Chapter II: Verdict

Spring had conquered the river valleys and was climbing to hilltop again. Those old pack-horse tracks, where bygone generations of beast and man have gradually beaten the ways down and down, until they run lower than the fields and the woods about them--those deep, heat-holding Devonshire lanes were dowered with green once more and lush with young leaves and fronds. At their feet opened wood sanicle and dewy moschatel; crowning them the bluebells wove their purple and scattered their fragrance; beside rill and water-trough golden saxifrages shone, and the wood strawberry was in blossom with the violet.

Amelia, after noon on the day that followed Adam Winter's return from London, put on her sunbonnet and taking a man's walking-stick, which she had always used since her illness, crossed Shipley Bridge, passed over the green space beyond and presently reached the home of Mr. Marydrew. She knocked and he came to the door.

"Morning, Billy," she said. "I thought you'd like to know how it went. Adam got back last night and just catched a train after the verdict was given. T 'others come home to-day--so he believes."

"I needn't ax you for the verdict. I see it in your face," he answered. "But come in and tell me, what you've heard."

She sat by his kitchen fire presently and tapped the ground with her stick to drive home the points. He listened without comment.

"'Tis a triumph for the Chosen Few against the ways of darkness," declared Amelia, "and it went very much indeed as you said it would; and we won't talk about him, nor yet the proper wreck and ruin he's made of himself, because we shan't agree about that. But this is what happened. He said what his beastly thoughts made him believe was the truth; and his wife and my nephew told what was the real truth; and then his great weapon against them broke his own head. He gave out certain words, that he swore he'd heard Margery and Adam use in Adam's own bedroom by night. He'd heard Margery say, 'Quick, quick--there's a dear'; and he'd heard Adam say, 'Come, then--come.' And Margery had laughed."

Mr. Marydrew nodded.

"That was his tower of strength; but I always warned him he might have heard wrong, and that if they denied it there was only his word against theirs."

"They didn't deny it," answered Miss Winter. "Like the truthful creatures that they are, they admitted every syllable--and why not? For how were them words said do you suppose? The truth was this. Poor Samuel had been struck down by the illness just after Adam recovered. Margery had brought some nice food for me, and Adam had axed her to come upstairs and coax Samuel to take his medicine, which he refused to do. It was in Samuel's room and to Sammy himself, while she offered him his physic in a wine-glass, that Margery said, 'Quick, quick--there's a dear'; and it was to Samuel that Adam said, 'Come, then--come.' And then Samuel had bolted his physic and Margery had laughed at the face he pulled. And when they heard that explanation, the jurymen believed it. They had long got restive and weary of the whole piece of nonsense, and now they said they were satisfied, and Adam says that anybody could have seen, even before the jury spoke, that the judge was also terrible tired of it. The great judge summed up on the evidence that Bullstone brought forward, and that his wife and Adam explained, and he talked mighty straight to the petitioner--that's Jacob Bullstone--and told him that he'd let vain imaginings get hold on his mind and allowed his jealousy to poison his vision and his sense of justice and honour to his wife and to the co-respondent--that's my nephew. He said that in his opinion it was a dreadful thing that good money and good time should have been wasted over an obstinate and mistaken man's error. Then he talked to the jury, and presently the jury went out. But in three minutes by the clock they was back in court and dismissed the petition with costs, and all his fabric of lies and flimsy fancies was down in the dust. And that means Bullstone can't get no divorce, and Margery and Adam come out of it without a shadow upon 'em, and her hateful husband have got to pay the lawyers every penny and all the expenses. Because the judge agreed with the verdict, and went so far as to say that there were no grounds whatever for the suit, and that it should never have been brought. In a word right has triumphed, and I shall always think a lot more respectful of the Law than I have in the past."

"Costs follow the verdict, of course," answered Billy, after considering this matter in silence. "And what else follows it? We shall see as to that. Time must pass. A good flight of time be the only thing for all parties, Amelia."

"Time can do a lot," she said, "but it can't undo what's done; and if you think----"

"Let time pass," he repeated. "Only time will heal the sores."

