but by the Evil One, who's often allowed to speak through our human
lips, that she wanted to go back to Red House and couldn't; and she
told you to tell your father that."
"So she did; and so I shall," answered Auna firmly.
"So you must not; that's why I was sent to overhear the fatal words
and save you from repeating them to your father."
"I promised to, because mother thought it would make father happier;
and so it will, granny; oh, it will do that when he knows."
"You promised, because you knew not why you promised, or who you
promised. But you are not going to keep your promise, because to
keep it would be threatening new danger to your mother's soul. A
soul's never safe till it's out of the body, Auna. Always remember
that. Many and many a soul has been lost on a death-bed, where the
devil's grabbed them at the last moment."
"How would it hurt dear mother's soul to know that father was a
little happier, granny?"
"It hurts your mother's soul to think on your father at all. I'm not
your father's judge, and nothing that your mother, or anybody else,
can do will alter the wages of such sins as his. And the way you act
about your father is a very great sorrow to all of us; for you've
been taught to know far better. But what matters now is that for
your mother's sake--your dying mother's sake, Auna--he must not know
what she said. Your mother's soul it may mean, for God wills that a
soul shall hang on a thread above the bottomless pit sometimes; and
such a little thing as a child's hand may push it down. Therefore
the man must never know that your mother wanted to see him."
"Why not?" asked Auna. "How will it be bad for dear mother's soul
that she's made poor father a little bit happier? Hasn't he had
enough to bear?"
"You ask why. John Henry wouldn't ask why, nor yet Peter, nor Avis."
"I love my father a long sight better than they do; and I'm full of a
great wanting to make him happier; and so's mother--full of a great
wanting to do it too. And father's full of a cruel, fierce wanting
to make her a bit happier if only he could get to her. And if he
knew she was dying and longed to see him----"
Auna broke down and wept bitterly, while Mrs. Huxam considered. She
pretended to assume a situation not as yet attained.
"Don't cry, but do your duty like a good girl, and leave the rest in
Higher Hands, as we all must. There's a holy word that tells how a
'backbiting tongue hath cast out virtuous women, and deprived them of
their labours; and whoso harkeneth to it shall never find rest.'
That's what you are doing now, Auna, and neighbouring with one whose
sentence is known and understood. But your Saviour may rescue you
yet I hope. All you need to do now is to think on your poor, wronged
mother, who has been deprived of her labours and is going to die.
But she mustn't be robbed of her heavenly home as well--not by any
word of yours. And so you promise, on your word of honour before God
Almighty, not to tell your father, or any other living creature, what
you heard from mother's lips this morning."
Auna began to see the object of this solemn command.
"You think that father, knowing that, would dash to dear mother
willy-nilly?" she asked.
This, indeed, was the terror that now crowded close over Judith. She
spoke and thought with absolute sincerity, believing that any contact
with Jacob Bullstone now might largely endanger her daughter's hope
of salvation. Indeed she felt the peril to be terrific--a direct
encounter between herself and the Powers of Darkness. They were hard
at work, as she expected them to be. Even did Auna finally give her
word, such was the girl's apparent reaction to the influence of her
father, that Mrs. Huxam already looked ahead and planned the next
step. She was not going to trust her granddaughter in any case.
Auna at least perceived the immediate peril and her grandmother
answered her question.
"I fear it; for these awful threats are allowed by God," Judith
replied. "I think if your lost father was to hear this, a great and
terrible thing might happen, for he'd believe that it was your
mother's real voice, because his eyes are darkened to truth, and he'd
think this devil's message came from herself. The devil says that
the next best thing to getting your mother back to Red House is to
let your father know she wanted to come back. Therefore I'll beg you
this instant moment, Auna, to promise me before the great, living God
that you'll be dumb about it and not act the devil's messenger. Why
do you hesitate? What are you made of? Is your mother's soul
nothing to you?"
Judith went down on her knees and drew Auna beside her; but still the
girl did not speak. She had not the bent of mind to echo the
attitude of her grandmother, or respond to the awful convictions of
the elder. But she was impressed. She knew that her grandmother had
a deep knowledge of the next world, and she believed very firmly
indeed that there were such places as heaven and hell. The idea that
her mother might by the remotest possibility lose heaven, stung Auna
sharply. From sorrow and terror, she began to grow dazed at this
terrible glimpse into the snares that awaited even saintly souls.
