"Don't you fret your wits with such stuff, for it won't help you to patience or wisdom."
"No, it won't bring the dead to life, or lift the brand from me. But I thresh it out by night and see great things heave up in my mind. Then, when I jump to put them into words, they fade and I lose them. Reason may be the work of the devil—his master-stroke to turn us from salvation. You can't be damned without it; but you can be saved without it. Or would you say a man can't have a soul to be saved, until he is a reasonable creature, built to separate good from evil and choose the right? No doubt it's well understood by deep men. My mind turns in and feeds on itself, William, because there's nothing left outside to feed on."
"You must come back to your appointed task. You must keep doing good things. You must do more and think less."
"I'm going up to Huntingdon with Auna this afternoon."
"And let her talk to you. Don't think her words are worthless. You've got a nice bit of your wife left in Auna. Always remember that."
"I do. I shall live on for Auna. There's one beautiful thing left for me—beautiful, and yet a living wound, that grows painfuller every day I live. And that's Auna—Auna growing more and more and more like Margery—bringing her back, even to the toss of her head and the twinkle of her eye. She laughs like her mother, William; she cries like her mother; she thinks like her mother. So my only good will be my first grief. The things still left to care about will torture me more than all the hate of the world can torture me. They'll keep memory awake—stinging, burning, till I scream to Auna to get out of my sight presently, and leave me with the foxes and the carrion crows."
Then Bullstone limped away. He soon grew calmer, as he was wont to do when alone with nobody to whet his thoughts upon.
During the later part of this day he ascended the moors with Auna and walked to the empty Warren House. They talked of those who had dwelt there, for that morning a letter had come from Mrs. Veale for Margery, giving her news of the Veale family—Benny and the children.
"You must answer it, Auna, and tell the woman that your mother passed away last winter," said Jacob. "If I was a younger man, I might go out to Canada myself and take you with me; but we'll stop here. You'll like Huntingdon, won't you?"
"Yes, father."
"Your mother's dead," he told her; "but we shan't be without a lot of treasures to remind us of her."
"All the things she specially cared about you'll have round you, father."
"I know them all," he answered, "because, so long as I felt hope that she might come back, I was specially careful for them and set them aside out of harm's way. She had a great liking for little things that she coupled with the thoughts of friends."
He spoke the truth, for many trifles that had sustained some faint fragrance of hope while Margery lived—trifles that her heart had valued and her hands had held—were now subject to a different reverence, set apart and sanctified for ever.
"We might take a few of her favourite flowers too," suggested Auna, "but I doubt they would live up there in winter. You can always come down and see them at the right time, father."
"Everything shall be just as you will, Auna. You'll be mistress and I'll be man."
She laughed and they tramped forward. Jacob could now walk all day without suffering for it, but he was lame and his pace slower than of old.
He brought the key with him and opened the silent house. A week rarely passed without a visit, and Jacob always awoke to animation and interest when he came. The melancholy spot and mean chambers, though they had chilled not a few human hearts in the past, always cheered him. To a dwelling whence others had thankfully departed for the last time, he now looked forward with satisfaction; and Auna, seeing that only here came any peace to her father, welcomed Huntingdon already as her future home. Not a shadow clouded her eyes as she regarded it, and not one regret before the receding vision of Red House and her own life therein. For her father was her world, as he had always been, and when he turned against his home, she echoed him and loved Red House no more. She knew that for Jacob the death of her mother had destroyed Red House; she understood that he desired to begin again and she felt well content to begin again with him. His influence had come between her and normal development in certain directions. She was old for her age, but also young. No instinct of sex had intruded upon her life, and little interest in any being outside her own home circle. Even within it her sister and brothers were nothing compared to her father, and impulses, fears, suspicions that might have chilled a girl's forward glance under the walls of forlorn Huntingdon, never rose in Auna's mind to darken the future. Her father willed there to dwell and her welfare and happiness as yet took no flight beyond him.
They wandered through the stone-paved kitchen and climbed to the little chambers above, while for the twentieth time, Jacob planned how things should be.
"I'll have this room," he said, "because the sun sets upon it; and you will bide here, Auna, because it's fitting the sun shall rise where you wake."
She was happy when he spoke thus tenderly sometimes.
"My sun set, when mother died," continued Jacob. "What's left is twilight; but you'll be the evening star, Auna, as it says in mother's little book. You can read it if you want to. I'll let it touch no other hand but yours. I've read every word many times, because I know her eyes rested on every word once."
"I'm afraid I don't understand about poetry, father."
"You'll come to understand it when you're older, perhaps. She understood it and got pleasure from it."
The desolation of the warren house soothed Jacob, and having wandered through it he sat for a time outside the enclosures before starting to return home. He rolled his melancholy eyes over the great spaces to a free horizon of the hills folding in upon each other.
"Will time speed swifter here, Auna?"
"I hope it will, father," she answered, "but the days will be very like each other."
"Days too like each other drag," he told her. "We must change the pattern of the days. It shan't be all work for you. We'll do no work sometimes, and now and then you'll go for a holiday down to the 'in country,' and I shall be alone till you come back."
"I'm never going to leave you alone," she said. "If you think upon a holiday for me, you've got to come too, or have Peter up here for a bit."
"There's only one other thing beside the moor that's good to me; and that's the sea; and you well love to be on the sea, so we might go to it now and again."
Auna's eyes sparkled.
"I'd like that dearly," she told him.
"To know the sea better may be a wise deed for me," he said. "Some it hurts and cannot comfort—so I've heard. Not that it could ever be a friend to me, like the hills."
"You'd love it better and better, specially if you'd sail out on to it, same as I did with Uncle Lawrence."
Her father nodded and this allusion did not banish his placid mood. The sun rays were growing slant and rich as they set out for home. Auna laughed at their shadows flung hugely before them. Then they descended and she walked silently for a long way with her hand in her father's hand. But she was content despite their silence, for she knew that his mind had passed into a little peace. She often wondered why the desert solitudes cheered him, for they cast her down. She liked to leave it behind her—that great, lonely thing—and descend into the kindly arms of the Red House trees and the welcome of the river. For the river itself, in Auna's ear, sang a different song beside her home, than aloft, in its white nakedness, and loneliness. There it was elfin and cold and silvery, but it did not seem to sing for her; while beneath, at the feet of the pines, under the bridge of logs, in the pools and stickles she knew to the last mossy boulder—there her name river had music for her alone and she understood it. It was a dear friend who would never pass away out of her life, or die and leave her to mourn. A time was coming when she would know it better still, see it aloft nigh its cradle, learn its other voices, that yet were strange to her. In the valley the river was old and wise; perhaps aloft, where it ran nigh Huntingdon, it was not so wise or tender, but younger and more joyous.
"It'll have to be my friend," thought Auna, "for there won't be no others up there but father."