"You needn't talk like that," said the old woman. "Adam haven't got no sores, except natural sorrow for an ill-used woman. For himself, nought can gall one like him. He's above the people's blame or praise, for when a man goes into a law court, and gets mauled by a paid lawyer, whose business be to show him in the wrong; and when he comes out of it with only the respect of his fellow-creatures, and never a stain on his life and history--then you may reckon he's a bit out of the common. And she was white as death in court and fainted once. And my nephew's terrible sorry for the woman, and sorry for himself, too, because he says he can never have any more to do with her. It's a natural instinct in him that they must be nought to each other after this; and I doubt not Margery will feel the same. Their lives can never touch in friendship no more, William."

"Very like they would both feel so," admitted Billy. "And what does Adam say about Jacob Bullstone?"

"He won't name him, and when Samuel cursed him and threatened great blows against him, Adam bade his brother be careful to do no evil. All he said was that Bullstone would suffer last and suffer longest."

"A very true saying, and your nephew be the wisest of all concerned," declared the old man. "For Adam this came as the greatest shock, because it burst upon him more unexpected and terrible than on the woman even. She knew her husband's weakness and, for brave pride, hid it from all eyes, including Adam's. And he will agree with me that 'time' is the only word."

"In your opinion it may be," answered Amelia; "but in the opinion of the Chosen Few, I reckon 'eternity' will be the only word. And don't you think, or dream, or tell Adam, or this fool, Bullstone, or anybody else, that time be going to soften it, because there's plenty of righteous people about as will take very good care that time does no such thing."

"That's what I'm afraid of," admitted Billy; "but don't you be one of them, my dear. If us would only let time, like patience, do her perfect work, wounds might often heal that never do; but no doubt a lot of godly folk won't be content to stand by and leave this pair in the hands of God."

"What God wills must happen," answered Amelia, "but you may bet your life, William, He won't will to bring them two together again; and nobody but a vain thinker and a man weak in faith would hope such a horror. However, you can very well leave Margery to her Maker and her mother; and as to her husband, if he was a man, he'd hang himself."

"Don't you be angry," urged Mr. Marydrew. "Your nephew have come out as he went in, without a shadow upon him. For the rest, don't you cast a stone. That ain't like you. Let charity conquer."

"You're his side we all know," answered Miss Winter; "and I'll give you a warning for yours. Don't let your sense of justice go down afore the wicked man. He'll gnash his teeth no doubt and wring his hands; but don't you try to come between him and his punishment, Billy, because you can't."

"True. I can't," he replied. "If you knew Bullstone like what I do, you'd have no fear he was going to escape anything."

Then Amelia astonished him by a penetration for which he had not given her credit. Her intuition may have sprung from anger--a fruitful source of bitter truth--but it threw a light upon what might presently happen, and William was not prepared, though much inclined, to contradict.

"You say that. But a woman always knows one side of men better than any man can, and old maid though I may be, I'll tell you this. Bullstone ain't the sort to lie in the dirt for his sins and scrape himself with potsherds. Don't you think that. He'll snatch at hope, like the drowning at a straw. He'll look at it all from his own point of view, as usual, and fifty to one he'll fool himself there's a way out. Yes--he won't see himself as all clean and honest men see him, William. He'll only see that his wife's a pure woman and that he was mistook to think her a whore. And what then? Have he got the decency to pour ashes on his head for shame, and slink away from the sight and sound of men? Not him! He'll say Margery's worthy of him, after all, and that he must have her home again. He'll expect presently to find her forgive him like the Christian she is, and it will be his fixed dream and hope to win her back at any cost--till he wakes from the dream and the hope dies. And not till then will his true punishment begin. That's Jacob Bullstone, and that's the man his wife knows, and we know, and you'll live to know. Far ways off what you pictured--eh?"

The ancient doubted.

"What you say about a woman knowing a side of man's mind that other men do not, be very likely true," he answered. "But I trust you will live to see yourself mistook in this matter. It's a great thought and you may be right; but if that happened, along with it would go a lot more that's in the man, which I know and no woman does. I can only say again, let time take charge, and I wish nobody else but time was going to have a hand in it."