Was it possible that not her sad-eyed mother, but a crafty fiend
lurking behind her pale lips, had said these things? For a moment
she forgot her father, and then, under the stressful words of Judith,
she promised not to tell him. But the very act of promising brought
him back to her. Whether a devil had spoken them or not, it was very
certain that the words she had heard from her mother would be of the
utmost consolation and comfort to her father. That Auna knew
exceedingly well; yet she had now promised; and she hated her
grandmother as her young heart had never before hated any living
thing.
Having sworn, she escaped without another word, and Judith perceiving
the girl's suffering and hearing the panting indignation that
followed her surrender, felt very far from certain that she would
keep her oath. She believed that, as surely as Jacob Bullstone heard
his wife had tried to come back to him, he would return to her and
force his way into her presence, with the strength of a madman if
need be; and she knew that between that inevitable sequel, with its
possible consequences for Margery, there stood only the exceeding
frail barrier of a wayward grandchild's promise. It was not enough
for any margin of security and every mental energy must now be poured
into the problem now confronting her--so Judith felt. She fell upon
her knees again and remained for half an hour as motionless as the
chair over which she bent. Then she rose, her mind affirmed and her
decision taken. She perceived that an issue so tremendous could not
be left to the doubtful honour of Auna, while she herself might take
more certain steps to protect her child.
And meantime the girl went home in deepest tribulation. She had
never lied, and for a long time her sorrow centred in the thought
that she had given a promise not possible to break. Once she stopped
and turned back, suddenly fired to see her grandmother again and take
back her oath. But she knew that would be vain. She had promised
and there could be no escape save through falsehood. Auna believed a
lie to be among the deepest of crimes; yet in half an hour she was
pursuing trains of thought that did not embrace her own soul's
safety, but only her parents. Her mind ran wholly on her father
first, and then upon her mother. A human instinct inclined her to
doubt whether the outlook in the next world was as dangerous as her
grandmother declared.
She hated going home at all now. She dawdled, wandered by the river,
felt her heart full of a great pity for her father that this most
precious information must be denied him.
"But of course it's no good telling dear father what the devil said,"
she reflected; and then, pursuing this melancholy thought, another
arose out of it and Auna sat by the stream and stayed her progress,
quite weighed down by an arrestive idea.
If the devil could talk through her dear mother's lips, then, surely,
nothing that anybody said was quite safe, for it followed that other
people might also be subjected to his dreadful cunning and innocently
voice his purpose. And if so, why not her grandmother as well as
anybody else? Evidently natural goodness could be no safeguard, for
she knew her mother to be as good as an angel in heaven. Her father
had said so a thousand times. Perhaps, indeed, thought Auna, the
devil delighted to make the most saintly people his mouthpiece. It
was such an added infamy as she could understand might well gratify
him. But, in that case, her grandmother was the least likely to
escape these awful attentions; and if the Evil One had been
whispering to Auna through her mother's lips, was it not possible,
nay probable, that he had also been speaking with the voice of Mrs.
Huxam? Then the human mind of her, quickened by love to deal in
sophistry, reflected on another argument. She had promised her
grandmother one thing; but not before she had promised her mother an
opposite thing. She could not, therefore, escape a lie. Only a
choice of lies awaited her in any case.
Auna rose and proceeded home. She suddenly remembered how Jacob was
waiting impatiently for news, and the question of the promise sank
into a minor matter before the immediate necessity to tell him her
mother was very ill. More than that Auna did not intend to say. She
was not going to speak of death, because she had a suspicion that her
grandmother had exaggerated the danger to frighten her and extort her
promise.
She told her father of the grave condition reported and he was deeply
perturbed. On the following day he visited the doctor with results
already chronicled, and Peter it was who during this morning went to
the post-office for news of Margery. He returned with the
information that she was about the same; and upon Auna asking him if
she was still so very white, Peter answered that she was. But later,
when she was alone with her brother in the evening, there came the
tremendous secret information that finally sent Auna in the small
hours of the next day to her father's room.