An incident clouded the return journey, and though neither Jacob nor his daughter was sentimental, death confronted them and made them sorry. An old goat, one of the parents of the Red House flock, had disappeared during the previous winter, and they had fancied that he must have fallen into the stream and been swept away in a freshet that happened when he vanished. But now, in a little green hollow rimmed with heath and granite, they found all that was left of the creature—wisps of iron-grey hair, horns attached to his skull, a few scattered bones picked clean by the carrion crows and the hollow skeleton of his ribs with young grasses sprouting through it.
"Oh, father—it's 'Beardy,'" whispered Auna.
"So it is then. And I'm glad we found him. A very dignified thing, the way the creatures, when they know they're going to die, leave their friends and go away all alone. A fine thing in them; and there's many humans would do the same if they had the strength I dare say."
Auna descended among the bones and picked up "Beardy's" horns.
"Peter will like to have them for a decoration," she said. "I hope he didn't suffer much, poor old dear."
"Not much, I expect."
"And I hope the carrion crows didn't dare to touch him till he was gone, father."
"No, no. There's unwritten laws among the wild things. I expect they waited."
"Did his wives miss him, should you think?"
"We don't know. They can't tell us. Perhaps they wondered a bit. More likely they knew he'd gone up to die and wouldn't come back. They know deeper than we think they know among themselves, Auna."
"I've often been sorry for that poor Scape-goat in the Bible, father. I read about him to grandmother long ago, one Sunday, and never forgot him."
"And so have I been sorry for him, too."
They tramped on together and presently Jacob spoke. He was thinking still of her last speech and his mind had turned dark.
"The Scape-goat in the wilderness was a happy beast compared to me," he said suddenly. "He went to his doom a clean thing—a harmless creature, pure as Christ's self under his filthy load of human sins. For a foul burden doesn't make the carrier foul. He'd done no wrong and wondered, perhaps, in his brute mind, why the scarlet thread was tied upon him and he was driven into the unkind desert, far from his bite of green grass and the shadow to guard him against the burning sun. But I'm different. I'm a goat caked and rotted with my own sins. The sins of the world are white and light against mine."
"I won't hear you say things like that, father. I won't live with you if you say things like that."
"Bear with me, bear with me. It comes in great waves, and I'm a drowning man till they roll over and pass. You'll sweeten me presently. Who could live with you and not grow sweeter, you innocent?"
He broke off.
Venus throbbed upon the golden green of the west, and as they descended, the valley was already draped with a thin veil of mist under which the river purred. From the kennels came yapping of the dogs; and when they reached home and entered the yard, half a dozen red terriers leapt round Auna and nosed with excitement at "Beardy's" horns.
On a rough day of autumn, when the river ran high and leaves already flew upon half a gale of wind, a little crowd of men gathered up the valley beyond Red House, and with crow-bars and picks sought to lift up the block of granite whereon aforetime Margery Bullstone so often sat. Jacob had long ago dug down to the foundation, that he might satisfy himself to its size; and it had proved too great beneath the soil, where twice the bulk of the visible part was bedded. Now, therefore, having heaved it from the ground, they were busy to drive four holes in it, where the cleft must take place. Then they inserted four cartridges, set the slow match, lighted it and retreated beside a cart that already stood out of harm's reach.
There had come Peter and Auna, Adam and Samuel Winter and Jacob Bullstone; and Adam had lent his pig-cart to convey the stone to the churchyard.
They watched silently; then came a flash, a puff of white smoke, whirled instantly away on the wind, and a dull explosion that reverberated from the hill above. The great stone was sundered and they returned to it, bringing the horse and cart with them.
The block had split true and a mass accordant with its memorial purpose was presently started upon the way. Jacob directed great care, and helped to lift the stone, that none of the native moss in its scooped crown should be injured.
"Whether it will live down in the churchyard air I don't know," he said, "but the grave lies in shade most times and we can water it."
Samuel was regarding the boulder with a puzzled face.
"Where be her name going?" he asked.
"The name goes on the side, Sammy," explained Jacob. "Blake, the stone-cutter, was up over a bit ago and took my meaning."
They went slowly away under the rioting wind, and near Red House Peter and his sister left them, while at Shipley Bridge Samuel also returned home.
Jacob walked beside Adam at the horse's head. It was a bad day with him and the passion of the weather had found an echo in his spirit. The rain began to fall and Winter drew a sack from the cart and swung it over his shoulders.
"You'd best to run into Billy Marydrew's till the scat's passed, else you'll get wet," he said.
But the other heeded not the rain.
"A pity it isn't my coffin instead of her stone you've got here," he said. "I'm very wishful to creep beside her. No harm in that—eh?"
"There's every harm in wishing to be dead afore your time, Jacob; but none I reckon in sharing her grave when the day's work is ended."
"Truth's truth and time can't hide truth, whatever else it hides. I killed her, Adam, I killed her as stone-dead as if I'd taken down my gun and shot her."
"No, no, Bullstone, you mustn't say anything like that. You well know it's wrong. In one way we all help to kill our fellow-creatures I reckon; and they help to kill us. 'Tis a mystery of nature. We wear away at each other, like the stone on the sea-shore; we be thrown to grind and drive at each other, not for evil intent, but because we can't help it. We don't know what we're doing, or who we're hurting half our time—no more than frightened sheep jumping on each other's backs, for fear of the dog behind them."
"That's all wind in the trees to me. I wasn't blind: I knew what I was doing. I don't forget how I hurt you neither, and took good years off your life."
"Leave it—leave it and work. Think twice before you give up work and go to Huntingdon."
"My work's done, and badly done. Don't you tell me not to get away to peace if I'm to live."
"Peace, for the likes of us, without learning, only offers through work."
They had reached Marydrew's and Adam made the other go in.
"I'll stop under the lew of the hedge till this storm's over," he said. "Tell Billy I'd like to see him to-night if he can drop in. The wind's turning a thought north and will go down with the sun no doubt."
He went forward, where a deep bank broke the weather, and Jacob entered William's cottage. Mr. Marydrew had seen them from the window and now came to the door.
"A proper tantara 'tis blowing to-day," he said. "My loose slates be chattering, like a woman's tongue, and I'm feared of my life they'll be blowed off. The stone's started then? That's good."
Jacob, according to his habit, pursued his own thoughts and spoke on, as though Adam still stood beside him.
"To talk of peace—to say there's any peace for a red-handed man. Peace is the reward of work and good living and faithful service. Red hands can't earn peace."
"Now don't you begin that noise. Let the wind blow if it must. No call for you to blow. Take my tarpaulin coat for the journey. A thought small, but it will keep your niddick dry."
"Give me a dram," said Jacob, "and listen to me."
Mr. Marydrew brought his spirit from a cupboard while the other rambled on.
