Mrs. Huxam had made up her mind and conscious that the period of danger must now be brief, determined to take Margery beyond it. That she was in no case to travel did not influence her mother, who dealt with issues far more tremendous than life or death. Indeed, so absolutely was human instinct quelled by the more potent fervours of faith, that the old woman experienced not one pang of mental suffering before the physical suffering she now caused.
Salvation only lay by way of flight, for Auna could not be trusted. She explained to Barlow what she was about to do, bade him get a closed carriage as quickly as possible, herself sent a telegram to Lawrence Pulleyblank at Plymouth, and within an hour had dressed Margery and set off upon the long and secret drive to her brother's home.
The sick woman protested, but she had no strength to oppose. Judith took food with her and at Plympton stopped and made Margery drink a hot cup of tea. To her daughter's repeated questions as to why this had been done, Mrs. Huxam promised a future answer. She concealed her purpose during the journey and, before they had reached the house on the Barbican, Margery was past questions. She sank into a great silence, which was never again broken, and she appeared to be nearly unconscious when they arrived. Mr. Pulleyblank, full of wonder and pity, himself picked her up and carried her to the room she always occupied when visiting him. Then, when she was settled in and a doctor sent for, Judith explained to her brother.
"Thank God we're in sight of victory!" she said with exulting eyes. "Margery's dying, by the blessing of her Maker; but the devil have had a hard tussle for her. With her last remaining strength he forced her to try and get back to Jacob Bullstone; and she'd have been found dead with her sins upon her, but for me. I saved her, and now we've only got to block the man for a little longer. Then she'll escape for ever. It's been a fight, Lawrence. I've shortened my life for Margery. Perhaps I've shortened hers; but that's a small thing. A dumbness has come upon her. The Lord has sealed her lips for safety."
"Dying!" he said. "D'you mean to tell me my pretty bird's really dying?"
"Quickly, I do hope and pray. Bringing her here will hasten it. You see so long as the man didn't know she wanted to go back, he was powerless; but once it gets to him that she did want to, then well I know he'll be on us like Apollyon. The Evil One used her. I heard him speak to her child, through her lips, and the child, Auna, looked a lie though she promised not to give the message. I couldn't trust her; but it's no odds now—not even if Bullstone does hear it, for Barlow will withstand him."
"And if he came here, so would I," said Mr. Pulleyblank. "Better the poor dear goes down to her grave this minute than listen to any word from that villain."
His sister gave details and presently a doctor came, heard particulars of Margery's physical state, and expressed dismay that she had been taken upon a journey. But Mrs. Huxam did not trouble herself to regret his strictures, and that he should think her an ignorant woman was no grief to her. He could do nothing, but directed how best to relieve the patient and desired to send in a nurse. This, however, Judith refused to permit.
"I'll nurse her," she said. "I'm her mother."
The physician called again at a later hour, but Margery, though a trifle stronger, was only semi-conscious. He warned them that she could hardly survive the night, but promised to return in the morning. The sick woman slept heavily and seemed no worse when day broke. This fact Judith telegraphed to Barlow; and he had repeated it when his grandson arrived from Red House for news.
But during that day Margery began to sink, and she had passed far into the shadow on the following morning, when Jacob at dawn rode to his father-in-law. For he had saddled a horse, being unable to trust his leg to walk to Brent. He trembled with anger to think that she had wanted him, and sought him, and been denied; but against his indignation there rose one satisfaction. That she was well enough to travel reconciled him in some measure to the fact that she had done so. Her state, he reflected, must be better than was reported if she could make even a brief journey. He felt tolerably sure that she had gone to her uncle at Plymouth and, ignorant of the truth, wondered why his mother-in-law thus attempted an impossible thing. For to keep him from Margery, now that he knew that she wanted to come back to him, was impossible. No power existed competent legally to stand between them now; and when presently he arrived at the post-office after daybreak, while a winter sun glinted over the edge of the earth, he asserted this fact to Barlow Huxam.
The postmaster was already up, waiting with anxiety for news by letter or telegram from Plymouth; for while Judith had inspired him with her own fervour and won his entire support two days before, now, alone, faced with the dreary ordeal of waiting for tragic news and stricken by the knowledge that he would never see Margery again, Mr. Huxam had fallen into a nervous and melancholy agitation.
He was not much astonished to see Jacob. Indeed he greeted him without emotion, called a boy to hold the rider's horse and bade him enter.
"Barlow Huxam," said Bullstone. "One word is as good as a thousand in this matter. I hear that some time ago my wife wanted to come back to her home, and to me. She was withstood, and that's contrary to law as you, well know. She's ill—very ill so doctor says—and she has been taken away against her own wish. You're an honourable Christian and I've wronged you and yours, and have confessed it and suffered as few are called to suffer. But now—now that my wife wants me, and actually tried to come to me, I ask you, man to man, to tell me where her mother has taken her. Not for regard of myself do I ask it, but for Margery's sake. Be merciful in this matter, as you'd ask for mercy if you stood where I stand."
"Mercy is not for us," answered Barlow. "And if I wanted to show mercy I could not, because it's not in my power. And who knows what mercy is? What you want may not be mercy at all. In your ignorance you may be asking for worse things than you've earned even, or your Maker intends."
"Let that all go. I'm not here to split religious straws. She wants me, and are you to stand between your sick daughter and one she's forgiven for his sins and wants again? Are you going to prevent her from coming back to the home she's made, and the home she's loved? It might be the turning point; it might save her and make her strong again to come back to all that's so dear to her."
Mr. Huxam was affected, more by the appearance of Jacob than his words. He perceived now, in the presence of the man and in the sound of his voice, something of what had happened to him. And there was worse to happen, for Bullstone spoke in ignorance of the situation. Yet for the moment, while moved, Barlow preserved an attitude laid down by his wife, and felt no inclination to yield.
"I must tell you things that you're not likely to understand," he answered. "As to splitting religious straws, I never have, nor never will do it. But we're concerned not with straws, but large, deep mysteries; and one of them has happened. And you must clearly understand that in my judgment and my wife's, it was not any heart-felt wish of Margery's to see you that Auna heard."
"What was it then? She tried to come; she told Auna that she wanted to come—to come to me, and wanted me to come to her."
"Auna heard those words," admitted Huxam, "but who shall say that Margery spoke them? In the shadow of death she lies, and we well know that while there's life there's fear—fear of death—not the death of the body, but the soul."
He elaborated this opinion, while the other stared, hearing Judith Huxam rather than her husband.
"Oh, God—to what you and the likes of you can come!" he said. "You—the father of her, who have seen her sinless, spotless life, and the good she has done and the evil she has suffered—you to think her a mouthpiece for a devil. What do you make of God? Are you so blind that you don't know goodness and honour and patience when you see them? Let me speak with the tongues of the pit, if you please; flout me—condemn me—spit upon me. That is just; but to stand there—a man experienced in life, who knows human nature and believes in an all-powerful, all-loving Father—to stand there and tell me that her natural, woman's longing to see the home she made, and her heavenly forgiveness, ready to return to a worthless man like me—to say all that was the devil whispering through her lips—why, what damned filth do you believe about heaven and hell?"