For Peter was no hand at secrets and confessed to Auna that he had
not seen their mother at all. His grandfather had bade him keep the
information to himself for the present; but none the less Peter told
Auna, commanding profound silence from her. Their mother had left
Brent.
"Grandmother's took her away for a change," explained Peter. "And
grandfather was awful down about it and in a proper fret. He says
that mother's soul have got to be saved, and he said now was the
appointed time. But where mother's been took to, to save her soul, I
don't know, and grandfather wouldn't tell me. And I swore I wouldn't
let it out; but it's so interesting I had to tell somebody. You
don't matter so long as father doesn't know; and if he did it's no
odds, I reckon, for he couldn't find her."
"You've told a lie, then," mused Auna, and her brother, somewhat
uneasy, began to argue the point; but she was not blaming him.
"Nothing ever happens that didn't ought, anyway," said Peter.
"Grandmother's told us that a million times, and it gets you round a
good few corners--lies included--to remember it."
"So it does," admitted Auna.
She took this great information to bed with her, and after many
sleepless hours could endure it no longer but crept to her father.
Jacob lay awake, for he suffered deep misery over his wife's illness,
while still far from any guess that extreme danger had developed. He
had discounted the conversation with Dr. Briggs, perceiving that the
medical man desired to hurt him, and he supposed that with time
Margery would grow stronger again, as she had after previous periods
of weakness. It was not yet a year since he had driven her away from
him, and he could not believe that she had sunk beyond hope of rising
again to health within so short a time. But troubled he was, for the
ultimate reconciliation seemed no nearer. Christmas approached and
he considered if at that date he might endeavour to break down the
opposition. His thoughts again turned to Jane and Jeremy, then to
Barlow Huxam himself. They had taken no notice of him at the
wedding, but he had caught Mr. Huxam's eye and, though the postmaster
looked away instantly, there had been no active enmity in his
countenance. Jacob thus dawdled on the brink of sleep, unhappy
enough, careworn enough, clinging to such shadowy hopes as rolled
from time to time uppermost in the welter of thought.
Then came Auna and he lighted his candle, tucked her into bed and
listened to her.
Once started the girl could not stop until she had told everything.
"Peter's lied and I'd sooner lie with Peter than keep my word with
grandmother, and if the devil can make one person talk, why shouldn't
he make another? And mother didn't sound in the least like the
devil, and grandmother did," wept Auna pursuing her own reflections,
but throwing no immediate light upon the reason for her nocturnal
visit.
Jacob calmed her down and so learned, little by little, what his
daughter desired him to know. It was impressed upon him that Margery
was actually at the point of death, that she had endeavoured to come
to him and failed, because Mrs. Huxam had prevented it; and that she
had now been taken away by her mother--but whither Peter was not told.
Leaving this cruel load of knowledge with her parent, and surprised
in her heart to find confession had so greatly calmed her spirit,
Auna went back to bed and soon slept peacefully; while Jacob rose and
dressed and prayed for the first glimmer of the day that would launch
him upon his quest. Enormous joy and profoundest grief clashed
within him. A great hope dawned with the morning: that he and
Margery might yet come together and that her body's salvation lay
with him.
No bird had broken silence and only the sleepless river purred under
a clear, white heaven as he rode out. Above him the morning star
shone, like a nail of gold on a field of ivory, and lifting his heart
to the hills round about him, Jacob found his mood calm, patient,
inexorably determined. He had never thought to wield such a weapon
as Auna had now put into his hands; but no adverse power could stand
against it, for it came direct from Margery herself. She had striven
to reach him and failed. Now it was his turn.
CHAPTER XIII
AT THE BARBICAN
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
CHAPTER I
'MOTHER'S STONE'
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.
CHAPTER XI
DRIVING IN THE PONIES
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.
CHAPTER III
THE PILGRIM FATHERS
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."
CHAPTER IV
EVENING STAR
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."
"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.
CHAPTER V
THE AUTUMN WIND
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.
CHAPTER VI
THE CHILDREN
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."