While they talked, Adam Winter wandered, unseeing, among his sheep on the hill with his hands in his pockets and a sense of anticlimax in his soul. The excitement was ended. He had seen himself justified and cleared; he had seen an innocent woman pitied; and he had seen Bullstone confounded. Now he was in the midst of sweet things and breathing fresh air with the heights rolling before his eyes and the larks aloft. But no exhilaration, only a sense of sickness and misery hung over him. He, too, longed for the time to pass, that the sordid memories of the trial might grow fainter.

Elsewhere Jacob Bullstone travelled from London and sat wrapped in his thoughts. But they were no covering for him. They fled past in wild rags and tatters, as the steam across the train window; and he could not frame a consistent argument, or follow any line of reasoning. All was chaotic, confused, hurtling, and every thought lashed like a whip. He struggled against the rush of ideas as a man against a blinding storm. He could clutch at nothing for support; or perceive any steadfast glimpse through this welter of what the future held in store. He was too astonished to suffer much as yet, save unconsciously, as an animal suffers. The reality, as it had developed in a law court, took a form so utterly unlike that which he had accepted as reality, that simple amazement reigned in him for a long time. It supported him in a sense through the trial and, now, as he came home, it gradually gave place to bewilderment, which, in its turn, quieted down until the stormy waters of his mind grew sufficiently smooth to offer a reflection of the situation newly created, and he began to trace the picture of the future.

He was trying to appreciate this evasive vision and find some firm, mental rock for his own feet when he got home again. But as yet nothing clearly emerged, and as often as he clutched at a steadfast-seeming point from which to start thinking, the image broke up under the storm swell which still swept through his mind. He felt as one in the presence of death. He desired to know, now that this earthquake had fallen upon him and his, who were left alive. He felt himself to be first among the dead, and believed, until much later, that existence could only be a living death henceforward.

Then he tramped after noon through the lanes, carrying his bag and sweating under the black clothes he wore. He pursued the familiar way, walked, ridden, driven a thousand times from boyhood to manhood, and he found an empty, peaceful spot in his brain that could see the bluebells and mark the breaking riot of the green. This consciousness of spring served to revive an element which had persisted with him during the past destruction and denunciation of the Divorce Court. He had listened humbly to the appalling errors the Law declared him to have committed, and he had viewed without passion the naked picture of his mistaken suspicions--each displayed and each destroyed by truth in turn. He felt no rage at this juncture--only the gathering surprise that finally overwhelmed him for a time, to the exclusion of more vital emotion. But, as the judge spoke, he felt great, vital wounds inflicted one after the other on his soul, yet endured them without flinching. Still the shame and condemnation were less than the astonishment, that his convictions should be but a phantom dance of falsity coloured to look like truth by his own sick mind.

The farther view and deeper estimate had to come. He was not near reaching them yet, nor had he developed anything like the attitude that Amelia Winter prophesied; but his brain now began to tune for a new outlook. The answer that he must make to the destruction of all his intentions and decisions was not so far propounded. He still loitered in thought with himself, but as he approached the valley in which his life had been passed, its tenderness and joyful, vernal spirit unconsciously influenced him, distracting his mind away from himself--not to the unconscious phenomena around him--but to the supreme and solemn figure in the fantasy now at an end. He thought of his wife. Whereupon a new phase opened in his mental processes and he began to regard with naked eyes the edifice of the past. Dwelling now upon the trial, he asked himself whether he still persisted in his former convictions, or whether the united and independent judgment of his fellow-men had proved their falsehood. That he could even propose this question calmly was a fact sufficient to indicate the answer. No such possibility would have entered his mind, had he not been prepared to weigh it and ultimately accept it. Yet he hesitated for the present to tell himself that he was convinced; for that admission meant such stultification of self, such absolute abnegation and retraction, such penitence, contrition and atonement, that he doubted his power to attain to them. Only did it seem possible to do so by keeping Margery and her sufferings in the forefront of his mind; and that was not practicable until he decided whether he would accept the decisions uttered against him, admit the justice of the world's rebuke and proceed to create a new life on the ground blasted, but also cleansed, by these fires.

Before he reached William Marydrew's house he began to plan the future, as though he had the planning and need but indicate his purpose to see life fall in with it!