"We've just hacked the stone for her grave out of the earth. Torn up by the roots, like she was herself. She dies and her children lose a father as well as a mother, because they know the stroke was mine; and what honest child shall love a father that killed a mother? That's not all. Think of that man now helping me to get the stone to her grave. Think of the suffering poured on Winter's head. A very good, steadfast sort of man—and yet my hand robbed him of much he can never have again. Three out of four children lost, and that saint underground. And all allowed by the good-will of a watchful God."
He nodded, emptied the glass his friend offered him and looked out at the rain.
"You're dark to-day and don't see very clear, my dear," said Billy. "You put this from your own point of view, and so 'tis very ugly I grant; but every thing that haps has two sides. You've bitched up your show here, Jacob, and I'm not going to pretend you have not. You've done and you've suffered a lot, along of your bad judgment; and you was kindiddled into this affair by the powers of darkness. But 'tis the way of God to use men as signposts for their fellow-men. He sees the end of the road from the beginning, and He knows that the next scene of your life, when you meet Margery, will belike be full of joy and gladness."
"It's your heart, not your head, that speaks that trash, William," answered the younger. "Can future joy and gladness undo the past? Can the sunshine bring to life what the lightning killed an hour afore? How shall understanding in Heaven blot out the happenings on earth? Things—awful things—that God's self can't undo? And answer me this: if some live happy in this world and go happy to the next, as well we know some do; then why should not all? If some are born to live with their minds clear, their tempers pure, their passions under control, why should such as I am blot the earth? Would a man make maimed things? Would a decent man bring living creatures to the birth short of legs or eyes, when he could fashion them perfect? Where's the boasted mercy of your God, William? Where's His eternal plan, and what's the sense of talking about a happy eternity if a man comes to it poisoned by time? I'm calm, you see—a reasoning creature and honest with myself. My everlasting inheritance would be nothing but one undying shame and torture at the ruin I have made; and I know that I cannot stand up in the next world among those I have spoiled and wronged and feel a right to do so. And if my Creator has built me to gnaw my heart out in agony through a life without end—what is He? No, the only poor mercy left for me is eternal night—endless sleep is what I'd pray for if I could pray; because another life must be hell wherever it is spent. Let Him that made us unmake us. 'Tis the least and best that He can do for nine men out of ten."
The storm had swept past and a weather gleam flashed upon the rain. The red beech trees before William's home shone fiery through the falling drops and shook off little, flying flakes of flame, as the leaves whirled in the wind.
Mr. Marydrew did not answer, but followed Jacob to the wicket gate and watched him as he rejoined Winter. William waited until the cart had disappeared and was turning to go in, when a neighbour came up the shining road from Shipley.
It was Amelia Winter in her pattens.
"Did Adam tell you he's wishful to see you to-night?" she asked and Billy answered that he had not.
"Well he is," she said, and put down the big umbrella under which she had come. "He's lending a hand with a heathen lump of stone just now. That forgotten man up the valley be going to put it on poor Margery Bullstone's grave; and for my part I'm a good deal surprised that parson will suffer such a thing in a Christian burial ground."
"They've just gone round the corner—Adam and him and the cart. He was in here storming against his fate a minute agone."
"Not Adam? He don't storm against nothing."
"No—t'other. My old friend. He ain't through the wood by a long way yet, Amelia. His thoughts and griefs crowd down on him like a flock of foul birds, and shake the roots of his life something shocking."
"'Tis well if the Lord's Hand is heavy," she answered.
"So it should be, if there's justice in the world."
"Try to think kindly on the man. He's suffered much."
"I live with Adam Winter," she answered and went her way.
Accident sometimes invoked a strange spectre of the old jealousy in Jacob Bullstone—that quiddity of his nature responsible for his ruin. It flashed now—a feeble glimmer of the ancient emotion—and involved Auna. She alone in his opinion cared any longer for him, or felt interest in his fortunes; therefore he was quick to resent any real, or fancied, attempts on the part of others to weaken the bonds between them. Such a task had in truth been impossible, yet there came hints to his ear that the girl should not be dragged with him into the fastness of the moor. He had to some extent lost sight of her natural demands and requirements. He little liked her to be overmuch interested in affairs that no longer concerned himself; but she was intelligent in this matter and, helped by advice, kept in closer touch with her relations than Jacob knew. With her grandmother Auna had indeed broken, for Judith declined to see her any more, and the younger did not pretend sorrow; but with Barlow Huxam, and with her Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Jane, she preserved a friendship they did not report to Mrs. Huxam; while despite harsh sayings against them from her father, Auna continued to love John Henry and Avis. She was loyal, would not hear a word against Jacob, and set him always first. She regarded the coming life at Huntingdon as no ordeal, but a change of infinite promise, because it might bring him nearer peace. Meantime, behind Bullstone's back others were busy in hope to change his plans, and these alternatives were placed before him by his children.
The occasion found him fretful after a period of comparative contentment. He was unaware that time cannot stand still, and in the usual parental fashion continued to regard his family as anchored to childhood. He was smarting under grievances on a day that he met Adam Winter and walked with him from Brent to Shipley.
"There's nothing so cold as the chill of your own flesh," he said. "A child's a fearful thing, Adam, if it turns against a parent, especially when you've kept your share of the bargain, as I have."
"No doubt there is a bargain," admitted Winter. "I speak as a childless man and my word's of no account; but you've been quick to see what you owed your own, and I hope they do the like. If they don't, so far, that's only to say they're young yet. They will get more thoughtful with years."
"Yes, thoughtful for themselves. Young and green they are, yet not too young to do man and woman's work, not too young to know the value of money. Something's left out of them, and that is the natural feeling there should be for their father. Hard, hard and ownself they are."
"Your eldest is born to command, and that sort play for their own hand by reason of the force that's in 'em. Time will mellow John Henry's heart, and experience of men will show him the manner of man his father is."
Jacob grew calmer.
"He loved his mother more than he loved anything, and it may be out of reason to ask them, who loved her, to spare much regard for me. That I grant and have always granted. Yet I've striven to show him now, with all my awful faults, I'm a good father."
"He can't fail to know it."
"John Henry comes of age in a minute and I've made over Bullstone Farm to him. A great position for one so young—eh, Winter?"
"A wondrous fine thing, and what makes it finer is that he's a born farmer and will be worthy of it."
"Kingwell's lease is up ere long, and then my son will reign and be the head of the family in the eye of the nation."
"You mustn't say that. You're the head of the family, not your son."
"He had scarce a word to answer when I told him how I'd been to Lawyer Dawes and turned it over. As for Dawes himself, he feels a thought doubtful whether I should part with my own so freely; but 'no,' I said, 'I understand what I'm doing.' A bit of bread and a cup of water is all I shall ever ask from my children. Let them do what I've failed to do and carry on the name in a proper way. I want to be forgot, Adam; and yet, because they're quite agreeable to take all and let me be forgot, I smart. Such is man."
