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."