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."

But he had only heard her first assertion and it calmed him. He stared at her and the anger faded out of his face.

"Why didn't you say so then? That's news."

He looked at Avis gently.

"You married Joe Elvin's son, Robert. Well, why not? Bullstones have wedded with Elvins before to-day. I'm glad you're going to have a little one, Avis, and I command this. If it's a girl, you call it after your mother."

"I mean to," she said, "and if it's a boy, Bob wills it shall be called after you."

"No, no--I forbid that. We'll have no more Jacobs."

But he relented before them and grew mild.

"Come here and sit by me and take my hand," he said to Avis; and then he turned to John Henry.

"If I was harsh, you can overlook it. I'm not the man I was. I'm a good deal fallen down from the man I was. I'm colder than the man I was. I'll give you credit for saying what you said in a right spirit, I believe it. That's your mother in you. But you swear it was your own thought--not whispered to you by Billy or some such well-wisher to me?"

"I swear before God it was my own thought, father; and I say again that if you'll come to live with me, I'd be very glad indeed."

But Bullstone shook his head.

"I'm bound for the only place that can offer peace. Auna and I. And I hope you'll make time as you can and come and see me now and again. I feel friendly to you and Peter. You know that actions speak louder than words. I hope it will be a girl for the sake of the blessed name. I'll come to the christening. Ill do that. Mark me. I'm a man of my word. You take all care of yourself, Avis, and don't be too busy."

Peter spoke.

"Why for can't you go to John Henry, father? Then we should have you in the midst."

"You know we're all right, father," added the elder brother. "It isn't as if you'd see a lot to vex you, and things being done you didn't hold with. You could come and go and keep your eye on the dogs too."

"I'd like to believe that you could wish it. And I will believe it," repeated Jacob. "I'll make myself believe it, hard though it may be. It's a sign of grace and I'm glad it came into your thoughts. And Avis is going to have a child. That's well. Be sure to call it after your mother if it's a girl."

He stared and nodded and they were conscious that his mind had wandered far from them.

"Let's go for a walk up the valley, father," said Auna. "You always like to talk best in the air."

"I'm going to do so," he answered, "but I'm going alone. You children can stop together, and I'll be back for tea drinking. I'm a good deal shaken by this great thought of John Henry's. It means his mother in him, working up to the surface. And he can thank the Lord she's there. She's in you all. Not that I can change my plans, for my help comes from the hills you must know--such as it is. But that I was wanted at Bullstone is worth a good bit to me,--good payment, you might say, for what I've done."

He left them and they turned anxiously to Auna,

"Is he all right? Is it safe for him to go alone?" asked Avis; and her sister answered that she need fear nothing.

"It's up and down like that. His memory fails him sometimes in little things. Not in big things. It shook him to find John Henry and you wanting him. But it's done him good already."

"He'll forget about it before he comes back," added Peter. "He'll often go out to think over something, or say he's going to, and then he comes back and you find it's slipped out of his mind altogether."

"But not a great thing like this," promised Auna.

"It's as much for you as for him," continued Avis. "It's not a place for you to be lost in--Huntingdon isn't--and if you have to go and live with him there, he'll very likely end by losing his reason altogether, and it's very bad for a young creature like you."

"Don't you say that, Avis. I couldn't live away from him. And he'll get better I expect. Days often happen when he's all right and his mind quite peaceful."

"It would be a lot more convenient if he went to John Henry," said Avis. "It's clear he finds it too wretched to stop here. I feel it creepy myself--with mother's ghost in every corner, and in the garden too. She was so busy that you can't see a thing without remembering her part of it. But he wouldn't be haunted with her at Bullstone, and we could make jobs for him, and keep him running about and doing something."

"I'd much like it to happen," admitted Auna, "for his sake. It's all one to me where I go, if I see him getting better."

"I'll keep it before him, and speak up for it so much as he'll let me," promised Peter. "Of course it's what ought to be. But I don't think it will. Because loneliness is his stronghold, and the lonelier he is, the better he is."

"You might put old Billy and Adam Winter on to him," said his brother. "He sets store by what they think. Tell 'em the fine offer I've made, Auna, and see what they say."

"I will, then. But Mr. Marydrew is always very strong that father's mind will mend up at Huntingdon. He says that I must be wits and staff for father, and I will be. And he'll come through. Some day he'll come through, if you and Avis and Peter can show kindness now and then. It's kindness he wants."

"And that shows how rocky his mind is for the minute," declared Peter, "because anything soft, like kindness, was gall to him in the past. He was ashamed of the kindness he did himself. And now his mind has shrunk. He dwells on little silly things and messes about trifles that he links up with mother."

"When is he going to divide her clothes?" asked Avis; "it's a cruel waste and no respect to mother to let things get moth-eaten and useless, that might be worth money to the living."

"I've been at him," answered Auna. "He says that I'm to have the clothes, when I'm grown a bit more, because I'm mother's shape; but that's silly. Now you've been so nice to him, I'll get on about the clothes again to-morrow and very like he'll let me go through them, or ask you to come over and take what you want."

The girls discussed familiar articles of their mother's wardrobe, and Avis indicated much that would be useful to her and the elder Mrs. Elvin. Auna agreed, and while they talked, Peter described his father's habits of mind to his brother. The elder took a gloomy view.

"I don't think he will mend," said John Henry. "I think it's a lot more likely he'll go from bad to worse and become a raving man. There's suspicions moving deep in him. When I told him about this, you remember, he asked if I wanted to have him locked up. People, with softening of the brain coming on, often look ahead in that way and know, by a sort of fearful instinct, what's going to overtake them."

They discussed the kennels and Peter's future.

"He's all right about that," declared Jacob's younger son, "but he's sharp enough for Auna. He told me plain that he didn't trust none of us but her, and that a hair of her head was worth the lot of us. But now belike he'll change, if he remembers. It was a great thought to offer him to come to Bullstone."

"If you want to please him, John Henry, put flowers on mother's grave now and again," advised Auna. "Her grave will always draw him down from the moor, same as it does now."

They talked until tea time, when Jacob returned, and John Henry went to put in his horse. Their father was now calm and cheerful. He said no more concerning the new suggestion; but he had not forgotten it, for when Avis and her brother were gone and Peter at the kennel, he questioned Auna.

"Can you tell me, faithful and true, that you had no part in what John Henry said?" he asked. "Because if you, or any other, put it into his head, then it's all in vain."

"Nobody put it in John Henry's mind, dear father," she answered. "It was his very own thought."

"That makes it a valuable thing, Auna."

"I know it does. And Avis dearly wants it to happen too."

"And you? Would you rather be with Avis or your brother, or----?"

"Father! You know better than that," she said very earnestly. "You and me are one, and what's right for you is right for me."

"So I think," he answered. "A very clever, deep thought in you to say that we are one."