"Nature and order can't be swept away," answered Winter. "Your children are very orderly children, and no doubt they'll do as you wish; but you mustn't think to go out of their lives and deny them your wisdom and advice. You've got your bargain to keep still, while you're in the land of the living. You mustn't wash your hands of 'em. You must show 'em that you're part of 'em yet, and that their good is yours and your good is theirs."
"They care not for my good—why should they? They don't want my wisdom, for well they know my wisdom is foolishness. Who'd seek me now? Who'd listen to me now, but a few such as you and William, who have the patience of those who grow old and can still forgive all and laugh kindly? No: they are children, and wisdom they need and experience they lack—the more so because the world has run smooth for them. But they don't look to me and they never did. All but Auna were set against me from their short coats. They began to doubt as soon as they could walk. Their grandmother was their god, and they'll live to find she was a false god. They didn't get their hard hearts from Margery, or me."
"Trust to that then," urged the other. "Be patient and wait and watch, and you'll see yourself in them yet, and your wife also."
"You have a great trust in your fellow-creatures, Adam Winter."
"You must trust 'em if you're going to get any peace. What's life worth if you can't trust? 'Tis to people the world with enemies and make yourself a hunted creature."
"'Hunted' is a very good word," answered Jacob, "that's the state of most of us. As to my children," he continued, "Peter will carry on here with Middleweek, and he's very well able to do it—better already at a bargain than ever I was, and likely to be more popular with customers than I. But my sons have got to make me payments. That's fair—eh?"
"Certainly it is."
"And Auna must be thought upon also. She's first in my mind, and always will be, and she needn't fear, when I go, that she'll be forgot. I've managed pretty cleverly for her, well knowing that she'd not think of such things when she grows up."
"Don't you force her to grow up too quick, however," urged Adam. "Such a far-seeing man as you must not come between her and her own generation, and keep her too close pent if you really go to the moor. Youth cleaves to youth, Jacob; youth be the natural food of youth."
"You're wrong there," answered the elder. "Youth's hard, narrow, ignorant and without heart. I want to get her away for her own sake. She's a flower too fair to live with weeds. She's her mother again. The rest are dross to her—workaday, coarse stuff, wishing me dead as often as they trouble to think on me at all."
Adam argued against this opinion and indeed blamed Bullstone heartily.
"Don't you be poisoned against your own," he said. "The hardness of youth isn't all bad. It often wears out and brings tenderness and understanding with experience. I'd never fear a hard youngster: it's the hardness of middle age that I'd fear."
And no distant day proved Adam to have spoken well. A certain thing fell out and Jacob remembered the other's opinion, for it seemed that Winter's prophecy came true quicklier than even he himself might have expected it to do so. On a certain Sunday in February their father received a visit from John Henry and Avis. The latter did not bring her husband, since the object of their visit proved purely personal to the family.
John Henry drove his sister in a little market cart from Bullstone Farm and they surprised their father walking by the river. Auna accompanied him and they were exercising some puppies. He had just pointed out to the flat rock by the river where Margery was wont to sit, when she took vanished generations of puppies for their rambles; then Auna cried out and the cart stopped beside them.
John Henry alighted to shake hands with his father and Avis descended and kissed him. He was astonished and asked the meaning of their visit.
"You'll catch it from Mrs. Huxam, playing about on Sunday," he said.
"We're not playing about," answered John Henry, "we've come on a very important, family matter—our affair and not grandmother's at all. And we thought we might stop for dinner and tea."
"Come and welcome; but I've done all I'm going to do, John Henry—all for you and all for Avis. You're not going to squeeze me any more."
"We haven't come to squeeze you, father—quite the contrary," declared Avis.
"Leave it till after dinner," directed the young man. "I heard you were fixed beyond power of changing on Huntingdon; but I do hope that's not so, father; because I think there's a good few reasons against."
"What you think is no great odds," answered Bullstone. "And why should you think at all about it?"
"I'll tell you after dinner."
He changed the subject and began talking of his farm. Already he had new ideas.
"I don't see no use in that copse up the valley," he said. "'Tis good ground wasted—only a place for badgers to breed, and we don't want them killing the poultry. But if it was cleared to the dry-built wall—cleared slowly and gradual in winter—it would give a bit of work and some useful wood, and then offer three good acres for potatoes and rotation after. It's well drained by nature and worth fifty pounds a year presently if not more."
"It's yours, John Henry. You'll do as you think best."
Jacob was in an abstracted mood and the sight of all his children met together gave him pain rather than pleasure. They accentuated the empty place and their spirits jarred upon him, for they were cheerful and noisy. He thought that Auna was the brighter for their coming and resented it in a dim, subconscious fashion.
They found him silent and absorbed. He seemed to withdraw himself and pursue his own thoughts under their chatter. They addressed him and strove to draw him into their interests, but for a time they failed to do so. Once or twice Avis and Auna whispered together and Auna was clearly excited; but Avis quieted her.
"I'll tell him myself come presently," she said.
When dinner was done, John Henry spoke.
"Light your pipe and listen, father. You must wake up and listen. I've got a very big idea and I'm very wishful you'll think of it, and so is Avis."
He looked at them dreamily.
"What big idea could you have that I come into?" he asked.
"Why, you yourself and your future."
"Who's put you up to thinking about me at all? You weren't used to."
"God's my judge nobody put me up to it; did they, Avis?"
"Nobody," answered Avis. "It was your own thought, and you asked me, and I said it was a very fine thought."
"Nothing about Auna?"
"No, father. It's just this. I know you don't want to stop here. That's natural. But there's other places beside the moor. And I'm very wishful indeed for you to come and live with me at Bullstone—you and Auna. Then you'd be near Peter, and Avis too; and she could come and go and look after you."
Jacob took it ill. He believed that selfish motives had prompted John Henry, nor did he even give him credit for mixed motives. Then, as he remained silent, another aspect of the proposal troubled him. This woke actual anger.
"To 'look after me'? To 'look after me'? God's light! what do you take me for? D'you think my wits are gone and my children must look after me? Perhaps you'd like to shut me up altogether, now you've got your farms?"
They did not speak and he took their silence for guilt, whereas it only meant their astonishment.
"Where the hell did you scheming devils come from?" he shouted. "Where's your mother in you? Are you all your blasted grandmother?"
Avis flushed and John Henry's face also grew hot. Auna put her arms round her father's neck.
"Don't, don't say such awful things," she begged him; "you know better, dear father."
Then John Henry spoke without temper.
"You wrong us badly when you say that, father. We meant no such thing and was only thinking of you and Auna. You must have stuff to fill your mind. You're not a very old man yet, and you're strong and active. And I thought that you'd be a long sight better with me and with Avis near by and the interests of life around you, than up over in that lonesome hole. It was nothing but a kind view of it."