Barlow felt a twinge before this indictment. He was too prone to accept Judith's interpretation of all that happened, too prone to assume that earnestness so tremendous and a faith that could move mountains, must of necessity enable his wife to probe more deeply into truth than saner people.
"Use your reason," added Jacob. "I've come of late through much torment of mind and grief of body, to see that reason's a gift of God, without which we fall back very quickly into the night of our forefathers. It was loss of reason that ruined me and my home. Let faith do her work, Barlow Huxam, but don't flout reason with nonsense about devils, or tell me that a saint like Margery could ever be the plaything of the Enemy of Mankind. Think for one moment, with the brains God gave you to use, and you'll know that is a foul, mad thought—a thought far liker to be bred of the devil than any that your daughter's mind could harbour, or her lips speak. She wants to see me and her home again; and I ask you, as one well thought upon for sense and human wisdom, if it will throw any shadow on her white soul to hold my hand, and let me hear her forgive me. You're married. You know the deep bond that makes woman and man one sooner or later, no matter how vast the gulf that folly and ignorance, or wickedness, may rip up between them. You know that a sinner may repent and be forgiven; and if by God, then why not by his own, faulty, fellow-creatures? She wants to come to her home, Barlow. She wants to come to her home, and there's no right or justice in hiding her, knowing that if she was strong enough she would come back to me. She's ill—terribly serious her illness—then so much the more reason that a wish, that may be among her last wishes, should be granted. Don't stand in the way any more. If I thought that I would do her harm, in body or soul, I wouldn't ask; but who am I to do her harm? I'm human. I've done all the harm I shall ever do. My life—what's left—will be bent on atoning and doing good—first to her, then to the rest of the world. I only live for that. My own life is but a means for that. Oh, man, don't you understand what my days are now—what I've made of them? Can you come between me and the last ray of light that's left for me?"
"A soul is in the balance," said Mr. Huxam uneasily.
"Granted. But whose soul? Not hers—not Margery's. You're not going to pretend that anything I could say, or do, will endanger a soul as far above me as light above darkness. Say my soul's in the balance if you like, and pray God's mercy on a sinful and erring man. Be large-hearted even for me. We don't make ourselves. We don't sit at the Almighty's elbow when He plans us, and tell Him what to put into us; we can't stand beside Him fortified with the experience of human life and say, 'Make me brave; make me honest; make me patient; leave lust out of me; leave jealousy out of me.' We don't ask God to fashion us true and plumb, of stuff fine enough to withstand the trials and temptations common to all flesh. We can't demand faith, or sense, or the power to move our neighbour to goodness by example and precept. We have no hand in our havage, no hand in our understanding, no hand in our weakness of will. Then what, in the name of Christ, is left for us but to be merciful one with another? What is left but for the strong to deal tenderly with the weak? You stand among the strong ones. You've been blessed with a clear head, good health, perseverance, self-control and a sense of reality that keeps your mind sweet. You married a strong woman. You rise above the traps and snares of life and go your appointed way. You had a good daughter, married to an erring and faulty man. And he's ruined her life and brought her through dark places, where such a woman should never have had to tread. But she's not tainted—there's no stain on her—and now—now, at the eleventh hour, she stretches out her hands to him. And who knows best? Do you know better than she does? Is her mother wiser than she is? God tells her to want me, Barlow—God—God! For His own ends—for His own ends."
The other did not speak. This appeal, coming on his own knowledge that his daughter was dying, distressed him much. But it was still the face staring into his—a face written closely over with intense pain—a face haggard and a head growing grey—that caused him more misery than Jacob's words.
Barlow began to cry, where he was sitting, with his hand on his forehead by a table, and the tears fell down.
Bullstone said no more for some time. Then he spoke again—a brief entreaty.
"Help me to believe in the justice of God," he said. "Don't take my last hope. If she is so ill, do not deny me the one and only blessing left to me in this world: to see her again before the end."
"Who shall come between a man and his Maker?" asked Huxam. "Who can do that, Jacob? I wish my wife was here. Perhaps you would have thrown a light for her. It's contrary to reason to suppose such a woman should be led wrong, but so it is contrary to reason to suppose that Margery should be led wrong. I grant that—I grant that. I never did like to think it was the devil in her. No—no. You're right there. The Lord don't desert His jewels in the Dark Valley. That's where He's nearest and strongest. Perhaps, in her fine fury to save her child, my wife overlooked a thing or two."
There came a knock at the door.
"A telegram for you, Mr. Huxam," said the post-office clerk, and Barlow took it from her hands. There was but one word: 'Sinking.' He held it out to Jacob and then he spoke.
"Come," he said. "We'll go together. And God must do as He pleases."
"Where is she?"
"At Plymouth along with her uncle."
Mr. Huxam looked at his watch, then put it into his pocket hurriedly.
"We can just catch the eight-thirty down. Go forward and get two tickets. I'll come after you."
In twenty minutes they were on their way to Plymouth in a third-class carriage, empty save for themselves.
Two immense facts strove in Barlow's mind and presently he spoke, trying with the one to condone the other.
"Death goes before all," he said. "Before death all doors are opened. Therefore my wife must pardon me for doing a thing she will not easily understand. It would be well if we pardoned oftener where we don't understand, Jacob."
The other was staring from the window and hardly heard.
"What is that to me? See you to that yourself," he answered.
The slow train seemed bent on torturing both men by its delay. It stopped to pick up a cattle-truck and a horse-box at Ivybridge. It dawdled again outside Plymouth. Nearly an hour had passed before they reached Millbay and took a cab.
"You must prepare for the worst, for I think she's gone," said Barlow. "I feel terrible certain that it is so, Jacob; and if that has happened, I beg and pray you'll make no great upstore about it."
The younger shook his head.
"You cannot know she's gone. We may be in time."
At the moment he spoke Margery, indeed, still lived, but was on the brink of death and only drew faint and fitful breaths. Her mother sat by her and held her hand. She did not know if any measure of consciousness remained, but spoke without ceasing in a flood of texts and exhortations. She was very white and drawn. She stopped presently and put down her head to listen; but still the woman's breast flickered, though the breath could not be heard.
"You'll soon be with the Lamb; you'll soon be with the Lamb. You'll soon wear your heavenly crown, my pretty," Judith kept saying. She longed for the end, but felt no fear now. Then, upon her security, came the sound of wheels over the cobbled street. They stopped at the door and, instantly alert, fearing harm, she hastened to the window and saw, first Jacob, then her husband, alight. Jacob pushed straight into the house, but Barlow stopped a moment to pay the cabman.
Mrs. Huxam rushed to the door and screamed to her brother who was below.
"Lawrence, quick for God's sake! Stop him—hit him down if he won't stop!"
Then she returned to the sick-room and locked the door of it.
