Chapter XII: The Christening

On a day six weeks later, Jacob went down among men and, at the desire of his children, attended the baptism of his grandchild. The families assembled and the time was afternoon on Sunday. All interested, save Judith Huxam, were present, and after the ceremony ended, a little company trailed up the hill to Owley, that they might drink tea together and cut the christening cake. Avis and Auna walked side by side and Auna carried the baby; while behind them came Peter, Robert Elvin and his mother. John Henry had joined his Aunt Jane Huxam and her little boys; Jeremy and Adam Winter followed them and Jacob Bullstone, with Barlow Huxam, walked fifty yards in the rear. They talked earnestly together and Barlow had the more to say.

He was full of great anxieties, yet did not fail to express regret at his son-in-law's illness and satisfaction that he had been restored to health.

"A triumph for your constitution and the doctor's skill. I've thought upon you and not left you out of my prayers," he said.

"Yes; I've come through; and it was worth while. Time will show," answered Jacob.

"A thoughtful moment, when first you see yourself as grandfather," commented Barlow, "and still more so when you've only got to wait till a little one can talk to hear yourself called 'great-grandfather.' That's how it is with me now."

"How d'you find yourself taking up the reins at the post-office once again?"

"The power is still there, thank God," answered Mr. Huxam. "But time don't stand still. Life goes pretty light with me, but in confidence I may tell you it doesn't go so light with my wife. You don't understand her and I don't expect you to do it, Jacob; and she don't understand you; but you've been through heavy waters; you've brought forth deep things out of darkness, in Bible words, and I may tell you that all's not right with my wife. She was a bit cheerfuller at first, when we went back into harness and let Jeremy and his family go to the residence, but it was a flash in the pan. Judy's brooding again and speaking in riddles, and I'm much put about for the future--the future here below I mean--not in the world to come."

Bullstone spoke quietly of his own thoughts on the subject of his mother-in-law.

"I've hated your wife with a deadlier hate than I thought was in my nature," he said. "But not now. Before I had my great illness, I always hoped to see her face to face once more and have speech with her; because I was much feared of a thing happening, Barlow. I'd meant to see her alone and warn her, by all that she held sacred, to play fair if she got to Margery before I did. Such was my blinded sight, then, that I thought it might lie in her power, if she went on before, to poison my wife's mind in heaven, as she did on earth, so that if I came I'd still get no forgiveness. But that was all mist and dream and foolishness, of course. If there was a heaven, there would be no bearing false witness in it. But there's no heaven and no meetings and no Margery. It's all one now. Things must be as they are, and things had to be as they were, because I'm what I am, and Judith Huxam is what she is."

"A very wrongful view," replied Huxam. "But, for the minute, your feelings are beside the question, Jacob, and I'm not faced in my home with any fog like that, but hard facts. And very painful and tragical they may prove for me and all my family. You'll understand that she never could forgive the fearful day we journeyed to Plymouth--you and me; and she held that I'd gone a long way to put my soul in peril by taking you there to see your dying wife. That's as it may be, and I've never been sorry for what I did myself, and I don't feel that it put a barrier between me and my Maker. But now the case is altered and I'm faced with a much more serious matter. Judy don't worry about me no more and she don't worry about any of us, but, strange to relate, she worries about herself!"

"I've heard a whisper of it."

"You might say it was the Christian humility proper to a saint of God; but this mighty gloom in her brain gets worse. Once, between ourselves, it rose to terror, at half after three of a morning in last March. She jumped up from her bed and cried out that Satan was waiting for her in the street. That's bad, and I spoke to Dr. Briggs behind her back next day."

"Her religion was always full of horrors, and the birds are coming back to roost."

"That's a very wrong view and I won't grant it," answered Barlow.

"Who can look into the heart of another? Who can know the driving power behind us?"

"It's not her heart: it's her poor head. Briggs is watching over her and he don't like it any more than I do. There's a well-known condition of the human mind called 'religious melancholy,' Jacob; and it's a very dangerous thing. And it's got to be stopped, or else a worse state may over-get her."

"She looks back and mourns maybe? Perhaps it's only her frozen humanity thawing with the years."

"She don't look back. Never was a woman less prone to look back. She looks forward and, owing to this delusion of the mind, she don't like what she sees and it makes her terrible glum. Her eyes are full of thunder, and her voice is seldom heard now."

"We reap what we sow."

"Not always. She's walked hand in hand with her God ever since she came to years of understanding, and it's a hard saying that such a woman deserved to lose her hope and suffer from a disordered mind."

