Adam looked at him without animation or emotion. Only a weary indifference marked his face and echoed in his voice. He was not thinking of Jacob, but his aunt. Amelia had told him that Bullstone would quickly come to grovel. He had much doubted this, but made up his mind to listen if Jacob did seek him.
"If you'll step in here," he said, and opened a door on the left of the entrance.
Jacob went in before him, took off his hat and sat down on a chair by the empty hearth. It was the parlour of Shipley and seldom used. Adam Winter, with his hands in his pockets, walked to the window and stood looking out of it.
"Words are poor things before this business," began Bullstone, "and I won't keep you, or waste your time with many. I've wasted enough of your time, and if you could tell me what that waste stood for in figures, I'd be thankful to make it up to you. I'm only here now to express my abiding sorrow and grief at what I've done, and acknowledge how basely I have wronged you. You know I've wronged you, of course—so does the rest of the world; but you didn't yet know that I know it. I want you to understand that I accept the judgment and all that was said against me, because I deserved every word of it. I've done terrible evil, and the fag end of my life I shall spend in trying to make amends, so far as it lies in my power. After my poor wife, you are the one who has got most cause to hate me and most cause to demand from me the utmost atonement I can make. But first I ask you, as a good Christian, called to suffer untold trouble through no fault of your own, to pardon those who have trespassed against you. I beg you to forgive me, Adam Winter, and tell me that you can. That's all for the minute."
Winter listened and nodded his head once or twice. He was listless and melancholy. When he spoke he might have been the worsted man, for his voice had none of the ring and conviction of the other's.
"I forgive you, Jacob Bullstone. That's easy enough. And since you are here, I'll speak too, because some inner things didn't come out at the trial. I want you to know that I never heard tell you were a jealous man. Your wife, no doubt, had cause to know it; but if she ever mentioned the fact to anybody, which is little likely, it wasn't to me. Decent partners hide each other's faults because it's seemly they should, and Mrs. Bullstone wasn't more likely to hint at a soft spot in you than, I suppose, you would have been to whisper any weakness you might have found in her. So I knew nothing, and I came into this horror as innocent as my sheep-dog; and if I'd dreamed how it was, I'd have left Shipley years and years ago, at any cost to myself and my family."
"I believe it," answered Jacob. "I understand the manner of man you are now, and the false light that's blinded me these many years is out. And if I could take your sufferings off your shoulders and endure them for you, thankfully I'd do it. I want to be the only one to suffer now—the only one to carry this burden."
"Yes, yes—no doubt. The past is past, and if the past didn't always flow, like a river, into the present and future, life would be as easy for us as for the beasts, that only know the present. Good-bye. God help you and all of us."
He indicated that the interview was done; but Jacob did not move. He only blundered on, uttering promises and hopes for the future which, to Adam Winter, sounded inconceivably vain.
"And that," said Jacob at last, "brings me to my wife."