"Death—death come to her! God take her home, God take her home!" she implored on her knees by the bed; and now her ears were first strained for voices below and then brought back to her child. Others might have supposed that Margery was beyond reach of any danger; but not so Mrs. Huxam. With Jacob's arrival an awful dread came upon her and a fury of fear. For who could tell what spark of consciousness remained to receive the contagion of her husband's speech? Noisy voices were raised below. Then her husband spoke swiftly and silenced the others. She heard him coming upstairs, while her brother and Jacob followed. If they defied her they might easily break the door down, for the devil was most surely with them. Her mind worked furiously, broken free of reason, stung to passion and fierce hatred of the evil forces now creeping upon her child's soul. Margery lay as good as dead. Each senseless breath was delayed longer than the last; while salvation's gate stood open, with her Saviour standing at the portal.
Lawrence Pulleyblank spoke from the other side of the door.
"Barlow and the man. 'Tis well and in reason they should come, Judith. They've made me see that. It's God's wish he should——"
The devil was now in her brother's heart also; and he must have captured her husband's, otherwise Barlow would not be there. Judith saw the trail of the Enemy step by step—Auna's broken promise, Jacob deluding Huxam, winning him and now at the door, in this supreme moment, to catch his prey—a masterpiece of craft and cunning.
"Open for God's love, Mrs. Huxam," implored Bullstone.
"Open, Judy—'tis all ordained that he should see her once more," entreated Barlow. But she neither opened nor answered. She prayed for time. She bent close to Margery and believed her dead. She made herself believe it. Her hand trembled over the woman's mouth. She rested it there a moment. Then came another faint suspiration. What was one worthless breath, more or less, against eternity? She took her hand off again and listened.
Now Lawrence Pulleyblank sternly bade his sister open the door; but still she refused, answering nothing. Then she heard that they were breaking it down.
She went back quickly to the bed, while blows fell slowly from some heavy object with which the men were battering.
In two minutes the door crashed open, and Jacob, followed by the others, entered.
They saw Mrs. Huxam standing before them with a great light blazing in her eyes and her features distorted. She appeared to be insane.
"To God be the praise! To God be the praise! To God be the praise!" she shrieked. Then she flung up her arms; the flame went out of her countenance and she fell forward and fainted.
Where the bed stood, a sheet had been drawn up over Margery's face. Jacob approached and turned it down. Then he knelt and bent close to her. Warmth rose from his wife; her open eyes were still lustrous and reflected his in their unwavering mirrors; but she breathed no more. He kissed the grey shadow of the lips he had known so red, gazed steadily upon her, pressed the hands crossed on her breast, then rose and went away quietly, for he knew that she was dead.
BOOK III
Adam Winter and William Marydrew were walking home side by side from the funeral of Margery Bullstone. Both wore black broadcloth and soft, black felt hats, but there was a touch of colour about the elder, for a red wool muffler wrapped his throat. Billy stopped after climbing the steep hill from Lydia Bridge to the hamlet above; then he drew a little bone box from his pocket and took snuff.
"The man held in all right; but it's the calm before the storm for certain," said William. "He's raging a good bit. They didn't ought to have hid her dying state from him, or kept 'em apart after they knew she wanted to come home."
"They did not," answered Winter, "and yet my aunt, who knows Mrs. Huxam very well, tells me it was done for high religious reasons, William."
"She hadn't been dead a minute, poor woman, afore Jacob smashed in the door of the room; but he had this consolation from Lawrence Pulleyblank, that his wife had been unconscious for hours and couldn't have known him, even if he'd come in time to see her alive."
"The call on faith gets heavier as we grow older, William. Life, after a certain age, seems no more than a cry for patience and a test of pluck. Don't you think my faith be growing weak; but 'tis only human to be down-daunted sometimes afore the things that happen."
"But when you come to my years, such things be different from what they are to you men in the fifties. As a general rule you'll find great deceits in men and women, deceits done for fineness as well as for poorness of spirit. Those who look to be happiest, Adam, are sometimes only the bravest, and them who have most to grumble at often grumble least. And there be some like dogs, without care, yet, out of their cowardice, will begin to yelp if they see so much as the shadow of a stick."
"He was pretty patient—for him—afore this break-up."
"And will be again, if his mind holds. There's a great strain on his thinking parts for the minute; and I hope they'll stand to him."
"I was a good bit surprised to see she'd gone in along with the Bullstones. I'd have thought now that them, as kept her from him so jealous in life, would have fought to have her buried with her father's family," mused Winter.
"Judith Huxam fell ill after Margery died, and Barlow was in a good deal of trouble for a minute. In fact he found himself too busy to bother about the funeral," answered William.
"All her children stood beside the grave—in fact everybody belonging to her except her mother."
"A funeral be nought to the old witch doctor. When the soul have flown to safety, that's all she troubles for. The dust would be no more to her than the empty acorn shard when the young oak springs up. I wrestled with her once, for I'll always say that if her daughter had come home, she might have been spared; but Judith Huxam treated me as though I was an imp of darkness, with the mark of the toasting-fork on my brow."
George Middleweek overtook them. He, too, was in black and had been at the funeral. With him came Peter Bullstone in a new, black suit.
The young man was subdued. He nodded but did not speak.
"How's your grandmother this morning?" inquired Adam. "I couldn't ask anybody that knew."
"She's better—very near well I believe."
Peter then pushed forward alone and George spoke.
"Hope us shall have a bit of peace to Red House now. Merry hell I can tell you for all parties since this happened."
"Is he calming?' asked Adam.
"He's been calm since the corpse came to Red House—calm by day, but not by night. He's pretty broke up. And women as usual at the bottom of all his troubles. Blast 'em, they be at the bottom of most. Why don't we keep 'em like cows or sheep—in herds—and only use 'em for breeding men? They'll always be a canker and a curse so long as we treat 'em like we do."
"This is your silly way of showing sorrow for your master, George," said Mr. Marydrew. "You mean well, though you talk foolishness. But you must keep your reason in bounds and put a bit on your tongue, or you won't help him."
"I'd help him with truth if I could," answered the other. "He's a chap lost in a fog of misery, that's half rubbish if he could see it. He's cussed Providence—that's something to the good; and from cussing, he'll soon get like me, to fling Providence over altogether. I'm damn bad myself, and none the worse for that I believe."
George elaborated his opinions with a good deal of ferocity. It was his way of expressing sympathy with Jacob Bullstone, a fact that William had appreciated.
"Come, come," said Billy, "you ain't half the sinner you want us to think, my dear. 'Tis just a habit you've fallen into, George—to frighten us all with your fearful wickedness. But you didn't ought only to talk of it; you ought to do some wicked things, so as we can believe in you—eh, Adam?"
Mr. Winter was of simpler understanding.
"If he don't believe in Providence, he's about wicked enough," answered the farmer.
A mourning coach conveying Jacob and Auna drove past the pedestrians. Bullstone had stopped to see the earth returned to his wife's grave, and Barlow Huxam had stopped with him.
Auna sat beside her father and held his hand. She did not attempt to speak. He had leaned back in the carriage and shut his eyes. When they reached Red House, he roamed away up the valley and Auna took off her new mourning frock and went about her business.
Jacob did not return to dinner, and presently his daughter set out to find him.
"I'd come," said Peter, "but he'll do more for you. The dark will soon be down—so best you not go far."
Auna took a couple of dogs and started to seek her father. She believed that she knew where he would be, and she was right. He sat on a mossy stone two miles up the valley. It was a spot dedicated of old to Margery and the stone, carved by time into a natural resting-place, had long been known to her children as "Mother's Stone."