"It's not a disordered mind that loses hope, Barlow--only a clear one. Hope's not everything."

"Hope is everything; and if the mind weakens, then the life of the soul stops and there's nothing left but an idiot body to watch until its end. I've got to face the chance of Judy's immortal part dying, though her clay may go on walking the earth for another twenty years; so you'll understand I'm in pretty deep trouble."

"It may not happen."

"It may not. But I'm warned."

Jacob expressed no great regret, for the things that now entered his mind he could not, or would not, utter.

Mr. Huxam pursued his own grey thought.

"Sometimes it happens that these people who are overthrown by religion, by the dark will of their Creator, have got to be put away from their friends altogether; because too much religion, like too much learning, topples over the brain."

"Perhaps it's only conscience pricking her."

"In a lesser one it might be that; but to hear such a woman as her wondering in the small hours whether, after all, she is redeemed, that's not conscience--it's a breakdown of the machinery. 'Could I lose my own soul by saving Margery's?' she asked me once, and such a question of course means a screw loose."

Bullstone did not answer and Barlow presently feared that he might have said too much. He sighed deeply.

"Keep this from every human ear," he begged. "I may be wrong. There may be a high religious meaning in all this that will come to light. We must trust where only we can trust."

"You'll find where that is, if you live long enough and suffer long enough," was all the other answered.

A cheerful spirit marked the little celebration at Owley and, for the first time, Jacob held his granddaughter in his arms. He had brought a gift--a trinket of silver with a moonstone set in it--that he had purchased before their marriage for Margery.

Auna and her father walked home together afterwards up the long slope from Owley to the moor. He was calm and gracious and they spoke of the girl's coming visit to her great-uncle.

"I wish you'd change your mind even now and come along with me," she said. "You'd do Uncle Lawrence good very like."

"No, I shouldn't do him good, and a town's too great a thought for me yet a while. Not but what I want to do a bit of good, to return a little of all that's been done for me. But opportunity doesn't lack. I'll get in touch with my fellow-creatures slow and gradual, one by one. They frighten me too much all together. They always did; but I'll come back to them, like a ghost, presently."

"You're not a ghost any more. Look how fine you stood among the people to-day, and how pleased they were to see you," said Auna.

"Jeremy's going to drive up and fetch you Monday week. He's a gentleman at large for the minute. Idleness always finds that man at his best."

"But he'll be a chemist next, and he's reading about it already. He says that the goal's in sight, and he feels that, as a dispensing chemist, he will come out like the sun from behind a cloud."

"A very ornamental man, but would have done better as a tree, Auna. There's many a human would have given more pleasure and less trouble as a tree in a wood."

Auna laughed.

"He'd have been a very good-looking tree--one of the silver birches perhaps."

"Margery Elvin is now of the Household of Faith," said Jacob suddenly.

"And weren't she good when parson took her, father?"

"I shouldn't wonder, if all goes well, whether I don't go down and see her again when you're away."

"I do hope you will then, and write me a letter to say how you are."

"I shall be full of thinking about you. I have thoughts about you. I am going to make you happy."

"Be happy yourself and I shall be."

"No, that can't happen; but I'll make you happy another way than that. I can look ahead as I never did before. It will come in good time. Patience is greater than happiness. I'll go back into the world some day. But my soul must be quiet--quite quiet for a little longer yet, Auna, please."

Jeremy came at the appointed time to drive his niece into Brent. She was going to spend one night with her Aunt Jane at the villa and proceed next morning to Plymouth. To the last moment she was busy with arrangements for Jacob's comfort. They had a milch cow at Huntingdon, and Bullstone milked it himself. A red dog had also settled down with him.

Jeremy was anxious about his mother, but turned to another subject as he and his niece journeyed down the hills together. Auna had waved her last farewell to her father and he had waved back. Then Jeremy touched a personal matter.

"I want for you to sound Uncle Lawrence about his money," he said. "You're a clever and understanding girl and can be trusted. It's time his family knew his intentions, Auna, and you might be doing a useful thing if you were able to get a word out of him."

"If he says anything I'll remember it," she promised.

"I hope he'll live for a long time yet; and when he's got to go, I hope you'll have the money, if you want it."

"I'm thinking not of myself, but my children, Auna, and your Aunt Jane."

"I'll send the boys post-card pictures from Plymouth," she promised, "and I'm hopeful to send some fine fishes to father if I can."