SUNDAY
John Henry, Avis and their mother had come on a Sunday, to drink tea
with Margery's parents and go to chapel afterwards.
There was trouble in the air; indeed Mr. Huxam, who happened to be
ailing, declared that he never remembered so many problems demanding
solution at one time. When he was indisposed, he always dwelt on the
blessings of retirement and declared that the 'villa residence' he
designed to build for his declining years should now be erected.
"I feel it borne in upon me very much of late that we ought to
begin," he told Margery, and she agreed with him.
"Jacob's always saying you should start. Not a week ago he was
telling me that his bit of land on the north side of the railway
ought to suit you down to the ground."
"I've let the chance slip," declared Barlow, coughing and patting his
chest. "If I'd been awake, I should have purchased a site ten years
ago; but what with one thing and another--chiefly Jeremy--I never
seemed to have the necessary dollop of money."
"It wasn't that," argued Mrs. Huxam. "Jeremy, though he hasn't found
the exact work yet, can't be said to have cost much in money, if he
has in thought. I always warned against looking too far ahead
touching the villa residence. But now I do think the time has come."
"'Peace with honour' is what you and me have a right to," answered
Barlow, "and if Jacob, among his possessions down this way, has got
an acre or thereabout, to please your mother, Margery, so much the
better. I want to see the house started."
"Jeremy's really going," Margery told them; but it was no news.
Indeed his mother knew more than she.
"I won't speak about the past," she began, "though I haven't heard
anybody say that Jeremy failed as huckster, or Jane to market. But
now, with a family on the way, the circumstances are changed. So
like as not Jeremy will come into Brent and take over Michael Catts'
little business--the green-grocer's."
"Leave Owley Cot?"
"Yes. It hasn't suited him too well and he's a good bit cut off from
religion up there."
"What changes!" murmured Margery. "Jacob says that Joe Elvin is
going down hill rather quick. His health's giving out. In fact
Jacob's beginning to look round already for a new tenant, if it must
be. Just now we've got distemper in the kennels and he's lost some
valuable young dogs."
"I hope he's taking it in a Christian spirit then," answered Judith.
"He's had an amazing deal of good fortune in his time, by the will of
God, and such men are often a great disappointment under affliction."
"He's vexed, of course, but he doesn't whine about it. You'll never
see him cry out if he's hurt."
"His steady luck has not hurt Jacob, as luck is apt to do," said
Barlow. "He keeps an even front."
"But he's not sound and commits himself to a very doubtful thought
sometimes," replied Mrs. Huxam. "A jealous God reads every heart,
Margery, and won't suffer no looseness in matters of doctrine."
"He does nothing but good--a very honourable and upright man, and
more than that," said Margery. "You must be all right if you make
the world happier than you find it."
"It is your place to stand up for him," returned Judith, "and, in
reason, a wife ought to say the best she knows of her husband; but
actions may spring from all sorts of motives. Good actions may arise
from bad motives, owing to the ignorance and also the devious cunning
of men and women. All we've got to cling to is the Light, and if a
man shows the Light doubtfully, then, however he may seem to shine,
we can't be sure of him."
Margery had concealed from her parents the gap that existed in
understanding between Jacob and herself. Her father cordially
approved of him; her mother had ever expressed herself as uncertain.
Now her daughter declared surprise at this fact.
"I've always got to champion Jacob against you," she said. "But I
should have thought you'd have been the first to see his qualities.
He's like you in a way--don't care for pleasure, or company, and
keeps a guard over his lips, and works morning, noon and night. If
Jeremy had been like that----"
Mrs. Huxam was not annoyed.
"You can't see all round the human character as I can, Margery," she
answered, "and I don't blame you, because such a bird's-eye view only
comes with years, and between husband and wife it often never comes
at all. What the deep eye looks to is the foundations. In Jeremy's
case I laid the foundation, being my work as his mother. And in your
case I laid the foundation also. Jeremy has a character that you
might call weak, and without religion he would very likely have
brought our grey hairs with sorrow to the grave--if I was that sort
of woman, which I am not. But the foundation is there, and as for
the building, though it ain't very grand to the eye yet, that's the
Lord's business. Jacob puts up a finer show, being a man with
money-making gifts and experience; but where the foundations are
doubtful, who can say what may happen if a shock comes?"
"I wouldn't call his foundations doubtful," answered Margery. "I
should say his foundations were the strongest part about him. Not
that I've ever seen them. Nobody has. Jeremy, for all his weakness
and instinct for change, gets more out of life than Jacob. Jacob
misses a lot by his nature."
"If he misses anything that he'd be the better for having, be sure
there's a reason," asserted Judith. "Haven't I seen it thousands of
times? Don't ninety-nine men and women out of a hundred miss a lot,
just because the one thing needful--the absolute trust and certainty
that all is for the best--be denied them?"