Jacob addressed Auna as though he were expecting her. He was very quiet for the moment; but she feared his look. His hat was off and his hair was rough, for he had been running his hands through it.
"A great thought—to put this stone on her grave," he said. "Here she sat a thousand times, and it belongs to her. It's her stone, Auna. You can't give the dead much. And yet to give her a stone—her I denied bread——"
"Don't say that, dear father. Perhaps it would be a beautiful thing if the stone were set up to her."
"Just as it is, mind. No tinkering it—just as it is—because she rested here. But that's all one. She shall have her stone, if parson lets me put it up; and her name shall be cut upon it."
"I'm sure he'll let you, father."
"But no cross. She's born her cross in life; the cross I put on her; the cross she broke down and died under. I'll bear her cross now, and if men was to come and say 'Jacob Bullstone, we be going to crucify you on your wife's cross,' I should thank God and glory in it."
"Don't you talk wild like that. Come home. It's getting dark and offering for rain. I'm so glad about the stone. Mother will like that; and you mustn't think she's dead, father."
"We'll meet again—in the earth. I'll lie next to her, as close as graves are allowed. I'll get to her, bone to her bone, ashes to her ashes, dust to her dust some day."
She comforted him to the best of her powers and he rose and took his hat from her and put it on. It was dark before they returned, and then he lighted a lamp and went to his own room. There they heard him busy with the drawers of the big wardrobe he had bought for Margery.
George Middleweek advised that he should be left alone. Auna called him to supper and he came quietly and appeared to be more calm and controlled. But he spoke of feeling very weary and began to talk concerning Huntingdon. He declared his determination to leave Red House as soon as possible and henceforth live at the warrens. His children listened and Peter was secretly fired with great hopes that his father might keep his word. Already he saw himself master of the dogs.
For a season the soul of Jacob shrank from all life and found its only peace in solitude. Now and again, for a day or two, the wish to be alone would leave him; then he would go to Marydrew, or Adam Winter, and pour out a flood of futile opinions. They bore with him and strove to restore his peace. But he would soon seclude himself again and, on one or two occasions, he spent the night alone at Huntingdon. He had determined to dwell there in time to come; but those that cared for him trusted that before spring returned he would change his mind. William, when opportunity offered, pressed occupation on his friend and assured him that only by way of work would serenity return; but Jacob could not work. His restlessness drove him to be moving always. He left his business in the hands of Peter and was impatient if either he, or George Middleweek, even desired his advice.
He would not see a doctor. He declared that the physician who attended upon his wife had poisoned his mind against all doctors. But he spoke kindly of his own attendant at the Cottage Hospital. Sometimes he was violent and blasphemed before his children. He often went to his wife's grave, to see if the soil were sinking. Auna was glad on the days that he chose to do this, because it made him easier. His furies seldom extended to any at Red House, though he turned much against John Henry and Avis, because they did not come to see him. Once or twice he set out to visit them on horseback, yet always changed his mind and rode into the moor instead.
Auna often begged to come with him when he wandered away; but he rarely suffered her to do so. For a time he seemed indifferent even to her—a phase that represented the extremity of his distemper.
"You're too much like your mother," he told her once. "I doubt I'll be able to endure you much longer. It's living with her ghost, rather than her child."
In one of his wildest moods he had said that; but she knew he did not mean it. He was careless of his garments and person now and looked to Auna for a thousand attentions—indeed had long done so.
She suspected that her father wanted to die and asked old William what should be done about it; but Mr. Marydrew advised nothing.
"Let him go his own gait," he told her. "If he dies, he dies; but more like he'll grow easier and come back to himself presently."
Jacob brought news from the moor. His values had all changed and sometimes a sort of peace did crown his lonely days; but it was not a sane peace. He talked as though human beings signified nothing; he lifted the unconscious creatures and their good and evil to first place in his speech and showed an interest in the prosperity of the coneys, the welfare of the fox and her cubs, the providence of the badger and his shifts to live through the naked winter months. At no time could it be said that he spoke as one insane; but he hovered on the brink of mental disaster and displayed a distortion of perspective akin to craziness.
George Middleweek suspected that Bullstone was concealing himself behind a pretence; but Adam Winter, to whom he explained his view, knew Jacob better.
"He couldn't pretend," he said. "His brains are on the knife's edge. All we can hope is that his bodily strength will save him, and that his mind will right itself."
They debated whether speech or silence was the better for Jacob, and agreed that his passion, venting itself in words, served to let the poison free. The occasional periods of taciturnity, when Jacob would not speak, or eat, or even move sometimes for many hours, they believed the more dangerous signals. So they watched him and did what they might, which was little; while Auna, grown to a woman in mind, kept as near to her father as possible, studied his every mood and learned in time how best to meet each wave of feeling, where to oppose, where to heap endearments, where to talk and throw herself into the subject of the moment, where to listen and make no answer that might fret.
There came a day when a harsh cold fell upon the moors and Robert Elvin rode to bring in some of his ponies. Beyond Ugborough's rocky summit, where its ramparts rose above the grey web of the forest, the waste swept in featureless folds northerly for mile on mile. All was now sombre, iron rusty and black. Sad-coloured garments held the hills and over them a wind from the north-east swept, dry and bitter in the blade. It brought a haze to lessen the austerity of the winter heath, and it made a low whimper, which rose and fell, now brushing the sharper sound of running waters to the ear, now deadening their murmur as it lulled, now increasing to gusts, that woke a tinkle from the dead heather and hummed to a deeper note upon the granite face of some great stone. Where the hills fell to each other's feet, rillets ran winding irregular threads among the boulders; and here was the highest light of these far-flung sobrieties; where, at fall and ripple, flashed grey foam, or spread some still and limpid pool to reflect the ash-coloured sky.
It seemed that winter had uttered an ultimate note, that the vitality of earth was sunk to its lowest, that her heart beat more slowly and her sleep sounded deeper than at any day until now. It was the dark hour before the dawn of another year and inanimate life seemed to have receded beneath the surface of things, while animate life had retreated to the greater comfort of the low lands.
Robert found his ponies, a dozen of them, clustered knee-deep in dead fern on the lee of a tor. They were dejected and showed pleasure at his coming. He sent his dog forward and soon the little cavalcade was trotting off the hills, down through a long and narrow coomb which opened above Owley, two miles to the south.
Then suddenly he came upon his father-in-law sitting as still as the stone under him. It was uplifted by the way in the eye of the harsh wind; yet Jacob reposed indifferent, gazing over the moor, his stick beside him, his hands clasped together. Robert stopped, dismounted and approached.
"Hullo, father! You didn't ought to be up here in this wind," he said and extended his hand. Jacob shook it and apparently proceeded with his thoughts aloud.
"I like to feel my marrow growing cold inside the bones. It teaches you how it'll be at the end, when the last cold comes that no fire can heat again. The crested plovers are all gone from the moor, Bob Elvin. You see them, so wise and dainty are they, running about in the lew fields and round the corn-stacks, like little pixy people. And they lift their kitten cries to keep themselves warm. But when the weather breaks, they'll soon fly back to their haunts again."