Abased indeed he must stand; but his particular sort of pride was not going to suffer eternally before a confession of error. So he told himself and already half believed that the opinion of his fellow-men would weigh little against the possibility of reconciliation. In that case all future life should be devoted on his part to atoning for the awful wrongs he had put upon her; and the censure of others, at worst, must be thistledown to the stinging hail of his own self-condemnation.

He saw all existence to be narrowed to this one ambition, and so swiftly and inconsequently was his broken intelligence now moving, that he had already swept the past away and pressed on to the future and the tasks that there awaited him. Through these immense changes his mind sped among the bluebells; then he walked in sight of the man and woman talking at William's cottage door, and Amelia hastily departed.

"There he cometh!" she said. "Pounding over the ground--boring along like a bull--the hateful creature. And now he can bore into the earth and bide there; for there won't be the face of a decent man, woman, or child to welcome him no more."

"Yes, there will," replied Billy. "A man there is, if I'm still worth to be called one, and a child there is, while his youngest remains. Soften your heart, Amelia, for surely the conquerors can afford to forgive."

She went off and in a few minutes Bullstone reached Mr. Marydrew. He was full of his own thoughts and present ambitions; but he felt the necessity to retrace the ground and, even in his present excitation, could remember that he had reached a point which William could not possibly understand until he had been informed of some of the stages that had served to lift Jacob from the depths to the situation he now occupied.

He came in, thankfully accepted the offer of a cup of tea and spoke while William prepared it.

He had already reached the conclusion that he must confess absolute error without excuse. For a moment he had considered the justice of such a complete surrender, by arguing that the play of circumstances were to a large extent responsible for his mistakes and their culmination; but he felt, before the tremendous conclusion, that any attempt to extenuate would be peddling and even dangerous. There was truth in the fact that time and chance had played his nature cruel tricks and it might be that others, after hearing the complete admission he designed, would think of these things and advance some few counters on his behalf; but he would not do it himself; he would not take refuge under any sort of justification, or seek to modify the awful thing he had accomplished. Thus the strange spectacle of a man almost cheerful in his destruction appeared to William, and he perceived at once the impatience with which Jacob recounted the details, and the anxiety under which he laboured, to get the past behind him as swiftly as possible and face the future. He was not crushed by what had happened, because he was already clinging, heart and soul, to what might happen. Horror of the thing done no longer dominated him, for interest and concentration upon the things yet to be done.

Thus he came to his ancient friend in a mood beyond Billy's imagination, and as he talked volubly and proceeded from past facts to future hopes, Mr. Marydrew perceived that an angry, old woman, in some mysterious fashion, had known better than himself how these disasters would react upon this man. For Jacob was concerned with his conclusion, not the stages that had led to it. Already he was forgetting them as though they had not existed.

"I knew I was doomed long before the end," said Bullstone. "I saw it in their faces, and I'm a reasonable man, William, and can sit here now and tell you that I wasn't obstinate and stiff-necked about it. Before the judge talked to me and told me the truth--the blessed truth, William, not the bitter truth. 'Blessed' I say, because it opens the door of the future and doesn't close it for all time. Before the judge poured his scalding words upon me, I knew they were deserved. And knowing them deserved, they hurt different from what he meant them to. That's the spirit that began to move the moment after my first enormous astonishment to find I was wrong. And the highest moment--the moment that threw all my years of agony to confusion--was when she and him were able to show the words I heard at Shipley were innocent and had to do with Samuel. From that point the tide turned--and I saw all I'd done, and looked back at a lunatic. And you see me now only hungering for the days and nights to speed past, so that the madness that have overtook me may be sunk--sunk and forgotten in the light of the sanity that's coming--that's come. For I'm here in my right mind, William."

"Don't run on too fast, however, Jacob," warned the elder. "I'm very thankful you can accept the truth, because, thank God, that leaves the door open, as you say. But you must remember that there's a lot more goes to this than for you to say you're sorry about it. You must use your good sense and your new-found wits to see how it all looked and still looks to the injured parties."

It seemed that Bullstone was doomed ever to move in the atmosphere of the unreal. Unreal grief and imaginary disasters had ruined his life; and now he sought to rebuild the wreck by his own achievements, independently of the actual course of affairs, which must depend upon others. His hopes might well prove as illusory as his vanished fears. The man's mind was always in extremes.