"Why should you grow kind? Why should you change your nature? Haven't I right and reason to doubt what motive is under this? 'To look after me'? That's how Winter speaks of his daft brother. I may be daft and small wonder—but—but——"
"Father," broke in Avis angrily, "I'm going to have a baby, and it's very hateful and wicked of you to shout and say cruel things like this to upset me. And it's all lies, because we meant nothing but what was right. We're grown up, and we've got our share of sense and proper feeling."
But he had only heard her first assertion and it calmed him. He stared at her and the anger faded out of his face.
"Why didn't you say so then? That's news."
He looked at Avis gently.
"You married Joe Elvin's son, Robert. Well, why not? Bullstones have wedded with Elvins before to-day. I'm glad you're going to have a little one, Avis, and I command this. If it's a girl, you call it after your mother."
"I mean to," she said, "and if it's a boy, Bob wills it shall be called after you."
"No, no—I forbid that. We'll have no more Jacobs."
But he relented before them and grew mild.
"Come here and sit by me and take my hand," he said to Avis; and then he turned to John Henry.
"If I was harsh, you can overlook it. I'm not the man I was. I'm a good deal fallen down from the man I was. I'm colder than the man I was. I'll give you credit for saying what you said in a right spirit, I believe it. That's your mother in you. But you swear it was your own thought—not whispered to you by Billy or some such well-wisher to me?"
"I swear before God it was my own thought, father; and I say again that if you'll come to live with me, I'd be very glad indeed."
But Bullstone shook his head.
"I'm bound for the only place that can offer peace. Auna and I. And I hope you'll make time as you can and come and see me now and again. I feel friendly to you and Peter. You know that actions speak louder than words. I hope it will be a girl for the sake of the blessed name. I'll come to the christening. Ill do that. Mark me. I'm a man of my word. You take all care of yourself, Avis, and don't be too busy."
Peter spoke.
"Why for can't you go to John Henry, father? Then we should have you in the midst."
"You know we're all right, father," added the elder brother. "It isn't as if you'd see a lot to vex you, and things being done you didn't hold with. You could come and go and keep your eye on the dogs too."
"I'd like to believe that you could wish it. And I will believe it," repeated Jacob. "I'll make myself believe it, hard though it may be. It's a sign of grace and I'm glad it came into your thoughts. And Avis is going to have a child. That's well. Be sure to call it after your mother if it's a girl."
He stared and nodded and they were conscious that his mind had wandered far from them.
"Let's go for a walk up the valley, father," said Auna. "You always like to talk best in the air."
"I'm going to do so," he answered, "but I'm going alone. You children can stop together, and I'll be back for tea drinking. I'm a good deal shaken by this great thought of John Henry's. It means his mother in him, working up to the surface. And he can thank the Lord she's there. She's in you all. Not that I can change my plans, for my help comes from the hills you must know—such as it is. But that I was wanted at Bullstone is worth a good bit to me,—good payment, you might say, for what I've done."
He left them and they turned anxiously to Auna,
"Is he all right? Is it safe for him to go alone?" asked Avis; and her sister answered that she need fear nothing.
"It's up and down like that. His memory fails him sometimes in little things. Not in big things. It shook him to find John Henry and you wanting him. But it's done him good already."
"He'll forget about it before he comes back," added Peter. "He'll often go out to think over something, or say he's going to, and then he comes back and you find it's slipped out of his mind altogether."
"But not a great thing like this," promised Auna.
"It's as much for you as for him," continued Avis. "It's not a place for you to be lost in—Huntingdon isn't—and if you have to go and live with him there, he'll very likely end by losing his reason altogether, and it's very bad for a young creature like you."
"Don't you say that, Avis. I couldn't live away from him. And he'll get better I expect. Days often happen when he's all right and his mind quite peaceful."
"It would be a lot more convenient if he went to John Henry," said Avis. "It's clear he finds it too wretched to stop here. I feel it creepy myself—with mother's ghost in every corner, and in the garden too. She was so busy that you can't see a thing without remembering her part of it. But he wouldn't be haunted with her at Bullstone, and we could make jobs for him, and keep him running about and doing something."
"I'd much like it to happen," admitted Auna, "for his sake. It's all one to me where I go, if I see him getting better."
"I'll keep it before him, and speak up for it so much as he'll let me," promised Peter. "Of course it's what ought to be. But I don't think it will. Because loneliness is his stronghold, and the lonelier he is, the better he is."
"You might put old Billy and Adam Winter on to him," said his brother. "He sets store by what they think. Tell 'em the fine offer I've made, Auna, and see what they say."
"I will, then. But Mr. Marydrew is always very strong that father's mind will mend up at Huntingdon. He says that I must be wits and staff for father, and I will be. And he'll come through. Some day he'll come through, if you and Avis and Peter can show kindness now and then. It's kindness he wants."
"And that shows how rocky his mind is for the minute," declared Peter, "because anything soft, like kindness, was gall to him in the past. He was ashamed of the kindness he did himself. And now his mind has shrunk. He dwells on little silly things and messes about trifles that he links up with mother."
"When is he going to divide her clothes?" asked Avis; "it's a cruel waste and no respect to mother to let things get moth-eaten and useless, that might be worth money to the living."
"I've been at him," answered Auna. "He says that I'm to have the clothes, when I'm grown a bit more, because I'm mother's shape; but that's silly. Now you've been so nice to him, I'll get on about the clothes again to-morrow and very like he'll let me go through them, or ask you to come over and take what you want."
The girls discussed familiar articles of their mother's wardrobe, and Avis indicated much that would be useful to her and the elder Mrs. Elvin. Auna agreed, and while they talked, Peter described his father's habits of mind to his brother. The elder took a gloomy view.
"I don't think he will mend," said John Henry. "I think it's a lot more likely he'll go from bad to worse and become a raving man. There's suspicions moving deep in him. When I told him about this, you remember, he asked if I wanted to have him locked up. People, with softening of the brain coming on, often look ahead in that way and know, by a sort of fearful instinct, what's going to overtake them."
They discussed the kennels and Peter's future.
"He's all right about that," declared Jacob's younger son, "but he's sharp enough for Auna. He told me plain that he didn't trust none of us but her, and that a hair of her head was worth the lot of us. But now belike he'll change, if he remembers. It was a great thought to offer him to come to Bullstone."
"If you want to please him, John Henry, put flowers on mother's grave now and again," advised Auna. "Her grave will always draw him down from the moor, same as it does now."
They talked until tea time, when Jacob returned, and John Henry went to put in his horse. Their father was now calm and cheerful. He said no more concerning the new suggestion; but he had not forgotten it, for when Avis and her brother were gone and Peter at the kennel, he questioned Auna.
"Can you tell me, faithful and true, that you had no part in what John Henry said?" he asked. "Because if you, or any other, put it into his head, then it's all in vain."