"So they will then. Get moving now. Drop in and have a tell with us at Owley and a good cup of tea to warm you. I'm taking my ponies down to the yard for shelter. Thank the Lord we're well to do for hay this year; the cattle can spare them a bite. We've got enough for all."
"I'm troubled for the foxes, however. There's no security in nature, Robert. All hand to mouth; and the rabbits lie so low, and there's not a beetle or a frog moving."
Robert laughed.
"The baggering foxes have picked up one or two of my chickens of late," he said.
"Don't be too hard on them. They're a fine, fearless people and it's cruel work standing before hounds on an empty belly. No security. Many soft-billed birds are dropping dead out of the trees by night—just for hunger and cold. No mercy shown; none expected. Only a man here and there knows the meaning of mercy. But the creatures have their bit of luck, Robert. Terror of death cannot fret them and sense of wrong can't wound their hearts. Great privileges you see. And how's your fine wife? A better wife than daughter, I hope?"
"Don't say that, father. Our thoughts are often along with you. Avis and me would be terrible glad to comfort you if we could."
"Judith Huxam, my children's grandmother, once said that I should call upon the hills to cover me. She said right. I have. But they refuse. A very respectable thing to worship the Lord, Bob Elvin; only take heed to stop at that. Don't try and follow Him, or do what He tells you, else you'll be locked up, or get into the workhouse. Worship at a distance. There may be better bread than is made of wheat, but human nature can't digest it—can't digest the teaching of Christ. It's no good. The lawyers and the politicians, the traders and the soldiers, and the sailors and even the parsons—such as are honest—they'll all tell you it won't work."
"Come on, father; don't sit here no more. Jump up on my cob and I'll walk beside you."
"I'm going to give Owley to your wife. It was ordained from the first, and my Margery agreed it should be so."
"You have, master. A very grand start in life you've offered us."
"Did my late wife know about it?"
"Yes, Mrs. Bullstone knew all about it."
"Good. I killed her, Bob. If I'd fired a gun into her heart, I couldn't have killed her surer. A pretty awful thing; but have no fear I'm not going to pay for it. When a man commits murder, they ought not to put him away: they ought to keep him alive, as long as ever they can, and let his sin gnaw into him, like a cancer, inch by inch. All sin's a cancer: it eats the heart, but it leaves the core to go on throbbing, so that the sinner may suffer as long as his flesh and bones hang together."
"Don't you say these fearful things. Come now, else Avis will wonder what's happened to me. There's a lot of good life ahead of you, Mr. Bullstone, and a lot of valuable work to be done—so clever as you are."
"There is—I grant that much. Much work for my fellow-creatures. But you can't accept man till you've denied God, Robert. That's a hard saying for your boy's ears, no doubt. Yet so it is. You can't make man your first thought and his welfare your faith, till you've put God Almighty and all other graven images behind your back."
"Don't you think that; you'll come back to God presently. I'm sure He's waiting for you, father."
Jacob shook his head.
"I don't ask you to do the like," he said. "Let every man trust his God so long as he can, and so far as he can. But be honest, and when your dark day comes and you can't trust any more, then fear not to say so."
Bob remounted his pony, which was beginning to shiver.
"I must get on," he declared. "And I pray you'll come down and drink a dish of tea before you start for home. Do now, father."
Jacob appeared to have forgotten him; but then he turned to him again.
"Small creatures fall light, remember. A grasshopper can drop where a bullock would break his neck. Pity's often wasted on those that don't need it and withheld from such as do. I fell heavy. I'm heavy in body and heavy in mind. I'm smashed up for good and all now; but no pity for me—no pity in Heaven above, or on the earth beneath. And I doubt—I very much doubt, between ourselves, whether I'd take it even if 'twas offered, young fellow."
"You'll find peace—you'll find peace. I'm sure there's a lot are praying for you," murmured Elvin. Then Jacob rose off the rock, nodded to him and limped off northward.
The gloaming was already coming down.
Robert drove his ponies home, gave them the hospitality of the farmyard and a shake of hay, then went in to his wife.
Tea was ready and his mother, quicker to mark the young man's moods than Avis, asked him presently if anything were amiss.
"Don't tell me the cold have got into you, Bob," she said.
"No, mother," he answered; "but a wisht thing happened. Poor Mr. Bullstone—up over—sitting like a lone hawk on a rock. He wouldn't come for a drop of tea, though I begged him, and he's going mad terrible fast by the look of it."
"He'll kill himself before much longer," declared Avis. "And he'll kill Auna too: she's fretting to fiddlestrings about him. A very good thing if poor father was to die, I reckon. For what's the use of living like him—a scourge to himself and nuisance to everybody else?"
"He's suffered such a lot that it's shaken his mind," answered Bob. "But no doubt, in good hands, he could be coaxed round again. He's not so old as he looks, and he's tremendous strong, else he couldn't face the weather like he does."
"Maybe Huntingdon will calm him. A spot surely to tame man or beast," said the elder Mrs. Elvin; "but yet, on the other hand, it might overthrow all. I'm very sorry for Auna—'tis far too much to put upon a young creature."
"Her father's her life in a manner of speaking," replied Robert, "Where he goes, she'll go. Peter says that Huntingdon would be a good thing very likely, for Mr. Bullstone hinders more than he helps now. He's getting a bit jealous of Peter—so Peter thinks."
"Not him," answered Avis. "That's only Peter's vanity."
"What does your grandfather say about it?" asked the mother-in-law of Avis.
"He haven't had much time to think about my father, because grandmother was so queer for a bit when mother died. But she's pretty right again now, and they're soon moving into the villa, and grandfather's terrible busy. By the same token I must go down to-morrow and help Aunt Jane. I've promised to take the children off her hands for a few hours. A great upheaval."
"So it is then. A very strange thought—the post-office and the shop without Mrs. Huxam in it; but it's time they retired and the name will be carried on."
Avis considered.
"For how long I wonder. Uncle Jeremy's got it all at his finger ends—so he says, but John Henry vows he'll never stick to it."
Her mother-in-law brought the subject back to Jacob.
"I hope Barlow Huxam will consider about your father in a Christian spirit," she said. "Something should be done for Mr. Bullstone, and I wouldn't say but what you and John Henry oughtn't to try and get a doctor to him."
"He'd never see nobody, and he's turned against us," declared Avis. "He's fairly friendly to grandfather I believe, but not to grandmother. He never did like her, because she saw he was not a godly man, and she kept mother away from him when the devil tempted poor mother to try and go back. He's the fifth wheel of a coach now—father is. A know-nought, rash man always, and it's no unkindness to wish he was out of his sufferings I'm sure. He's a disgrace to us all in a manner of speaking, mother."
The elder woman considered and shook her head.
"That's a hard word," she answered,
"He ended mother's days whether or no," argued Avis. "And mother was always a thousand times more to us than father. And you can't expect us—especially me with my honeymoon spoiled—to feel overmuch for him."
"Auna was always the one for your father," said Mrs. Elvin. "It was the same from the beginning."