Billy's warning cooled Bullstone.

"I know--I know," he answered. "I'm assuming nothing. My whole life will be a long atonement to her--to lift myself from where I have sunk, till I'm worthy to be forgiven. I see that. I ask none to pardon till they can. How soon they can depends on me. I'm dealing with better people than myself; so is it too much to hope, even in this awful pass of my life, with destruction and grief around me, that I may rise myself up to be forgiven by them?"

"Not too much to hope; but a darned sight too much to happen--for a very long while, my dear," explained Mr. Marydrew. "You've done a most fearful deed and those that have suffered from it must be given a deuce of a lot of time before they can calm down and see how it all fell out--how the Devil knew your character was prone to jealousy and fooled you according. The first person for you to consider is your wife, and if you can once rub it into her, fully and frankly, that you be sure you'd done her an awful wrong and be set, while life's in your body, to atone for it, then--presently--when she gets away from the influence of her wonderful mother--perhaps.--For Margery knows the good side of you as none else does, and she's slow to anger and quick to forgive. You've got to lay the foundation of the new life, and I hope to God, my dear, you'll soon find it grow; but the shape it takes will depend a good deal on other folk so well as yourself."

"I must proclaim my wickedness and paint it so black, that the mercy of man will intervene and lessen my blame of myself, if only for the credit of human nature," said Bullstone.

"Man won't be much put about. 'Tis the mercy of woman be going to be most use to you," answered Billy. "You must court that. After all, jealousy be a left-handed compliment to them; and they can always forgive that without much trouble--up to a point. Of course you went far beyond that point, however, because the Devil got in you, and turned your eyes crooked, and made life look like a nightmare, same as it do if you see yourself in a spoon. You'll want the patience of Job to endure the next six months or so; but other men have come through and why not you?"

"I know that human nature don't forgive such cruelty as mine very easy. Awful cruel I have been--I, that thought I was made of mercy, William. So life surprises us--so we shock ourselves quite as much as we shock our neighbours. But I keep saying, 'Time's not ended: there's still time.'"

They talked for an hour, then Jacob returned home, to find Avis and Peter. They welcomed him awkwardly, as though he had been a stranger; but that had been their attitude to him of late. Auna had waited for him outside and brought him home. They had kissed but said little as yet. He spoke to his son and elder daughter that night after supper, when George Middleweek, the new kennel-man, had departed and Auna was gone to bed. He owned his errors frankly, as though he were a repentant child confessing to grown-up people. He told them of the evil that he had done, and how he prayed God and man to pardon him. With the microscopic vision of youth, they looked at their father while he spoke. They observed he was very haggard, that he had not shaved and that one of his eyes was shot with blood.

"You're old enough to understand," he said. "I've done a very mistaken, terrible thing and wronged your dear mother as never a good, noble woman was wronged before. There aren't words to say how wicked I've been--nor yet how sorry I am. You must all be patient with me, Peter, and try to forgive me if you can."

They looked at him silent and round-eyed. His appeal embarrassed them and they knew not what to say to him.

"Mother's won, then?" asked Avis, screwing up her courage to the question.

"By the blessing of God she has, Avis."

Uneasily conscious that a man ought not so to speak to his children, they stole away presently, and then breathed again.

There was no pity in them. They only gloried in their father's defeat, as they knew that others would.

"It's knocked the stuffing out of him," said Peter.

"So it has. I hope mother's all right," answered his sister.

"You bet she's all right: she's won. And grandmother and grandfather and Mr. Winter's all right too," promised Peter.

From his false dawn of hope Jacob sank presently into lethargy and reaction. He recalled William Marydrew's speeches for comfort, but found that more than comfort was in them. With night and silence he lay awake reflecting on his wife. Everything depended upon her, not upon him. Could her merciful spirit, even under this awful provocation, become permanently ruthless? He was already fighting fiercely for the rags of his future, in hope to find decent covering among them. The court, the jury, the adverse verdict, the minatory judge were sunk into shadowlands, that mattered less than a bad dream.