"Nobody put it in John Henry's mind, dear father," she answered. "It was his very own thought."
"That makes it a valuable thing, Auna."
"I know it does. And Avis dearly wants it to happen too."
"And you? Would you rather be with Avis or your brother, or——?"
"Father! You know better than that," she said very earnestly. "You and me are one, and what's right for you is right for me."
"So I think," he answered. "A very clever, deep thought in you to say that we are one."
George Middleweek came to see old William with a message and a gift. It was Mr. Marydrew's eighty-fourth birthday and Auna had sent him a very fine ham, and a reminder that he had promised to eat his dinner at Red House.
"You look ten years less than your age, Billy," said the kennel-man.
"We're a long-living race, George. My grandfather was thrice married, and his last he took when he was eighty-two. Gave my old sister the slip, for he was active as a kitten, and nipped off to spend a month with friends in Somerset, and came back with a wife! The woman thought she'd polish him off in a year or two and get his bit of money; but she thought wrong. He lived for ten years and left his cash, such as it was, half and half to me and my sister. His third was a failure, though he was too proud to own it."
"You get into your coat and boots," said George. "If you be coming with me, we must start."
They were soon upon the road and William asked after Jacob.
"Haven't seen him this longful time," he said.
"He's up and down," declared the other. "Says silly soft things one day, so as you think he's growing tootlish; and then, the next, he'll be short and sharp and seemingly all right. He's going through everything that belonged to his wife, and Miss tells me that it shakes him up. He's keeping some of her things for himself. His old ideas—the stuff he was taught as a child—sticks out now and again. But he's shed most of it I reckon. Life's knocked faith out of him, William, same as it does out of most honest people. But the old stuff clings to him. He'll often say he's a miserable sinner, though in my experience it's only the good people yelp about being miserable sinners. The real, right-down wicked men go on their way rejoicing."
"It ain't the sense of sin makes people miserable, because misery's a matter of character, not conscience, George."
"A very shocking business to say anybody's born in sin," argued Middleweek. "And it's an insult to honest matrimony in my opinion."
"You don't understand religion, and the fall of man, George," answered Mr. Marydrew mildly. "The mysteries of faith are beyond you. Your mind ban't built to hold 'em."
They reached Red House, where Billy thanked Auna for her gift and bade her go on with her work and not mind him, as he was early. But she was glad to stop a while and brought down Jacob from an upper chamber. His present business alternately excited the widower and cast him down. He spoke and thought much of Margery as he handled her garments; and sometimes he was normal and uttered intelligent words; but not seldom his memory tormented him and he said strange things.
"Every stitch dear mother ever wore puts father in mind of something," explained Auna. Then Jacob joined them. His eyes showed that his mind was roaming, but he remembered the occasion.
"A man can wish you many happy returns of your birthday, Billy," he said; "because life's good to you still. You can live on very safely, I reckon. But I'm different from that. It's come over me strong of late that if there's a life beyond, I must get to it soon—else there'll be more trouble. I must be there before a certain other party, William!"
"Leave all that in Higher Hands, Jacob. The length of the thread be no part of our business."
"I must be first, however; I must reach Margery before her mother does. That's commonsense, because we well know that I'd get but a bleak welcome if Judith Huxam had her daughter's ear before I did. She robbed me before, and she would again. A fault in Margery—to say it kindly—to listen to that old fiend. But I don't want her mind frozen against me for eternity. I still live in hopes that we'll be very dear friends, William—so far as a ghost man and a ghost woman can be friends."
"And why not, Jacob? Where there's no secrets hid, the people must surely come together in love and understanding."
"I say these things, because this is one of the days when I believe in a future life. Some days I do and some days I do not. To-day I do; and why do I, should you think? Because my mind is a good deal filled up with my late wife; and if there's any sort of justice and any sort of Almighty Being to do it, then there ought to be a heaven—if it was only for her."
"We found the things she was nearly drowned in to-day," continued Bullstone. "Oh, my God, Billy, what a mad shape life takes, if you see it steady with a glance spread over quarter of a century! For look at it. If Adam Winter hadn't saved her, then four lives hadn't come in the world and my children would never have been born. And what does that mean? It means that Winter is responsible for my children as much as I am; and why for shouldn't they thank him for their existence instead of me? Such thoughts go too deep for the mind of man, William; but if we could understand them, they might throw a good deal of light on life."
"Don't you be silly, my dear. It ain't a deep thought at all, but just a brain-sick fancy. And you mustn't feel no fear about the old witch doctor going to glory before you do. In the course of nature, she'll be called, and I dare say she'll hate going, quite as much as they uncommon good people often do. By the same token I hear that she and Barlow ain't finding the villa residence all that they hoped and deserved. And I'll tell you for why: you can't alter the habits of a lifetime in a minute and not feel it in mind and body. I know, because when I retired, though naturally rather a lazy old man, I missed my work above a bit, and often did a good heavy day for a neighbour—not so much on his account as my own."
"So you did," answered Jacob. "I'll bear you out there. You sawed a good many hundred logs for me in your time, William."
"Barlow Huxam misses the shop and owns up; but his better half won't own up so far, because that would be to say the wrong thing has happened. And we well know it's a cast-iron rule the wrong thing cannot happen in their tabernacle. Then again she's had a fearful facer, and so's Amelia Winter. A very nasty jar has fallen upon them and it have cast them down a lot. I heard it from Adam Winter himself, and I've felt a good bit amused about it, though sorry for Amelia, because it looks to her as if the end of the world had got in sight."
"Whatever's fallen out, Mr. Marydrew?" asked Auna.
"Why, Adam, after taking a good bit of thought, have chucked the Chosen Few and joined up with the Establishment. And, of course, that means that Sammy have done the same, for what his brother doeth, he does. 'Tis a hugeous shock to Amelia and she's very sorry for all concerned."
"Uncle Jeremy's two little boys have been taken into the Chosen Fews," said Auna. "Aunt Jane told me they are received in. So they'll take the place of Mr. Winter and his brother, and the numbers will be kept up."
"The axe is at the root," declared Jacob, "and I'm glad of it. They're a self-righteous crew and it was well within Adam Winter's nature to find them out and leave them. I hope I'll live to see the end of them, and if that hag died, the hornets' nest would soon empty."
"How's Huntingdon getting on?" asked William.
"I'm waiting for a fine day to ride up over on a pony. But not while the floods are out."
"We've got everything very vitty now," added Auna, "and a nice load of peat stacked by the door, and the new stove. The stores go up after Christmas, and when the stores are in, our things go up."
"Peace—please God peace is in sight," said Jacob, "and I shall have a good few of her treasures around me, William. I find they are a great help to peace. Virtue goes out of these things. I was wondering if it would give her any pleasure to put her favourite junket bowl on the grave, William? Auna's against; but for my part, after deep thinking, I wouldn't be over-sure. All's doubtful with the dead. They may like to know the grey birds are hopping over them for all we can tell. Nobody can say they don't."
