Eden Phillpotts

“ But what about Margery? Did she get what she deserved? Did she earn what she was called to suffer—a creature, sweet as an open bud, to be drawn through dirt and horror and things evil and foul to early death? Was that the work of the all powerful and all just?"
"Always remember there's the next world, Jacob."
"Can fifty next worlds undo the work of this one? Can eternity alter what I did and what she suffered here? The next world's no way out, William. The balance isn't struck there, because evil never can turn into good, either in earth, or heaven. ”

“ Margery fluctuated and on her feeblest days the desire to return home became most intense. For her own sake she longed to be back at Red House; for his sake she wanted to be with Jacob. Her emotions towards him eluded her; but when she knew definitely from Auna that his only dream on earth was to see her again beside him, pity woke a faint ghost of the old love. Red House itself drew her, for she felt that if the remainder of her life was to be spent as a sick woman, she could be a more useful one and a happier one in her home than with her parents. ”

“ Nobody has. Jeremy, for all his weakness and instinct for change, gets more out of life than Jacob. Jacob misses a lot by his nature."
"If he misses anything that he'd be the better for having, be sure there's a reason," asserted Judith. "Haven't I seen it thousands of times? Don't ninety-nine men and women out of a hundred miss a lot, just because the one thing needful—the absolute trust and certainty that all is for the best—be denied them?"
"He doesn't grant that all's for the best, because he doesn't think or feel so," answered Margery. ”

“ You're dead—you're dead, Margery. You've come because I'm going to die. She's dead, Billy. It was only a wishtness—standing there. She's gone!" he continued, as Auna slipped away. "Did you see her too?"
"I see her very plain and beautiful, Jacob; and don't you worry about it. All's well. Where there is Margery, there is hope—such a hopeful one as her. Just you bide so hopeful as you can and trust yourself to God."
"Didn't she have a message? Where did she come from? Oh, Christ, William, I'm in everlasting torture. Would God put a man in hell before he's dead?" ”

“ You've got a nice bit of your wife left in Auna. Always remember that."
"I do. I shall live on for Auna. There's one beautiful thing left for me—beautiful, and yet a living wound, that grows painfuller every day I live. And that's Auna—Auna growing more and more and more like Margery—bringing her back, even to the toss of her head and the twinkle of her eye. She laughs like her mother, William; she cries like her mother; she thinks like her mother. So my only good will be my first grief. The things still left to care about will torture me more than all the hate of the world can torture me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And I, for one, incline to think the same."
"The end of the world's not our business," said Judith, "but the souls of ourselves and our children and grand-children are our business. You strike in on ground where I've just been treading, and I'm very sorry to hear you can say what you have said. Whether it's indecent and blameworthy for Jacob Bullstone to want his wife don't matter at all. What those doomed to eternal death want, or don't want, is nought. But we've got to think of the living, and we've got to save the souls that are still open to be saved." ”

“ Jacob was unshaken.
"The spoken word remains," he answered, "and the long story remains—every item—stamped in my brain for eternity. They may lie; but justice is justice. No power on earth can undo what's done, or leave it doubtful."
"You speak true," said Mrs. Huxam. "God Almighty will see to that. There'll be no shadow of doubt on earth, or in hell, or heaven, when this is blazed to the light." ”

“ He's great on reason."
"I'm sorry to hear it," replied Judith. "Reason is well known for a very faulty shift and the play-ground of the devil. Reason don't save no souls, but it damns a parlous number, and I wish I could feel a lot surer than I do where Jacob will spend his eternity."
Margery was not moved at this dreadful suspicion.
"Goodness is goodness and can't be badness," she said, "and goodness is rewarded. Jacob says religion can't alter your instincts, or your nature; and if you're the fidgety, anxious sort, belief in the Almighty won't make you less so. ”

“ Jane Huxam, dark and tall, with a humble expression and a loose mouth, shook the postmaster's hand very nervously and hoped he would forgive them.
"We've known each other a longful time," said Jeremy, "and remembering you thought so well of the Catt family, I was pretty sure you'd be glad to hear that Jane cared for me. And it's the turning point, and it will be like your unfailing kindness, father, if you take us hopefully before mother, as if you was pleased about it."
"We feel that as man and wife we shall be able to get on a lot better in the world than separate," explained Jane. ”

“ Tell him he's not a wicked man, Mr. Marydrew," urged Auna.
"Nobody's very wicked, my dear," answered Billy; "and nobody's any too good. We're all much of a muchness, and good and evil be like the berries on the trees—-all stomachable to somebody. Good's bad and bad's good according to the point of view, and only through being bad, some folks reach to being good. To some nice people being good is as easy as falling off a log—same as it is to you, Auna, because you can't be any other; and to some equally nice sort of people, 'tis a lot more difficult. ”

“ Marydrew had seen them from the window and now came to the door.
"A proper tantara 'tis blowing to-day," he said. "My loose slates be chattering, like a woman's tongue, and I'm feared of my life they'll be blowed off. The stone's started then? That's good."
Jacob, according to his habit, pursued his own thoughts and spoke on, as though Adam still stood beside him.
"To talk of peace—to say there's any peace for a red-handed man. Peace is the reward of work and good living and faithful service. Red hands can't earn peace." ”

“ Bullstone knew all about it."
"Good. I killed her, Bob. If I'd fired a gun into her heart, I couldn't have killed her surer. A pretty awful thing; but have no fear I'm not going to pay for it. When a man commits murder, they ought not to put him away: they ought to keep him alive, as long as ever they can, and let his sin gnaw into him, like a cancer, inch by inch. All sin's a cancer: it eats the heart, but it leaves the core to go on throbbing, so that the sinner may suffer as long as his flesh and bones hang together." ”