"He doesn't grant that all's for the best, because he doesn't think
or feel so," answered Margery.
"There you are then! That's weak faith. That's what I'm telling
you. The man who pits his opinions against God and doubts of the
righteous fate of the world is next door to a lost man himself."
"He's talked of these things," answered Jacob's wife, "for I've
challenged him sometimes and said how I believe, with you, that
nothing happens that's not ordained to happen. But he won't grant
that. He holds much evil happens that we might escape, if men were
wiser and more patient and reasonable. He's great on reason."
"I'm sorry to hear it," replied Judith. "Reason is well known for a
very faulty shift and the play-ground of the devil. Reason don't
save no souls, but it damns a parlous number, and I wish I could feel
a lot surer than I do where Jacob will spend his eternity."
Margery was not moved at this dreadful suspicion.
"Goodness is goodness and can't be badness," she said, "and goodness
is rewarded. Jacob says religion can't alter your instincts, or your
nature; and if you're the fidgety, anxious sort, belief in the
Almighty won't make you less so. You may know perfectly well that
you ought to trust, like a lamb trusts its mother; but Jacob says you
can't always keep your mind fixed on God, when it's full to bursting
with a wife and children. I know what he means well enough."
"Do you? Then I'm cruel sorry to hear it," answered Judith, who was
much perturbed. "What's religion for but to alter your instincts and
your wretched nature? If I thought that man was weakening your faith
by a hair's breadth, or casting the shadow of danger over your soul,
I'd call upon you on my knees to leave him."
Then Barlow spoke, calmed his wife and endeavoured to lighten the
gravity of the conversation.
"Let it be, Judy, and use your brains," he began. "We all very well
know what a difficult thing it is to say what we mean, for words beat
their makers, time and again, and half the trouble in the world, so
parson tells me, was begot at Babel. And I doubt not that what
Margery says Jacob told her, wasn't exactly what Jacob thought he'd
told her. Plain mouth-speech is a very hard thing to reach, and if
we, who keep a shop, don't know it, who should?"
"He's very sparing of words at all times," added Margery.
"Jacob," continued Barlow, "is hard in some things and silly soft in
others. But every man that was ever born does silly things in a
woman's opinion, off and on. And women have got their own
silliness--to the male's eye. Not you, Judith, but the race in
general. Women drive men wild sometimes, and we drive them wild.
The difference is that generally they tell us if we disagree with
them, and we ain't so open."
"That's true," admitted Margery. "And nought, I'm sure, vexes a
woman more than to know she's going wrong and not be told how."
When Judith had gone to put on her bonnet for chapel, Margery
returned to the subject of the villa residence and cheered her father
up.
"I want to see you lay the foundation brick," she said, "and I hope
you will start next spring if not sooner. It's high time you and
mother slacked off."
"It is," he answered, "and I can see myself doing it; but I can't see
her."
Avis and John Henry returned at this hour and presently, leaving Mr.
Huxam behind to take care of his chest, they proceeded to the temple
of the Chosen Few. Jeremy appeared with Jane, and Adam Winter and
his aunt were also among the small congregation. Margery felt glad
to see Miss Winter, for she now liked better to speak with Adam when
another was present. For pride, she had not mentioned past events to
him, and the man guessed not that he had ever won a harsh word or
thought from Margery's husband behind his back.
There was a measure of truth in Barlow Huxam's argument, for
Bullstone sometimes missed conveying the warmth he felt, from
frugality of spoken words. His deeds atoned in the judgment of most
men and women, since speech conveys no special unction to bucolic
minds. It is only the urban populations, fed from youth upon the
newspaper, that are so easily hoodwinked by volubility.
Leaving her mother refreshed by devotion, Margery joined Amelia
Winter on the homeward tramp to Shipley, Adam asked after the illness
in the kennels and expressed regret at it. Then Margery inquired for
Sammy, who had cut his leg when mowing fern.
"He's all right," answered Samuel's aunt; "but him being laid by for
ten days opened our eyes to his usefulness, didn't it, Adam? Take
the bull alone. 'Turk' is a queer-tempered party, and nobody else
will dare face him; but along with Sammy he's a proper lamb. My
nephew orders him about like as if he was a dog, and will even dare
to hit him over the nose if he's cranky."
"A very queer truth," admitted Adam. "There's something in Samuel
that gets over 'Turk.' They understand each other. We're going to
show the bull at Brent Fair presently, and if he falls short of a
prize, I don't know what my brother will do--talk to the judges I
expect!"
The famous Pony Fair was near at hand and, on the occasion of this
annual revel, not only ponies, but sheep and cattle came to Brent.