"Because she was so like mother," answered Avis. "Mother must have been the daps of Auna, when she was young. But why Auna always clung to father and put him before everybody, none of us ever did know. Grandmother's done with her, because she's a liar."
"They are too different in their natures to get on very well I expect," said Robert. "Come out and look at the ponies afore it's dark, Avis."
They were still lovers and only happy in each other's company.
None could explain the malady that overtook Judith Huxam after the death of her daughter. The termination of Margery's life did not appear to be the cause, for Judith shed no tears on man or woman who, as she described it, had "died in Christ." Her child was safe, and the febrile disorder that upset Mrs. Huxam on returning home arose from other causes. All, save Barlow himself, supposed that she was very naturally shocked into sickness by the events reported from the Barbican. How she had taken Margery to her brother's, that she might pass in peace; how Bullstone had discovered the hiding-place and thrust in upon it; how he had actually arrived but a few moments after his wife's death; and how Judith's struggle against the violence of the men had caused her to faint in Barlow's arms—these things were known, and none of her own circle but applauded Mrs. Huxam, rejoiced that she had achieved her high purpose, and felt that such a victory was more than sufficient to explain her subsequent collapse.
One, however, understood it differently, and that was Mr. Huxam. He believed that the cause of Judith's tribulation rested with himself. Indeed, as time passed and his wife gradually returned to physical strength and her accustomed health of mind and body, Barlow perceived that he had done a thing which would modify Judith's attitude to him for ever.
That at least became clear—a picture indelibly printed on the combined surface of their lives when the storm had passed, their daughter was in her grave and the tumultuous moments of her death a memory. Slowly Huxam understood that henceforth his wife would not regard him as of old. That he should have assisted Jacob to find her was, it appeared, a lapse that could never leave future relations unmarked, and when again he saw her brother, Lawrence Pulleyblank, who had also won Judith's displeasure, the old fisherman doubted not that Barlow's action, together with the united operation of the three men in breaking down the door, had for ever darkened Judith's opinion of them both. Lawrence trusted that, with time, his sister would see their deed was natural, in the light of her silence when they challenged; but Barlow knew better.
The estrangement fell awkwardly, for now came the great change in the life of the Huxams. The bustle and business consequent on leaving the post-office for their new home offered a respite, but all was soon accomplished and presently the husband and wife found themselves thrown together after a fashion unfamiliar since their earliest married days. Only when their retirement had been completed did they gradually come to perceive all that it implied, and the dislocation of their lives, that resulted from thus dropping the habits of half a century. The change completed Judith's cure and restored her vitality and energy; but one aspect of the new existence they had not paused to consider, and now it was forced upon them. Neither had been concerned with their future occupations save vaguely; but such plans as they had formed proved wholly unequal to filling the startling and immense spaces of leisure now thrust into their lives. Barlow had imagined himself gardening with Margery, and thus ordering his time and energies; he designed, too, some weekly hours at the shop, that he might assist Jane and his son and launch them into the details of the business. For the rest he had not planned anything; while Judith hoped that her new existence would offer more leisure for reading desirable books and aiding her neighbours. They came thus into a world of new experience; and when all was done, the house arranged in every detail to Mrs. Huxam's liking, the new garden at a stage when nature's more leisurely processes succeeded Barlow's zeal, they found themselves faced with a generous gift of time and some difficulty to fill the lengthening days.
It was then that the cloud he had hoped to dispel settled into a permanent canopy and Barlow found that his wife was changed. In no actual relation could he declare any alteration, but the former, mental understanding had failed. She did not trust him as of old and her outlook on life had taken a new colour also. It was tinged with melancholy. Grey and austere it had always been, but not downcast as now. He almost fancied sometimes that the note of triumphant assurance had left her voice. The change influenced him a great deal, and on an occasion when he was at the shop with his daughter-in-law he uttered an alarm. They were good friends and Jane was old enough to understand some of his difficulties.
"It's fear for my future that's at the bottom of all this," Barlow told his son's wife. "People think that Mrs. Huxam is a bit under the weather, because of the great change into our villa residence; but a thing like that is of no account to her. She's troubling about me—that's the anxiety. When I took Jacob Bullstone to his dying wife, I did a thing that your mother-in-law felt to be above measure wrongful. She may be right and, if I thought she was, I should confess as much; but I can honestly look back and feel it wasn't a wrong thing. The sufferings of that man were real; and I was rent myself to know that Margery was going home; and between my own grief and his, what more natural that I should take him to say his last farewell? He was an evil man and he'd done fearful wrong, but one thing I never will allow—that he could by word, or touch, have cost Margery her salvation. Far more likely a word, or touch, from her might have saved him. And so I took the man; but the shocking upshot, Jane—the shocking upshot is that my dear wife no longer feels sure whether I haven't doomed myself for all eternity by that deed!"
Jane begged him to banish any such painful suspicion.
"I'm sure it's at the very foundation of things that you're saved, just as much as she is," said his daughter-in-law. "There's some great truths we take for granted, and that's one of 'em. If I was you, I'd have it out with her."
"A woman like my wife, who lives, you may say, with one foot in the other world, will sometimes find the heavenly light to dazzle her, if you catch my meaning, Jane," said Mr. Huxam. "With her standards of conduct and her face always lifted to the divine perfection, she may well perhaps lose the sense of proportion and forget that if we was all perfect, there wouldn't be any need for us to be saved. She probably don't allow enough for the power of Jesus Christ to fetch in His lost sheep."
Barlow raised the question again on the following Sunday, when Mrs. Huxam, during the stagnation between dinner and tea, had permitted herself an hour with a book. It was a work that Lawrence Pulleyblank had discovered at a second-hand bookseller's shop in Plymouth. For he was a strenuous reader himself, within limited boundaries, and this work, entitled "The Sabbath of New England," had given him infinite satisfaction. He had sent it to Judith as a peace-offering in some sort.
Mrs. Huxam now learned what a Sabbath might be, and had actually once been, as ordered by the Pilgrim Fathers—they who sailed from Mr. Pulleyblank's own Barbican in times past. She had seen the white stone which recorded their departure, and now she pursued the book and marked the many passages her brother's black lead pencil had underlined.
Pain and pleasure accompanied the perusal. If England chastised sin with whips, it appeared that these New Englanders had wielded scorpions for their ungodly. The details of their rule braced Mrs. Huxam's spirit, while it drooped a little when she reflected that such discipline was lost to the world for ever.
She read the Blue Laws of Connecticut and other literary survivals. She considered the penances and penalties inflicted on those who broke the Lord's Day, and found therein a code of perfection beyond even her own dreams. She learned how the law drove all to worship and locked the doors upon them until the exercise was ended; how Tabitha Morgan was fined three shillings and sixpence for playing on the Lord's Day, and Deborah Banks—a deeper sinner—paid five shillings for a like offence; how Jonah and Susan Smith were seen to smile and suffered accordingly; how Lewis and Sarah Chapman—sweethearts—were found in goodman Chapman's garden sitting under an apple tree—branch of ill omen—and fined for their levity; how Elizabeth Eddy was seen to hang out clothes upon the Sabbath Day and mulcted ten shillings for her lapse.
