife. We'll hunt up some gossips and put the thing in train."
"I'll be one, and I'll buy a christening cake, and you shall come into Red House on the way home and eat it," said Margery. Even the prospect of this modest entertainment pleased her.
The parents were much gratified, and still more so when Jacob also agreed to be a godfather.
"Duty's all right, Benny; but we must have law and order also," he explained. "This is a Christian land, and though Christians differ a lot and some take their religion sadly, and some cheerfully, and some so lightly that it doesn't amount to anything at all, yet we must bow to custom and it won't do you much good with any master to say you're no Christian; because the Christian habit is to distrust any who don't subscribe."
It was arranged that when Mrs. Bullstone returned from her holiday to Plymouth, the children should be received into the Church.
Sally declared great gratification and Benny promised Jacob not to declare himself a pagan—if merely as a measure of worldly wisdom.
"And I hope you'll go one better presently," added Bullstone, "and find you can honestly call yourself a member."
"I always keep an open mind," answered the warrener. "I don't quarrel with nobody's opinions if their practice stands for 'em."
"It's all summed up in that," admitted Jacob. "But, because we fall short in practice, you godless men mustn't quarrel with our principles. The principles are loftier than our powers to reach—to make us aim high, Benny. I don't hold with a lot I hear and see; but then I allow for the poverty of human nature, finding it in myself. And when you know how poor you are yourself, you make allowance for others."
Benny listened and so did the women.
"All true as Gospel I'm sure," murmured Sally.
"Yes," said Margery, who had been astonished at Jacob, "and you two had best set about finding how true the Gospel is."
Somewhat cast down, the warrener and his wife presently witnessed the departure of the Bullstone family.
Jacob decided to walk back and, to his satisfaction, Peter was allowed to mount his father's horse and proceed with his brother. The boys were soon out of sight and Margery, well pleased, walked beside her husband.
The evening was full of gracious light and the west threw a roseal warmth of colour into the bosom of the Moor. The hour was reflected in Margery's mood and she found herself happy, weary, content. Jacob, too, discoursed amiably and praised his eldest son. Sometimes they came thus closer in spirit and wondered secretly why it was not always so. Yet, even as the sun sank and they entered the deep gorges of the river, where it wended toward their home, something of the twilight entered Margery's mind also, by reason of a thing said.
They had dwelt on the past to their mutual satisfaction and he, she found, remembered their lovers' walk of old, which had brought them home again by the same path that now they trod. Their minds were at peace and no dark thought, for the moment, thrust in upon Jacob; no doubt or dread of the watcher saddened his wife. Then she asked a question and, though it was inspired by concern for him alone, there arose out of his answer a spirit of helplessness in her that was swift to awaken the familiar gloom in him. Thus the tramp that had begun with both in good heart, drifted them finally upon silence before they were home again.