"I know that human nature don't forgive such cruelty as mine very easy. Awful cruel I have been—I, that thought I was made of mercy, William. So life surprises us—so we shock ourselves quite as much as we shock our neighbours. But I keep saying, 'Time's not ended: there's still time.'"
They talked for an hour, then Jacob returned home, to find Avis and Peter. They welcomed him awkwardly, as though he had been a stranger; but that had been their attitude to him of late. Auna had waited for him outside and brought him home. They had kissed but said little as yet. He spoke to his son and elder daughter that night after supper, when George Middleweek, the new kennel-man, had departed and Auna was gone to bed. He owned his errors frankly, as though he were a repentant child confessing to grown-up people. He told them of the evil that he had done, and how he prayed God and man to pardon him. With the microscopic vision of youth, they looked at their father while he spoke. They observed he was very haggard, that he had not shaved and that one of his eyes was shot with blood.
"You're old enough to understand," he said. "I've done a very mistaken, terrible thing and wronged your dear mother as never a good, noble woman was wronged before. There aren't words to say how wicked I've been—nor yet how sorry I am. You must all be patient with me, Peter, and try to forgive me if you can."
They looked at him silent and round-eyed. His appeal embarrassed them and they knew not what to say to him.
"Mother's won, then?" asked Avis, screwing up her courage to the question.
"By the blessing of God she has, Avis."
Uneasily conscious that a man ought not so to speak to his children, they stole away presently, and then breathed again.
There was no pity in them. They only gloried in their father's defeat, as they knew that others would.
"It's knocked the stuffing out of him," said Peter.
"So it has. I hope mother's all right," answered his sister.