"No chance of your master going to the revel I suppose?" asked Adam.
"Never shows himself at such times."
"I wish he did," answered Margery. "I'm always on at him to have a
bit of fun when it offers, which isn't often. But pleasuring's pain
to him."
"Get's his pleasure different. I met Benny up over, and he says when
he's off next year, Mr. Bullstone will very like take on
Huntingdon--for his health."
"For his mind's health," answered she, not sorry to breathe her
grievance. "He's such a lover of peace that he feels a day or two up
there sometimes--beyond sight and sound of his fellow-creatures and
the fret of his family--would do his tormented mind a lot of good."
"Fancy! 'The fret of his family'--eh? Takes every sort to make a
world, no doubt, and the sort that knows its own luck is the rarest
of all."
"I understand, though I don't share, his feeling," explained Margery,
who instantly supported Jacob when any other questioned his manner of
life. "It's the contrast from the racket and din of home. You're a
bachelor and seem like to stop one, so you don't know and never will
know what a noisy, bustling house with childer in it exactly means.
But to a thinker, like Jacob, there comes a craving to get out of
reach of real life sometimes. A spell of silence and his own company
always put him in a good mood. He'll go off for the day when he can,
on some pretext, but I know it means a day of solitude. Solitude
doesn't mean loneliness to him. It's a craving, like some men crave
for drink."
"You're not the same though?"
"Not I. I love company and pleasant faces and the news. I shall be
at the fair with my children."
"I'm fond of a rally myself. You'll drop on very nice people at them
times--folk you only see once a year, very like, and yet are glad to
call friends. Pony Fair's a great place for meeting such. Sammy's
for it, too, though you wouldn't think so. And never takes a drop
too much, if he's got animals to look after. So I always see that he
has. But if he's a free man with no responsibility, then he'll let
himself go and get blind in no time."
Elsewhere the children discussed a more serious subject. They had
heard a stern discourse and considered it.
"I can stand hell better in cold weather than hot," said John Henry.
"Makes you sweat in the summer, but warms you when it's frosty."
"You didn't ought to say that, did he, Miss Winter?" asked Avis; then
she explained John Henry's view to Amelia.
"Let hell alone," answered the old woman. "Remember there is such a
place and just keep it at the back of your mind--same as we always
keep a kitchen at the back of the house. Heaven's your eternal home
well hope. Be you going to the revel?"
"All of us but father," said Avis. "He won't go, but mother's taking
us."
"You'll have a nice swing in the 'roundabouts' I expect."
"I shan't," said John Henry. "I'm going to learn about the cattle;
so's Robert Elvin from Owley. He's older than me, but he don't know
a bit more about farming than what I do, though he's been at it near
two year."
"Don't you puff yourself up, John Henry," warned Amelia. "You hear
my nephew, Mr. Winter. He's been a farmer for five and twenty years,
and yet he'll tell you there's always more and more to learn."
"That's one for you, John Henry," said Avis.
The boy considered what to reply. He suffered reproof from men, but
hated it from women.
"I only said that Bob Elvin didn't know more than me. I didn't puff
myself up," he answered, "and if I've still got a lot to know when
I'm so old as Mr. Winter, then I shan't be much of a farmer."
"Time and human wisdom don't stand still," explained Amelia.
"There's always a lot left to know about everything, because larning
increases and new-fangled things are always coming to the top. I
dare say pigs will fly some day. If you ever catch yourself thinking
you know all there is to farming, John Henry, then you'll do very
well to be frightened, for that'll mean you're going to get left."
"I ain't afeared I'll get left, Miss Winter," he answered stoutly.
The fair continued to be matter for general conversation. Amelia
alone was not going.
"Too old," she said. "Half the pleasure of a revel be to know you
ain't coming home to an empty house and the fire out."
"You'd better keep Jacob company," advised Margery. "I'm always
wanting him to find new friends, because the old ones drop off so."
"There's no doubt Jacob's first friend is that ancient man, Billy
Marydrew. And a very companionable, cheerful old bird he is. But
he's up home eighty, I believe, and have got to go pretty soon,"
replied Adam.
"Yes," admitted Margery. "He's my husband's dearest friend, I do
think--except one. Funny he should have one at both ends of life."
"The other being?" asked Adam.
"Why, his own youngest--Auna."
"And a very dear, dinky child to have for a friend," admitted Amelia
Winter. "But in my experience it ban't wise for a man to fasten on
his darter, specially if she's going to grow into a pretty woman
before you can look round; for then comes love and good-bye. A maid
shares her heart with her father only till the lover comes."
They parted at the gate of Shipley Farm and Margery followed her boy
and girl, who had run forward. It was dusk and still. Already the
owls hooted from the fir wood.