"I think mother would a lot sooner that Peter kept the junket bowl at Red House, with all the best china," declared Auna.
"And so I say," replied William. "I believe in very plain graves myself. I like the granite stone. That's enough—just that and the snow-drops to come up every spring. I wouldn't do no more. There's nought so proper as the green spine grass on the dead."
"I'm training some white heather to grow there," answered Auna.
"White heather's for the living, not the dead, my dear."
They came to table presently, ate well and drank William's health. Jacob grew cheerful during the meal and spoke with hope about his family.
"It's a seemly thing for a man in my position to hand over his worldly goods in his lifetime. Then the new generation comes to understand the meaning and obligations of power and rises to it after the manner born. Very likely, if all had been different and my wife had been spared, we should still have withdrawn ourselves and let the young come into their own."
He preserved an amiable and peaceful manner until the end of dinner and Auna, heartened by his mood, exchanged many pleasantries with William, George and Peter.
Mr. Marydrew praised the little feast when it was ended.
"I've ate far too much for a man my age," he said. "I'm 'filled as the moon at the full,' Auna, and if ill overgets me, the fault is yours. You'd cram your father's oldest friend like a Michaelmas goose."
Hope arose out of that anniversary for the girl. It proved but a respite between storms; yet she could look back to William's birthday and remember an interlude of peace.
Slowly but certainly Barlow Huxam discovered that his wife was slipping from her old self, and for a time he set it down to age, but then he discovered other reasons for the change in her outlook upon life. Stern she had always been and definite in her pronouncements. She was not wont to criticise and wasted no time in lamenting the evil around her; yet a certain quality of contentment had marked Judith in the past, and now her husband perceived that this failed her. She became very taciturn, and Barlow wrongly decided that this silence arose from the fact that Mrs. Huxam had so little to talk about. The shop had been her solitary subject outside religion, and now, not only was the shop less and less upon her tongue, but the master subject of life seemed sunk too deeply within her to offer material for casual speech.
The disturbance that followed her daughter's death had apparently passed, leaving only a new gravity; but it was not to their common loss that the old postmaster attributed the change. Indeed Margery's death had been a gain to Judith and resolved her greatest and most terrible problem. Then the explanation of the change was, in his own opinion, clearly revealed to Barlow, and he discovered it in his own experience. For he, too, was changed and the expected thing—the peace of retirement, the absence of daily demand upon his energies and time—by no means produced that state of contentment and satisfaction he had anticipated from it. Various causes combined to frustrate his hopes and he attributed the disappointment to one reason; whereas in truth the explanation lay elsewhere. He suspected that Jeremy was to blame, and Jeremy certainly did serve to keep him in an atmosphere of anxiety, from which he had supposed retirement would set him free; but beyond Jeremy, and the too certain fact that he was falling short at the post-office, another and a more vital elucidation of Barlow's disillusion lay at his hand.
He was a man without resources and his resolute endeavour, to fill life with his villa residence, had failed him. He worked hard, because work alone made existence tolerable. He laboured in his garden, cut the front patch into stars and moons and planted rose trees and other shrubs. He toiled likewise behind, where the vegetables grew, and raised crops for the house. He read books upon the subject and proceeded intelligently. The work kept his body strong, and the open air made him feel ten years younger; but these energies still left a void, for Mrs. Huxam did not share them. In the old days they had been one in every enterprise. They employed two servants now, and Judith having trained the maidens into her way and introduced them both into the ranks of the Chosen Few, found time hang heavily upon her, the more so that her thoughts became darkened with personal melancholy.
She never complained; she censured Barlow, when sometimes he grumbled that there was so little to do; but she secretly sympathised with him and long before he had arrived at the conclusion that an error confronted them, she was of the same opinion. In his case frank weariness of the present monotony began to whisper the need for change; but her consciousness, that they were making a mistake, was wakened by more than weariness. He wanted something to think about and something more to do, and there was work under his own eyes that called him rather loudly; she also wanted something to do—something to deaden thought and distract it into other channels than those that now bred an increasing gloom within.
For some time neither would confide in the other, or confess that their present days lacked justification; but Judith had perceived the unrest and discontent in her husband long before he began to suspect her; and she waited, therefore, until his emotions broke out in words. They had passed through nearly a year of the new existence and tested its every phase, when Barlow's wife heard much that she expected to hear, together with much that surprised her.
It was a winter afternoon and she had been reading the Book of Exodus until a passage familiar enough gave her pleasant pause. The fact that One had said the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, had always given her quiet regret; but where authorities differed, her bent of mind inclined Judith to the Old Testament rather than the New. It chimed better with her own genius and uncompromising principles. The earlier dispensation never failed to find her in harmony; and when she read again the Commandment and its drastic and detailed direction, she felt it was enough. Consideration of the texts led to gloom, however. If the Lord found one day in seven sufficient for His rest, how came it about that she and her husband, while still in possession of energy and health, were resting seven days a week?
Upon this question returned Barlow from the post-office and, unaware of the matter in her mind, displayed some irritation. Not until he lighted the gas did she observe that his face was puckered and his eyes perturbed.
"Things are coming to a climax," he said, "and after tea I should like to have a tell, Judy. I'm not at all content with a good deal that's happening."
Mrs. Huxam rang for tea to be brought. Her dark eyes brightened.
"We'll have it and get it out of the way," she said. "And one thing I never shall like here in the planning. The parlour is a desert island for all you know what's doing in the kitchen."
They ate their meal, which was of a solid character and the last serious food for the day, since they had given up taking supper and found themselves better without it. Then the tea things were cleared, and hardly had the door shut when Mr. Huxam began.
"It's just fifty-three years ago, Judith, since I, as a lad, took the first telegram that ever came to Brent out to Beggar's Bush to the master of the Otter Hounds, I was eleven years old at the time."
"And sixty-four now," she said.
"Yes, we're both sixty-four, and mark this—young for sixty-four. Thanks to our manner of life, I wouldn't say that either of us need count more than sixty in the things that matter."
"So far as this world's concerned, you're right," she admitted.
"Very well then. And now don't get upset or nothing like that; but I'm going to say this: that taking one thing with another, I feel terrible doubtful if our life in this residence is all it might be, or even all it should be."
Mrs. Huxam stared at him with deep interest.
"I half thought your views had settled down. When did this come over you?" she asked.
"It came, as such things do come—gradual. Here a little and there a little, till I was surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, Judy. Granted for the sake of argument—though I won't grant it for any other sake—that we was a bit over-moiled with work and worry, and wanted to get away from the shop and the post-office for a rest and refreshment. Granted we did—what then?"
"Then we've had it," she declared. "We've had a year of it."