Mrs. Huxam contemplated such a Sunday with enthusiasm and the printed page brought a rare flush to her cheek. But worse followed and her brother had doubly scored the fall of mariners, which too often happened. There was Captain Kemble, of Boston, newly come off a three years' voyage, who publicly kissed his wife, the day being Sunday; and devout persons were compelled to witness the offence, since it took place under the open sky on the erring man's front-door step. Another master of a Boston vessel, caught loitering in the streets, during those later hours of Saturday sanctified by law to "catechising and preparations for the Sabbath," was followed by a constable and dragged to prison. But in his case divine retribution delayed not and the little child of this sailor fell into a well on the following day and was drowned; whereupon the contrite wretch acknowledged the Hand of God and the justice of his punishment in open congregation.
These were they who had fled from England to escape religious persecution.
It was at this stage of her enquiry that Mr. Huxam joined his wife in the parlour of their villa residence, and she took off her spectacles to utter an aspiration.
"Oh, for the grand old days and the grand old faith!" she sighed, and he, who had already dipped into "The Sabbath of New England," assured her that while such as she still stood for the Light, some fine breath and after flavour of those adamant times yet breathed its essence over the earth, to be caught up and preserved and passed forward by the will of the Everlasting.
"While the Chosen Few remain, the work goes on," he said.
"I'm not repining," she answered. "I'm not even wishing I'd lived among those grand people, because that would be to want what my Saviour didn't will; but the flesh is weak, and reading of such high Christianity makes one mourn for the present day."
"You open the road to a thought a good bit on my nerves of late—ever since our Margery went home," he told her. "The better the day, the better the deed, so I'll openly tell you that I'm much fearing, Judith, you don't hold me quite so high as you were used to do."
His wife looked at him and set down her Sunday reading. She did not answer and he continued.
"Of course I know the reason; but I'm a long way short of being convinced that you are right. You hold it was a shameful abuse of confidence and deliberate danger to Margery that I should have let her husband have the chance to see her alive; and you think that action has put me in a very doubtful position. Well, I disagree, Judy."
"I know you do, so what's the good of talking about it? I'm not your judge, Barlow. I feel sometimes that—I feel, in fact, nobody can be positive. You'll call that a weak word coming from me; but I've been a bit bruised and battered by the powers of evil myself of late."
"Never!" exclaimed Mr. Huxam. "Are you sure what you are saying?"
She looked away with strained eyes, as though surveying the tempestuous places of her own soul.
"Nobody so strong but they may yet fall," she said. "Another of the devil's tricks I've found of late—they're endless, and 'tis a pity some godly man, with the power of the pen, can't make a list of those dark wiles and set 'em down for our guidance and warning."
"He won't waste his time with you, I reckon," answered Mr. Huxam. "The devil knows when he's down and out—none quicker."
"A cunning plot—to let a person go for years and years building up for righteousness, until they feel strong in the Lord and in the power of His might; and then, like a thief, to come some fine day, when least expected, and strike with all his strength! Years he'll let you go, for he knows the people who are proof against the common trick of his trade; years he'll pass by, till a godly creature takes heart and believes the world, the flesh and the devil are all left behind; but no—he's never left behind!"
"It he's struck at you, he's only had his trouble for his pains," vowed Barlow.
"Easy to say. But I want more Light. I'm groping a bit just now. The Lord sends fears and terrors."
"You do amaze me," he answered, "and I hope this will be a lesson to you and me to cleave closer in heart than of late we have done. First our dear child's death under terrible circumstances, and then this hugeous upheaval have thrown us apart; but I'm glad you've spoke and done me the compliment to tell me you're not so content as usual. That must be mended, because if you were to feel a grain of doubt about things, then the linch-pin's out of the wheel and the roof-tree of the house is broken. So I hope you'll begin by getting quite right with yourself, for all our sakes, Judy."
"Can a human creature be too zealous for God?" asked she. "That's the question I put to myself, and three months ago I'd have been in no doubt of the answer."
"There is no doubt," he replied, "and if you feel a doubt, that is only to say you're not well again yet. You want a dose of strong medicine. Not medicine for the soul, I don't mean, but medicine for the body. I've often known a liver pill to bring me a good step nearer God, because it's His Almighty plan that soul and body be very close cogged together, so long as they bide on one earth. And clean and healthy organs help the higher parts. You see Mr. Briggs again, and then, after you've took a good dollop of his cautcheries, I'll promise you won't feel any more doubts. Conscience depends more on the bowels than we've any idea. None can be too zealous for God; and none can be zealous enough for that matter. I've noticed a dull look about your eyes ever since we come into our own, and I've seen the same expression on my own face; and I'll tell you what it is, Judy. It's weariness, because we ain't weary. Not to feel tired when you go to bed argues something wrong. In a word you can't work for fifty years and then suddenly become a lady and gentleman in a villa residence and not suffer pretty sharp. In my case, it takes the shape of indigestion and sleeplessness; in yours, being a soulful creature before all else, you get in the fidgets about religion."
She considered this.
"I could greatly wish you were right," she said, exhibiting a mild and almost pensive mood which was foreign to her. "I've had my suspicions once and again. It's dangerous, even for a woman of my age to sit with her hands in her lap, and know that if she rings a bell, another will come to wait upon her."
"You've been ill and had to be waited upon; besides we figured it all out: we knew that our new life would embrace rest and time for our innocent happiness."
"We must be sleepless in well-doing, however, or else we may go down."
"Our life seems to be emptied out, I grant that," he answered, "There's not so much to it as there was, and light things—like gardening and reading books and so on—can't fill the gap."
"No," she said. "Where there's a hole in your life, the first person ready and willing to fill it is the devil. You talk about 'innocent happiness,' and yet all experience goes to show that happiness is doubtfully innocent at best. I've never felt too sure that God put the longing for happiness in us. Security's better than happiness. In fact there's no happiness, rightly so called, without it. And that thought is making me suffer a good deal. And physic's no use against fear."
Mr. Huxam scratched his head.
"I don't much like what you're saying," he replied. "If I thought the villa residence was coming between us and the work of the Holy Ghost——"
He regarded the prospect blankly and Judith made no effort to dull its gloomy proportions.
"Come and drink tea," he said. "We know where to trust, and it's no good getting our tails down at our age. We've faced life and its many bitters up till now, and it would be a fantastical come-along-of-it if we failed under the reward of well-doing. Who sent this house, tell me that?"
"God," admitted Mrs. Huxam. "And why did He send it? We don't know yet. We pray Him not to lead us into temptation; but we well know it's a part of His discipline so to do."
"We'll look out, never fear," replied Barlow. "But we'll look out in a large spirit, Judy. We mustn't think this commodious home is a trap to make us forget our heavenly home. 'Twould be to look a gift horse in the mouth, my dear—a very ill-convenient thing against God or man."
