Chapter IX: The Gift

Margery, on her way to the post-office, called upon her brother at the green-grocer's. Jane and he had settled in and Jeremy declared that the future might, at last, be regarded as cloudless.

"I've come into my kingdom," he said. "I find I've got a feeling and understanding for fruit and vegetables you wouldn't believe. It was hid in me all these years, waiting to get its chance. Mother says I dress a window better far than anybody she's known. I've got a great instinct for a pattern, Margery, and a pattern always makes an appeal to the human eye. You can catch almost any sort of mind with a pattern, and what better for patterns than apples and oranges and so on?"

The end of the year was come and Jeremy had excelled himself with a design of fruit and brussel sprouts. On the green ground he had arranged 'A Happy Christmas' in yellow bananas--magnificent, but not business in the opinion of experts.

Her brother once more showed Margery the wonders of the shop, and Jane explained the working of the till, which interested her most.

"Once a week I go to Plymouth to buy choice fruits," explained Jeremy, "but, at this time of the year, there's very little demand for the highest things."

"Or at any time in a place this size," said Jane. "We've had pineapples and other curiosities go bad on our hands, and I pray he won't bring any more back, because you can't return 'em when they're past their prime, which very soon happens to 'em."

"These are the higher touches and flourishes you may say," explained Jeremy. "The solid backbone is greens and roots, including potatoes. Did the notice over the shop strike you? Just 'J. Huxam' in chocolate and gold?"

"Shall you sell poultry?" asked Margery, and Jane hoped they might do so.

"A little game also," said her husband. "There's nothing interests the better class of customers more than a good row of pheasants, or a hare or two. But that's for the future. For the present I'm wanting to make it known that my quality in fruit and vegetables is far ahead of the old shop. Then, again, it's wonderful what you can do selling coals and coke on a small scale to the cottages. I might develop in that direction--of course not myself, but employing a staff."

It had always been Jeremy's ambition to employ a staff.

Jacob Bullstone met his wife presently by appointment at the shop, and Margery made her Christmas purchases. It was also understood that Jacob conveyed a couple of tons of potatoes to his brother-in-law. The crop had been so large at Red House that Jacob found himself with more than he would need and he now offered the business of selling his surplus to his wife's brother. Jeremy was delighted and engaged to get a price high above that of the wholesale markets.

"I'm working up a class of customer who can be trusted to pay for the best, which is all they want. Such people are only to be got by accident, and I catch 'em with patterns. They are passing by perhaps, and never thinking of the class of fruit I sell, when they just glance in, expecting to see the usual dreary piles of apples and mounds of nuts and so on; but instead--well, you've only got to look in the window yourself. And I change it all every second or third day. Don't I, Jane? I've got a mind for designing really, and I feel sometimes it's a thousand pities I wasn't taught the designer's art."

Customers interrupted Jeremy and they left him for the post-office. Jacob came to do an act of kindness and was interested to hear how his father-in-law would take it, He called it a 'Christmas box' and, under that name, he had offered Barlow an acre of good land with a road frontage, a quarter of a mile north of the railway station. It was a site in every way worthy of the habitation Mr. Huxam proposed to erect during the following spring.

He had not seen Jacob since receiving this gift by letter, and now he declared himself as absolutely unable to accept anything so great.

"We all know you for a very generous man," said Barlow, "and this I'll so far meet you as to do: I'll pay what you paid for the land, which still leaves me and my wife very much in your debt. Because the ground to-day is worth double what you spent upon it ten years ago."

Jacob, however, would not budge.

"It's to be all, or none," he said. "You must take my gift my way--that I insist. Only a small mind grudges to receive gifts, and I know you're large minded enough for anything."

"I am," confessed Barlow. "As I said to Judy when your letter came, 'this is the sort of seemly act which may well happen between a man and his son-in-law.' And needless to say that all we have, my wife and me, will go to Jeremy and Margery and their children, when we have no more need for it. In this case, if it is to go through, we should leave the villa residence to Margery."

"That's your affair," answered Jacob. "It's an idea altogether outside my scheme of things, though perhaps not hers."

Then Mrs. Huxam appeared. She was not emotional on the subject of the land, but dwelt on other aspects of the new house and the great changes entailed by retirement. Then Margery brought her back to the gift and insisted on some expression concerning it. Judith, however, proved exceedingly dry. She was consistent in her famous conviction: that nothing happens outside the purpose of an all-seeing and all-loving Creator.

