Chapter VII: Sunday

John Henry, Avis and their mother had come on a Sunday, to drink tea with Margery's parents and go to chapel afterwards.

There was trouble in the air; indeed Mr. Huxam, who happened to be ailing, declared that he never remembered so many problems demanding solution at one time. When he was indisposed, he always dwelt on the blessings of retirement and declared that the 'villa residence' he designed to build for his declining years should now be erected.

"I feel it borne in upon me very much of late that we ought to begin," he told Margery, and she agreed with him.

"Jacob's always saying you should start. Not a week ago he was telling me that his bit of land on the north side of the railway ought to suit you down to the ground."

"I've let the chance slip," declared Barlow, coughing and patting his chest. "If I'd been awake, I should have purchased a site ten years ago; but what with one thing and another--chiefly Jeremy--I never seemed to have the necessary dollop of money."

"It wasn't that," argued Mrs. Huxam. "Jeremy, though he hasn't found the exact work yet, can't be said to have cost much in money, if he has in thought. I always warned against looking too far ahead touching the villa residence. But now I do think the time has come."

"'Peace with honour' is what you and me have a right to," answered Barlow, "and if Jacob, among his possessions down this way, has got an acre or thereabout, to please your mother, Margery, so much the better. I want to see the house started."

"Jeremy's really going," Margery told them; but it was no news. Indeed his mother knew more than she.

"I won't speak about the past," she began, "though I haven't heard anybody say that Jeremy failed as huckster, or Jane to market. But now, with a family on the way, the circumstances are changed. So like as not Jeremy will come into Brent and take over Michael Catts' little business--the green-grocer's."

"Leave Owley Cot?"

"Yes. It hasn't suited him too well and he's a good bit cut off from religion up there."

"What changes!" murmured Margery. "Jacob says that Joe Elvin is going down hill rather quick. His health's giving out. In fact Jacob's beginning to look round already for a new tenant, if it must be. Just now we've got distemper in the kennels and he's lost some valuable young dogs."

"I hope he's taking it in a Christian spirit then," answered Judith. "He's had an amazing deal of good fortune in his time, by the will of God, and such men are often a great disappointment under affliction."

"He's vexed, of course, but he doesn't whine about it. You'll never see him cry out if he's hurt."

"His steady luck has not hurt Jacob, as luck is apt to do," said Barlow. "He keeps an even front."

"But he's not sound and commits himself to a very doubtful thought sometimes," replied Mrs. Huxam. "A jealous God reads every heart, Margery, and won't suffer no looseness in matters of doctrine."

"He does nothing but good--a very honourable and upright man, and more than that," said Margery. "You must be all right if you make the world happier than you find it."

"It is your place to stand up for him," returned Judith, "and, in reason, a wife ought to say the best she knows of her husband; but actions may spring from all sorts of motives. Good actions may arise from bad motives, owing to the ignorance and also the devious cunning of men and women. All we've got to cling to is the Light, and if a man shows the Light doubtfully, then, however he may seem to shine, we can't be sure of him."

Margery had concealed from her parents the gap that existed in understanding between Jacob and herself. Her father cordially approved of him; her mother had ever expressed herself as uncertain. Now her daughter declared surprise at this fact.

"I've always got to champion Jacob against you," she said. "But I should have thought you'd have been the first to see his qualities. He's like you in a way--don't care for pleasure, or company, and keeps a guard over his lips, and works morning, noon and night. If Jeremy had been like that----"

Mrs. Huxam was not annoyed.

"You can't see all round the human character as I can, Margery," she answered, "and I don't blame you, because such a bird's-eye view only comes with years, and between husband and wife it often never comes at all. What the deep eye looks to is the foundations. In Jeremy's case I laid the foundation, being my work as his mother. And in your case I laid the foundation also. Jeremy has a character that you might call weak, and without religion he would very likely have brought our grey hairs with sorrow to the grave--if I was that sort of woman, which I am not. But the foundation is there, and as for the building, though it ain't very grand to the eye yet, that's the Lord's business. Jacob puts up a finer show, being a man with money-making gifts and experience; but where the foundations are doubtful, who can say what may happen if a shock comes?"

"I wouldn't call his foundations doubtful," answered Margery. "I should say his foundations were the strongest part about him. Not that I've ever seen them. Nobody has. Jeremy, for all his weakness and instinct for change, gets more out of life than Jacob. Jacob misses a lot by his nature."

"If he misses anything that he'd be the better for having, be sure there's a reason," asserted Judith. "Haven't I seen it thousands of times? Don't ninety-nine men and women out of a hundred miss a lot, just because the one thing needful--the absolute trust and certainty that all is for the best--be denied them?"