Only fitfully did Jacob Bullstone accept his situation. He was occasionally resigned and spoke with rational appreciation of facts; but often it seemed that his mind still stood at a point in time before his wife had passed. The actual loss he appeared to forget upon days of stress. Such moments, however, occurred less frequently than at first. Auna never resisted his proposals now, or attempted to prevent the long days alone that he was constantly planning. For she found that her father returned the better and the saner from these days. Words that man was powerless to speak, he heard from the solitudes. The hills had not covered, but they had comforted him. As the spring waxed, he increased the number of these expeditions and separated himself for longer intervals from his kind. He watched the lengthened evenings sink to sunsetting and the dawns open cold and sweet before the sun. He declared that Time was a being, and tried to explain to Auna that Time wearied at night-fall, slept by night and woke again invigorated with the dawn.
She humoured his imaginings and was always thankful when any subject outside himself could arrest his thoughts. But that was seldom. He suffered evil days and, when they came, Auna devoted herself to him and let all lesser duties mind themselves.
There came over Bullstone a long period of fruitless rage. Having for a season heaped contumely upon his own head and wondered why the people did not rise up and stone him; having subsequently mourned and become very silent through the passage of four weeks, his unsteady mind broke into a frenzy and his self-restraint failed, so that Auna shook in fear and Peter began to tell the people that his father was mad. But after a calenture, during which he cursed fate, flouted heaven, and uttered many profanities, which terrified Auna and pleased George Middleweek, Jacob grew calmer again and was almost childish for a season. He became more mild and humble, less envenomed against destiny.
People were sorry for Auna and Peter, but there seemed to be few to help them. Adam Winter, however, kept in touch with them, and William Marydrew often came to Red House on one pretext or another. He had declared from the first that Jacob would recover, so far as his brain was concerned. He knew Bullstone best and had the art to calm him quicklier than any other man was able to do. For Jacob felt William to be trustworthy and loyal. He often went to see him, and if any idea suddenly struck into the sufferer's thoughts, he would either convey it to William, or describe it to Auna. At this season his egotism was supreme and only at rare moments was he able to dismiss his projects, or himself, from the substance of speech.
A trivial thought took Jacob one day as he stood among his dogs, and he turned his back upon them, left Red House and, following the river, soon reached Mr. Marydrew's cottage.
"It's borne in on me that there are three sorts of men and only three, William," he said, standing before the ancient and looking down at him, where he sat smoking his pipe in his porch.
"A very simple earth if there was only three sorts of men on it, Jacob."
"Three sorts—those that leave the world better than they found it; those that leave it worse; and those that go through it like shadows and make no more mark than shadows do. And I thought, in my pride, I was the first sort of man, and never guessed to be the second."
He sat down on the bench beside William.
"We most of us leave the world better than we found it by a few kind actions and decent thoughts," declared Billy. "Very few go through life without doing their fellow-creatures a good turn here and there. Certainly you've done a lot of good in your time and many can testify to it. And to say you've done evil also—that's only to say you're a human."
"At best the good balances the evil and leaves us only shadows, with nothing to credit."
"Nonsense," answered Billy. "We know—even us small people—that we're of more account than shadows."
"In my case the great evil swallowed the little good. I wish I had never been born, because then none could point to my grave some day and say, 'There lies the man that killed his wife.' If I could have chose before I was born, I'd have said to God, 'Either let me come into the world for well-doing, or not at all,' and that would have been a decent, self-respecting wish. But how can people believe in God's mercy and love, when the world swarms with bad men He could as easily have made good ones? Take my late wife, for you must firmly grasp now that Margery's dead—that rare woman is dead, William. Take her and ask yourself how an all-seeing, all-loving God could let that innocent, harmless creature love a man who would end by killing her?"
"You waste a lot of time, Jacob," said the other, "and you ax a lot of questions no mortal man can ever answer, because we don't know enough. I've lived to see great changes myself, and you may say, well inside civility, that God's like some of us old men, who were once young. When I was young I was well thought of and held in great respect, and I counted, in my small way, among the rest. And when God was a thought younger—for time will go on and He can't be outside it, Jacob—when He was a thought younger, the people held Him in greater respect than now. He ain't quite so much in the middle of the picture as He was when I was a boy—just as I myself ain't no more in the middle of my own picture. But God's just the same as He always was, and just so determined as ever not to give a plain answer to a plain question. He never have done it and He never will, because it's contrary to His Almighty opinion of what's best for us."
"And how if it's all a mare's-nest and there's no God, William?"
"Then 'tis waste of time to be rude to Him. Civility costs nought anyway. My old father said to me when I was a child, 'Always touch your hat to a pair of hosses, William, for you never know who's behind 'em.'"
"I puzzle a good deal upon the subject, and life often flings it uppermost," answered Bullstone. "In fact so are we built, through education of conscience, that it's impossible to go very far without being brought up against God. How often in my secret times of pain do I catch the Name on my tongue? How often do I say 'My God, my God, what have I done?' I ask Him that question by night and day. A silly question, too, for I know what I've done as well as God can. But I know what I've suffered far better than He can. I went on hoping and hoping, as you bade me, last year. I went hoping, with one eye on God, like a rat that creeps out of his hole with one eye on the dog hard by. But the game had to be played out by inches. He knew that Margery was dying, a few miles away, and He kept it secret from me and didn't let me hear till it was too late. He planned it, so that I should just be there after the very last breath was breathed, should touch her before she was cold, should miss her by seconds. And she longing—longing to come back to me—to save me. What should we call that if a man had done it—eh, William?"
"Come and look at my bees, Jacob. A brave swarm yesterday, and poor Sammy Winter took 'em for me with all the cleverness of a sane man."
"Mysteries everywhere. People pity Samuel. I don't—not now, I did once, because it's the fashion to think anybody's lacking reason is a sad sight. Why? Brains are like money—poison so often as not. My brains have poisoned me—fretted and festered and burnt out my soul like an acid. The more I see of the wild, innocent creatures, the more I feel that reason's not all we think it, William. You can't fetter the soul down to reason. What has reason done for me? The little comfort I get now is outside reason. Reason only goads me into wanting to end it and make away with myself. That would be the reasonable thing. What happened yesterday? Auna found a rhyme book that belonged to my wife. And in that book was a sprig of white heath I picked for her on a wonderful day we had, just after she had promised to marry me. There it was faded to brown—more than twenty years old. And what else did Auna find? Between the pages she found the crumbs of a little sweet biscuit—a sort of a little biscuit, William, that Margery loved. Where's the reason when a crumb of wheat can stab the soul deeper than a sword? And what then? What did Auna say? Nothing in reason, God knows. 'Father,' she said, 'you and me will eat these crumbs—then we'll have shared the biscuit with dear mother.' A holy sacrament—yes, faith—'holy's' not too strong a word. We ate the crumbs, and there was a strange, mad comfort in it; and the child smiled and it made her happier too. You could see it in her face. Why? Why? All darkness—no answer. And the little verse book, with the heather bloom, will be in my breast pocket now till I die—never out of reach of my hand—warmed daily by my warmth. Why? Can reason tell me? No—it's only because I'm gone below reason, William."
"Or it might be above it, my son."
"Such things make your head whirl. If there's to be happiness in heaven, we mustn't be built like we are here. Fear must be left out of us and the power of remembering. We must be suffered to forget earth, William; yet, what would that make of heaven? Nothing. It all tumbles to pieces whichever way you think of it, for reason, whether it is a good or evil thing, makes heaven a wilderness."