"I am quite pleased about it," she said. "When the Lord wills a thing, it's always a great joy to weak, human nature if they thing appeals to us and we can accept it in a humble, human spirit without having to call upon faith. As a rule, when God acts nowadays, so faulty have our natures grown to be, that it generally demands great trust and faith to see He is right; but when I heard Jacob had given us that parcel of nice, sloping land under the plantations, I said, 'Good!' I was glad for my husband, but I was still gladder for Jacob, because we all know it's more blessed to give than receive. We envy his power of giving and hope to be spared to practise it. Meanwhile, to receive is very good discipline for my husband and me."

After supper Jacob and his father-in-law were left alone to discuss the ground, and Barlow brought out the plans of the new house. He manifested a larger sense of obligation than Judith; indeed he apologised for her.

"You mustn't take it in bad part," he said. "My wife has such an amazing sense of what's right, and such a lofty idea of human duty, that it never surprises her when people do good and kind things. It's a compliment to human nature, in a way, that she can see such virtue displayed without showing surprise. If you was a different sort of man, then, no doubt, she'd have been struck dumb with wonder and hesitated to take the gift, fearing some hidden motive for it; but with you it's all plain sailing and aboveboard and in your character. You can't get a grape from a thorn, and if a thorn offers you a grape, 'tis best to think twice before you taste it. And so, in a word, the way my wife have taken this is really a compliment to you, and between me and my valued son-in-law there's no question at all about the gift hurting. In fact that's nonsense."

"You're a much cleverer man than you think you are, Barlow," answered Jacob. "You're so often called upon to smooth places left rough by your high-minded wife, that you do it like second nature. But it argues great judgment and skill in you."

Mr. Huxam was pleased at this praise.

"I believe I am a clever man in my small way," he admitted. "Judy sees it, too; but she's doubtful if it's a virtue or a vice. My best art is to get round sharp corners. It's a very useful gift in a shop, and in life in general. For that matter life itself is a shop, Jacob. We all bring our small wares to market, and some get a purchaser and some never do. What think you of Jeremy's new venture? He says it's been the dream of his life to have a fruit shop. But he's said that before about everything that offered."

"I envy him his skill to win people," answered Jacob; "and it's a good thing he's got that skill, because he'll always want his fellow-creatures to help him fall light."

"I'm afraid so. I understand him better than his mother, though don't you repeat it. She reckons that once Jeremy's in his proper notch, we shall have a very cheering experience; and she also knows that the virtuous man never is called to beg his bread. That's all right; but Jeremy's gifts ain't the sort that'll ever find butter. He's a very ornamental sort of person; but ornament without usefulness is a vain thing."

Elsewhere Margery spoke with her mother and revealed a growing interest.

"Have you ever thought upon Robert Elvin, Joe's son, at Owley?" she asked.

"I have not," answered Judith. "Why should I think upon him? He comes in sometimes, on errands for his mother or father. Civil spoken and a good face."

"It will sound funny to your generation, but I reckon he's after Avis."

"They're children, Margery!"

"To you, yes; not quite to me; not at all to themselves. Bob is nearly nineteen and has done a man's work for a couple of years now, and Avis--she's old for her age too. She likes him."

"Chasten her then. She didn't ought to have an eye for a male for years yet."

"It's all very pretty and natural. She can't help it, and she don't know in the least what it means I expect. But he does. He's not a gadabout boy, or fond of the girls--quite the contrary; but he'll often come over of a Sunday to dinner now and--look at her. And Jacob likes him. He likes his nature. I wouldn't say but that Bob Elvin suits him better, in a manner of speaking, than his own sons."

"If so, then a very wicked thing," answered Mrs. Huxam. "I trust you're wrong, Margery, because that would show something in Jacob that's contrary to religion. And when you see things contrary to religion, hope dies. And if you tell me he looks at another man's son more favourable than upon his own, then I little like it."

"It's nothing unnatural, mother. Bob's very quiet and attends to Jacob's every word. John Henry and Peter don't listen to him as close as they might. They're full of their own ideas; and Jacob doesn't pretend to be a farmer, though, of course, he knows all about it really. But he lets John Henry run on and never troubles much to contradict him. And Robert don't run on. He listens and says but little. He's anxious above his age, with the cares of the farm and a dying father. He's called to think of many things that my boys haven't got to think about. We cheer him up."