"He doesn't grant that all's for the best, because he doesn't think or feel so," answered Margery.

"There you are then! That's weak faith. That's what I'm telling you. The man who pits his opinions against God and doubts of the righteous fate of the world is next door to a lost man himself."

"He's talked of these things," answered Jacob's wife, "for I've challenged him sometimes and said how I believe, with you, that nothing happens that's not ordained to happen. But he won't grant that. He holds much evil happens that we might escape, if men were wiser and more patient and reasonable. He's great on reason."

"I'm sorry to hear it," replied Judith. "Reason is well known for a very faulty shift and the play-ground of the devil. Reason don't save no souls, but it damns a parlous number, and I wish I could feel a lot surer than I do where Jacob will spend his eternity."

Margery was not moved at this dreadful suspicion.

"Goodness is goodness and can't be badness," she said, "and goodness is rewarded. Jacob says religion can't alter your instincts, or your nature; and if you're the fidgety, anxious sort, belief in the Almighty won't make you less so. You may know perfectly well that you ought to trust, like a lamb trusts its mother; but Jacob says you can't always keep your mind fixed on God, when it's full to bursting with a wife and children. I know what he means well enough."

"Do you? Then I'm cruel sorry to hear it," answered Judith, who was much perturbed. "What's religion for but to alter your instincts and your wretched nature? If I thought that man was weakening your faith by a hair's breadth, or casting the shadow of danger over your soul, I'd call upon you on my knees to leave him."

Then Barlow spoke, calmed his wife and endeavoured to lighten the gravity of the conversation.

"Let it be, Judy, and use your brains," he began. "We all very well know what a difficult thing it is to say what we mean, for words beat their makers, time and again, and half the trouble in the world, so parson tells me, was begot at Babel. And I doubt not that what Margery says Jacob told her, wasn't exactly what Jacob thought he'd told her. Plain mouth-speech is a very hard thing to reach, and if we, who keep a shop, don't know it, who should?"

"He's very sparing of words at all times," added Margery.

"Jacob," continued Barlow, "is hard in some things and silly soft in others. But every man that was ever born does silly things in a woman's opinion, off and on. And women have got their own silliness--to the male's eye. Not you, Judith, but the race in general. Women drive men wild sometimes, and we drive them wild. The difference is that generally they tell us if we disagree with them, and we ain't so open."

"That's true," admitted Margery. "And nought, I'm sure, vexes a woman more than to know she's going wrong and not be told how."

When Judith had gone to put on her bonnet for chapel, Margery returned to the subject of the villa residence and cheered her father up.

"I want to see you lay the foundation brick," she said, "and I hope you will start next spring if not sooner. It's high time you and mother slacked off."

"It is," he answered, "and I can see myself doing it; but I can't see her."

Avis and John Henry returned at this hour and presently, leaving Mr. Huxam behind to take care of his chest, they proceeded to the temple of the Chosen Few. Jeremy appeared with Jane, and Adam Winter and his aunt were also among the small congregation. Margery felt glad to see Miss Winter, for she now liked better to speak with Adam when another was present. For pride, she had not mentioned past events to him, and the man guessed not that he had ever won a harsh word or thought from Margery's husband behind his back.

There was a measure of truth in Barlow Huxam's argument, for Bullstone sometimes missed conveying the warmth he felt, from frugality of spoken words. His deeds atoned in the judgment of most men and women, since speech conveys no special unction to bucolic minds. It is only the urban populations, fed from youth upon the newspaper, that are so easily hoodwinked by volubility.

Leaving her mother refreshed by devotion, Margery joined Amelia Winter on the homeward tramp to Shipley, Adam asked after the illness in the kennels and expressed regret at it. Then Margery inquired for Sammy, who had cut his leg when mowing fern.

"He's all right," answered Samuel's aunt; "but him being laid by for ten days opened our eyes to his usefulness, didn't it, Adam? Take the bull alone. 'Turk' is a queer-tempered party, and nobody else will dare face him; but along with Sammy he's a proper lamb. My nephew orders him about like as if he was a dog, and will even dare to hit him over the nose if he's cranky."

"A very queer truth," admitted Adam. "There's something in Samuel that gets over 'Turk.' They understand each other. We're going to show the bull at Brent Fair presently, and if he falls short of a prize, I don't know what my brother will do--talk to the judges I expect!"

The famous Pony Fair was near at hand and, on the occasion of this annual revel, not only ponies, but sheep and cattle came to Brent.