"Exactly so; and I'm like a giant refreshed with wine. And I should say you, in your quieter way, was up for anything also. For my part, even if all was suent and just so with the shop—which it is not—I'd be exceeding pleased to go back thereto, and feel myself in the heart of life and at the helm of my own ship again."
She raised a question, though she knew the answer.
"When you say things are not 'just so,' would you mean Jane, or Jeremy?"
"Jane's all right, as far as it's humanly possible with her growing family. Another coming in April I hear. But she does pretty well, though the stocks are far too low and, of course, she doesn't understand buying; but with regard to Jeremy, it's idle to pretend, and for that matter I won't pretend. He's letting it down—not out of malice, of course, but simply for the reason he lacks the needful qualities. Nobody ever had a better shop manner and a kinder heart, and nobody was ever more wishful to please his customers; but smiles and cheerful remarks about the weather don't take the place of the things people come into a shop to buy; and when a person hears that Jeremy's out of this, or out of that, or don't keep a thing in stock, it won't open the till for him to say the corn is coming on nice, or ask a woman how her baby is. When people want to buy needles, it ain't no manner of use telling them you've got a fine assortment of pins. Jeremy's all right, in a manner of speaking, so long as he's got a better to boss him. The spirit is willing, but the brain isn't built for all the work that must go on out of sight if a business is to pay. In a word he ought to be in somebody else's shop, not his own."
"He's going to let it down."
"He has let it down, and I tell you, when I run over the accounts and lend Jane a hand with the books, my heart bleeds. To see what we made so fine and four-square and the foremost affair in Brent going back, and to know Hasking, at the corner, and that little old maid with the Berlin wools and gim-cracks—Miss Moss I mean—to know such as them are lapping up custom and can find what Jeremy can't—it's a punishing thing. Very soon I shall keep out of the shop, or else my temper will suffer and I may say what I should be sorry to say."
"I know how you feel about it. My fingers itch every time I pass the window and I want to fly to the shelves when a customer comes in; but well I know that if I did, I'd find little but empty cardboards."
"And no law nor order," murmured Barlow. "Not a thing in its place and many a melancholy five minutes wasted in hunting for what ain't there to find. Last autumn a lot of holiday people were about and I've seen strangers come into the shop full of hope for some everyday thing—socks for their children or sunbonnets or elastic or what not; and then Jane and Jeremy would go pecking about, like a pair of birds in a strange field, and hope would fade off the faces of the visitors, and they'd just creep out. And very possibly, ten minutes after they were gone, what they wanted would be found."
"An unexpected chastening for us," said Judith.
"I know you find it so," he answered, "but what I feel is that the situation may not be past praying for; and that brings me to the tremendous idea that's taking shape in my mind. It came over me like a flame of fire last time I was with the Chosen Few. I thought of what used to be, and my manhood rebelled, and a voice seemed to say, 'It's not too late—it's not too late.'"
He looked at his wife and she nodded and wiped her spectacles but said nothing. Still he fenced with the subject, though she knew to what he was coming.
"How is it you sleep so bad nowadays?" he asked. "I'll tell you, since you don't know. For this reason, because the residence faces different from the old home, and there's a lot more light and air in our present chamber, and the noise of the wild birds singing of a morning strikes in upon you. In our old bedroom we were much more favourably situated, and custom is everything, Judy, and I very much doubt if you can sleep in one room for forty years and more and ever take kindly to another. And I'll be bold to say that if you was back in our old room you'd know sleep again and wake fresh as the dew on the fleece. All of which only points one way."
"Jeremy was saying not so long ago that he felt to be in a good deal of need of change," murmured Mrs. Huxam. "Not grumbling, or anything like that; but down-daunted and weary. He's getting to look too old for his years in my opinion. Patient and sensible and no temper, but a bit under the weather."
"As we all are when we're over-weighted," answered Barlow. "And if he wants a change, and Jane wants a bit of peace and quiet against April, then I say to you in all seriousness that it's well within our power to let 'em have a change."
"Where to?"
"To the residence! Let 'em come here for a few months, and he can do the garden and Jane can look after her family; and you and me will go back to town. I feel, for my own part, that it would do me a power of good, because messing with rose-bushes and French runner beans—after all it's not man's work for a man like me. But I'm not putting myself forward. I'm thinking a lot more about you, and I well know time's hanging terrible heavy on your hands, else you wouldn't do such a lot of reading and look so wisht over it."
"You voice a good bit that's in my own mind. You can think too much. I think too much; and thought often takes you into places where the spirit had best not to be. We'll make it a matter of prayer if you're in earnest."
"I have been making it a matter of prayer since Christmas," he replied. "I've been taking the thing to the Throne ever since I knew the game was up, so far as Jeremy was concerned. And it wasn't until the prayer was answered that I've broached it to you. I see my way very clear indeed if you do. But your word's my law now as always. The only problem that rose before me was this house, and that won't run away because we go back to the post-office in the fulness of our strength. Put them in here for a few months, and then, when the Lord's solved the position so far as they're concerned, we can let it for the summer, furnished, for very fair money indeed."
"It's almost too good to be true in my opinion," she said.
"Far from it," he assured her. "It can come true in rather less than no time if you think it ought."
"I'll set it before my Maker, Barlow."
"I'm sure you will," he answered with confidence, "and if you and Him don't see eye to eye, it will be the first time."
He was much elated, for he felt that all must now happen as he desired; and then further fortune fell out to assist the project, for his son came over after closing time, and arrived at a moment perfectly chosen by chance to affirm the situation for Mr. Huxam.
The ineffectual Jeremy trailed his attractive person before his parents, announced that he had come to see his mother and declared that he was very tired; whereupon Barlow judged it politic to leave them for a time, feeling in no doubt as to the nature of his son's mood.
Jeremy began with his usual tact and sympathy.
"Father tells me you don't seem quite yourself, and I was a good deal put about to hear it," he said.
She nodded.
"Who is quite themselves as you call it?" she asked. "While we're in the flesh, we can't be quite ourselves, Jeremy. Ourselves belong somewhere else far beyond this Vale."
"I know—I know it better and better, as I grow older, mother. I'm in sight of forty now, remember, and if I haven't found out this life is a Vale and no more, it's a pity. Why don't you go down to Uncle Lawrence for a bit and get some sea air?"
She shook her head.
"My body is strong enough—too strong in a sort of way. For it shakes the soul a bit, Jeremy, to see the body living in idleness when it might be doing something useful."
"You've done your mountain of work I'm sure."
"So I have then, but maybe there's a molehill of work still left in me. I'm not easy about it and your father's not easy about it either."
"As for me," he answered, "work's beginning to tell. Jane, catching the light in my hair a few days ago, broke it to me that there's a little bald spot showing to the naked eye on my crown. The beginning of the end I suppose. I'm a very weary man indeed."