"There's nothing whatever to cast him down about his father," answered Judith. "That's a part of life we've all got to face; and if Joe Elvin is right with Christ, then to see him getting daily nearer his reward should be a good sight for a good son. It's only selfishness makes us mourn, just as half the big, costly marble stones in the churchyard are stuck up to ourselves rather than to the dead."

"Like will cleave to like, and his two sons aren't like Jacob very much. He loves them dearly, mother, and is proud of them; but he don't care to see any of us coming forward. He's sensitive and shrinking about his own. I never shall understand all there is to him and I won't pretend it. One thing is sure: he never wounds by intent, like most men do when they're angry. He never is angry outside. He has a sort of cold anger; but you can't always tell why, and he never lets you know why. Of course every man has got his own difficulties and the side he hides from his wife."

"Not at all," answered her mother. "Many men hide nothing, for the very good reason they've got nothing to hide; and many men hide nothing, for the very good reason they can't. Look at your father. Would I have stood secrets and 'cold anger' as you call it? I wouldn't stand hot anger, or any sort of anger; because well I know that he's got nothing to be angry about. For that matter to be angry at all is godless and means weak faith."

Margery had sometimes considered the wisdom of confiding her difficulties to Mrs. Huxam; but she had never done so. She was not proud for herself, but still felt very proud for Jacob; and to confess the truth would be to weaken him in her mother's eyes. In a sense she was glad that her husband could be jealous of her, since she supposed that such an emotion only existed in connection with very deep and passionate love; and if he had long since ceased to give any outward signs of such a love, (by sacrificing himself more to her reasonable tastes, for example) jealousy, she thought, must none the less prove that fierce affection still existed unseen. She, therefore, conscious of the baselessness of his error, troubled only occasionally about it and was wholly ignorant of its extent, of its formidable and invisible roots in his nature, ever twining and twisting deeper for their food, and finding it in his own imagination alone. So she kept dumb concerning her discomfort, and indeed, disregarded it, save at the fitful intervals when it was made manifest before her eyes. And she erred in supposing these almost childish irruptions sprang from no deep central flame. To her they were in a measure absurd, because she knew that they were founded upon nothing; but her error lay in ignorance of origins: she had never glimpsed the secret edifice that her husband had built--a house of dreams, but a house solid and real and full of awful shadows for him.

They walked home together presently and Margery told Jacob how greatly he had pleased her father.

"I know him so well," she said. "It moved him a great deal."

"It didn't move your mother, however."

"Yes it did; but you understand her way of looking at things--at everything that comes along."

"What did you think of the land regarded as discipline for them?"

"I thought it rather fine," said Margery. "It was so like mother. We can't appreciate the high, unchanging line she takes. It doesn't surprise her when men do generous things, any more than it surprises her when they do wicked things. That's her knowledge of human nature. And the pluck of her! How many are there who don't feel favours to be a bit of a nuisance; and how many have the courage to say so frankly?"

Jacob considered this.

"Wouldn't you have felt just the same, even if you weren't stern enough to say it?" she asked.

"Yes--I suppose I should."

"You may have the chance some day and find yourself in debt for gratitude."

"Gratitude should not be difficult, however."

"Why, I've heard you say yourself it's a terrible rare virtue! And you know, for no kind man has laid people under obligations oftener than you."

"I've never asked gratitude, Margery. The pleasure lies in doing a good turn."

"Very well then," she answered. "Remember your pleasure may be a sort of one-sided pain to the other party. Only with some people, of course. Some clatter enough gratitude I'm sure; but often the most grateful hide it. Mother's grateful enough. She knows what men can rise to, but she also knows how seldom they do. She never denies praise in the right quarter. Though she may not thank you, she'll thank God hearty enough, and no doubt say a prayer on your account also. The Chosen Few may not know everything there is to know; but they know it's difficult to be as generous as you; and when things like that happen, it cheers them, and they praise the Lord for letting His Light shine out so clear in a fellow-creature."

This pleased Jacob and he accepted it.

"Very good, Margery," he said. "I'm glad you said that. I thought something different. I thought gratitude depends on the giver as much as the gift, and I reckoned, because your mother doesn't like me, that she didn't like the land. But I see clearer now and have got you to thank."

"Mother does like most of you," answered his wife, "She likes you quite as well as you like her, Jacob."

Then they fell silent and his momentary warmth faded.