"I don't know anybody that hasn't a good word for him."
"And I'm well thought upon too, father."
"Why not, Avis; why not?"
"Nothing can ever come between me and Bob," she said, then left him, and he forgot her instantly.
His thoughts drifted through the familiar channels and he read pregnant and personal things into Winter's jest. He began at the old starting point, strove to bring a judicial mind to bear upon the question, asked himself, for the thousandth time, if he had ever found a cause to suspect any man but this man, or associate with Margery the name of another. He remembered that with some exceptions, now faint in vanished years, he had never done so. Once or twice during their early married days, a dog-fancier had spoken to Margery in words too free and easy for his taste; but no man remained in their united lives save Winter. His wife was not a woman who particularly enjoyed male society, or strove to challenge the other sex. So far as he knew, her acquaintance did not number a dozen men of her own generation.
To this fact he always returned, and it increased rather than abated his tribulation. He told himself, falsely, that had she appreciated male society and been at her best and happiest in it, innocence would be far easier to assume; he assured himself that he would not have minded that. But there was only one who could not be shut out of her life and who, despite handsome inducement to do so, would not go out of it.
The words overheard by Avis might mean much; and even more importance he attached to Margery's answer. A woman who was doing wrong with her eyes open, and suffering accordingly, was just the woman to have replied so.
He worked himself into a fever and fell upon days of gloom darker than the weather.
Accidents contrived to throw Shipley Farm much into his thoughts, for illness fell upon it. An epidemic that was filling half the homes of Brent with sickness reached the vale, and first Amelia was stricken down, then her younger nephew. Both were seriously ill for a time and the old woman's life became endangered. The parish nurse was too fully occupied to assist them, and since neither could be moved, it became a needful charity that their neighbours lent necessary aid. Samuel Winter tended his brother, while a cousin—one of the nurses from the Asylum not far distant—obtained leave to wait on Amelia. The old woman survived, but was kept in her chamber for some weeks. Then the nurse left again and Avis and Auna were glad to be of daily service. Adam also began to recover. Margery, however, so far as her husband knew, had not visited Shipley Farm during the progress of this misfortune. He neither forbade her to do so, nor commented on the fact that she kept away, though, according to his custom, he weighed its significance and now felt glad and now read more into it than appeared.
Of late he had sometimes struggled from his torment by the road of preoccupation, and striven to busy himself for other people. Opportunity did not lack, for the winter was long and hard, and there came a day when, out of good-will alone, he set off to visit an old man—a friend of his dead father—who lived at Totnes and was reported in the extremity of need. Only the workhouse waited for him, nor did Bullstone know any means to avert this doom, since the ancient soul lived on after the world could offer no other place for him; but Jacob departed to inquire if anything might be done, and it was understood that he would stop at Brent on returning from Totnes, sup with his father-in-law, who desired to speak with him, and return at a late hour to Red House.