“ That is if you are ambitious, like Jacob is. A man spoke well of in newspapers like him—what should he care for me?"
"He thinks well of you and says it's a fine thing the way you work."
"No, no—think twice, Margery. You're inventing now—to please me. He's got a very good knowledge of what's worth praise; and a man that does his own duty without flinching, like your man, isn't going to admire them who only do the same. I do no more than that, and the time hasn't come yet when we pat a man on the back for doing his duty; though perhaps it will be a rare sight in the next generation." ”

“ They lived hard for certain, but I dare say they had their bit of fun, if it was only fighting; and as for goodness and hope of salvation, who are we, with all our comforts and inventions, to deny goodness to them, or the eternal reward of goodness? Why in the name of charity must nine out of every ten humans that come into the world be doomed to hell? What did the Lord die for, Margery, if all the doubtful characters are to be damned?"
"Leave it," she said. "I feel same as you; but I haven't thought about such fearful things and more have you; but mother and father have. ”

“ You know the deep bond that makes woman and man one sooner or later, no matter how vast the gulf that folly and ignorance, or wickedness, may rip up between them. You know that a sinner may repent and be forgiven; and if by God, then why not by his own, faulty, fellow-creatures? She wants to come to her home, Barlow. She wants to come to her home, and there's no right or justice in hiding her, knowing that if she was strong enough she would come back to me. She's ill—terribly serious her illness—then so much the more reason that a wish, that may be among her last wishes, should be granted. ”

“ Then happened an incident steeped in deep emotion for husband and wife. It was a quality of Jacob's failure to reason that his life, down to its most trifling incidents, suffered contamination. As existence, even to the least details, will wake the breath of creative imagination in an artist, so, where a passion has obtained complete mastery, no minute event of life but is unconsciously passed through the test of that noble, or vitiated, outlook on all things. The smallest action challenges the paramount emotion and is illuminated by that gracious, or evil, light. ”

“ And to watch the young enjoying themselves and doing all the same things we did, brings back the past in a cheerful sort of way."
"I'm answered, then," replied Jacob, "and it's a good advertisement for your pleasures, Billy, that you can live them over again in others. When I'm old, there will be nothing like that for me."
"You're too old for your age as it is," answered the elder. "There's nought makes a man grow old before his time like brooding and over-much thought. Solitude throws you in on your own nature, Jacob, and a man's own nature ain't always the best company for him." ”

“ Are my children to receive always and return nothing—no duty, no love, no respect even? Have you ever thought what you owe to those who brought you into the world?"
"I owe no man any thing," answered John Henry without emotion. "And I never will. It's always the fashion, seemingly, for parents to make a fuss about what their children ought to do, and expect them to fall down and worship them. Why should I—just because you married and had a good time with mother? And, seeing what life is, I don't know that anybody need feel under any very great gratitude for being alive. ”

“ No—they'd cut and run, as you expected to see 'em."
"The people argue without knowledge of the facts," answered Jacob; "but you, who have heard the facts from me in secret and know whereon my case stands—how you can still hold the balance against me, for all our long friendship—that puzzles me, William."
"I'm a truthful man where my memory will let me be," answered Mr. Marydrew, "and so I won't pretend anything. Words have as many meanings as a songbird have notes, Jacob, and the ear be often bluffed into believing things by the mind that is hungry to believe 'em. ”

“ In another hour Jacob had become unconscious again and the girl and old man ate hastily together below.
"Us must face a stormy night, my dear," said William; "but 'twill pass, however long. Fetch up a good lot of peat, and keep the hot milk and the sago pudden down here; and trust me, if your eyes close, to be on the watch."
"They won't close," promised Auna.
"I've stopped the cuckoo clock," explained William, "because the noise vexed him. We'll be still as death to-night, for silence is physic in itself." ”

“ I must reach Margery before her mother does. That's commonsense, because we well know that I'd get but a bleak welcome if Judith Huxam had her daughter's ear before I did. She robbed me before, and she would again. A fault in Margery—to say it kindly—to listen to that old fiend. But I don't want her mind frozen against me for eternity. I still live in hopes that we'll be very dear friends, William—so far as a ghost man and a ghost woman can be friends."
"And why not, Jacob? Where there's no secrets hid, the people must surely come together in love and understanding." ”

“ Let faith do her work, Barlow Huxam, but don't flout reason with nonsense about devils, or tell me that a saint like Margery could ever be the plaything of the Enemy of Mankind. Think for one moment, with the brains God gave you to use, and you'll know that is a foul, mad thought—a thought far liker to be bred of the devil than any that your daughter's mind could harbour, or her lips speak. ”

“ You needn't argue it so, Margery. I might as well say that you were happy with me at Red House long ago, and didn't want anybody else but me. Life changes our tastes and appetites; life laughs at us, while it makes us cry sometimes. I want Huntingdon for contrast, because home often comes between me and my best thoughts—because home often fouls my thoughts, if you must know. And you—home makes you hunger for change—change—new ideas—new voices—new faces. ”

“ There was only one sort of woman I wouldn't much have liked for Jacob, and that's the light-minded sort—not the bad sort, but just the light-minded, pleasure-seeking kind of woman, who can't see that marriage is a serious subject, but flits after amusement where she may, and takes the whole solemn business of life and death as though it didn't matter to her, no more than it does to a butterfly without a soul to save. ”