"No chance of your master going to the revel I suppose?" asked Adam. "Never shows himself at such times."

"I wish he did," answered Margery. "I'm always on at him to have a bit of fun when it offers, which isn't often. But pleasuring's pain to him."

"Get's his pleasure different. I met Benny up over, and he says when he's off next year, Mr. Bullstone will very like take on Huntingdon--for his health."

"For his mind's health," answered she, not sorry to breathe her grievance. "He's such a lover of peace that he feels a day or two up there sometimes--beyond sight and sound of his fellow-creatures and the fret of his family--would do his tormented mind a lot of good."

"Fancy! 'The fret of his family'--eh? Takes every sort to make a world, no doubt, and the sort that knows its own luck is the rarest of all."

"I understand, though I don't share, his feeling," explained Margery, who instantly supported Jacob when any other questioned his manner of life. "It's the contrast from the racket and din of home. You're a bachelor and seem like to stop one, so you don't know and never will know what a noisy, bustling house with childer in it exactly means. But to a thinker, like Jacob, there comes a craving to get out of reach of real life sometimes. A spell of silence and his own company always put him in a good mood. He'll go off for the day when he can, on some pretext, but I know it means a day of solitude. Solitude doesn't mean loneliness to him. It's a craving, like some men crave for drink."

"You're not the same though?"

"Not I. I love company and pleasant faces and the news. I shall be at the fair with my children."

"I'm fond of a rally myself. You'll drop on very nice people at them times--folk you only see once a year, very like, and yet are glad to call friends. Pony Fair's a great place for meeting such. Sammy's for it, too, though you wouldn't think so. And never takes a drop too much, if he's got animals to look after. So I always see that he has. But if he's a free man with no responsibility, then he'll let himself go and get blind in no time."

Elsewhere the children discussed a more serious subject. They had heard a stern discourse and considered it.

"I can stand hell better in cold weather than hot," said John Henry. "Makes you sweat in the summer, but warms you when it's frosty."

"You didn't ought to say that, did he, Miss Winter?" asked Avis; then she explained John Henry's view to Amelia.

"Let hell alone," answered the old woman. "Remember there is such a place and just keep it at the back of your mind--same as we always keep a kitchen at the back of the house. Heaven's your eternal home well hope. Be you going to the revel?"

"All of us but father," said Avis. "He won't go, but mother's taking us."

"You'll have a nice swing in the 'roundabouts' I expect."

"I shan't," said John Henry. "I'm going to learn about the cattle; so's Robert Elvin from Owley. He's older than me, but he don't know a bit more about farming than what I do, though he's been at it near two year."

"Don't you puff yourself up, John Henry," warned Amelia. "You hear my nephew, Mr. Winter. He's been a farmer for five and twenty years, and yet he'll tell you there's always more and more to learn."

"That's one for you, John Henry," said Avis.

The boy considered what to reply. He suffered reproof from men, but hated it from women.

"I only said that Bob Elvin didn't know more than me. I didn't puff myself up," he answered, "and if I've still got a lot to know when I'm so old as Mr. Winter, then I shan't be much of a farmer."

"Time and human wisdom don't stand still," explained Amelia. "There's always a lot left to know about everything, because larning increases and new-fangled things are always coming to the top. I dare say pigs will fly some day. If you ever catch yourself thinking you know all there is to farming, John Henry, then you'll do very well to be frightened, for that'll mean you're going to get left."

"I ain't afeared I'll get left, Miss Winter," he answered stoutly.

The fair continued to be matter for general conversation. Amelia alone was not going.

"Too old," she said. "Half the pleasure of a revel be to know you ain't coming home to an empty house and the fire out."

"You'd better keep Jacob company," advised Margery. "I'm always wanting him to find new friends, because the old ones drop off so."

"There's no doubt Jacob's first friend is that ancient man, Billy Marydrew. And a very companionable, cheerful old bird he is. But he's up home eighty, I believe, and have got to go pretty soon," replied Adam.

"Yes," admitted Margery. "He's my husband's dearest friend, I do think--except one. Funny he should have one at both ends of life."

"The other being?" asked Adam.

"Why, his own youngest--Auna."

"And a very dear, dinky child to have for a friend," admitted Amelia Winter. "But in my experience it ban't wise for a man to fasten on his darter, specially if she's going to grow into a pretty woman before you can look round; for then comes love and good-bye. A maid shares her heart with her father only till the lover comes."

They parted at the gate of Shipley Farm and Margery followed her boy and girl, who had run forward. It was dusk and still. Already the owls hooted from the fir wood.