"Yes, I know. I love her. In some of my moods I see how grand she is; and in others I slink away, because, after all, there is such a thing as mercy. I've got time to think, and think nowadays as never I had before. There wasn't time to think in my married life, nor yet leisure to weigh things and stand outside them. I was in it all, and you can't weigh things if you are part of the reason why they happen. Now—torn away, or drove away—I can see Jacob better. He knew so little about real life and never seemed to want to know about it. I felt that Avis and John Henry had more sense of character and judged people truer than he could. He lived a very small life for choice, and it made him narrow and fostered this awful thing in him, till it grew up and wrecked him. He loved nature, but nature couldn't keep his mind sweet for long. And justice sometimes makes me see that what all looked such moonshine in the court, must have looked horribly real to him—before he rose and struck me."
"Because he was insane on that one subject and bent everything to that vile purpose."
"There it is!" she answered. "That's the point. If he was insane, as you say, then where do we stand? If those that are near and dear to us turned lepers to-morrow, should we fly from them? I feel a great deal has to be thought and said on that view, father; but I know nothing will come of it with mother, because she never changes. To her, madness is one thing and wickedness another; but grant madness, then there's no wickedness."
Mr. Huxam was a little startled before this attitude; for Margery had never yet indicated weakening, and these words clearly pointed in that direction.
"You're on dangerous ground and had better not pursue it," he answered. "We know where we stand, and when I said the man was a lunatic, I meant no more than a figure of speech. All sin may be madness seen one way; but we don't treat all sinners as madmen, else there'd be more ready to be locked up than we could find fellow-creatures to guard them. Your mother was right there—as usual. Forgive him as a Christian must; but don't keep twisting back to him in your mind. He's gone for ever; and if I thought, even in your dreams, that you could feel like going back to him, Margery, I should take a very grave view of such a fault."
"No, I wouldn't go back to him—any more than he could come back to me. For why should we think, because we won against him, that we've convinced him he was wrong?"
Mr. Huxam considered.
"We keep this subject from you, because our feeling is that it's very indecent and unbecoming and unworthy of the family to mention it," he answered, "but, since we're on it, through no choice of mine, my child, I must tell you once for all the latest facts. I'll ask you to keep what I'm going to say to yourself, for your mother might blame me to mention it; but men—even madmen—will talk, and you can't always command them to be silent, or refuse to hear what they desire to tell you. And Jacob Bullstone, in the ear of his old friend, William Marydrew, has acknowledged that he was wrong in every particular. He wrote after the trial—a letter which he first sent to your mother and then brought to the shop himself; and your mother saw him with me—for the last time—and refused to read the letter. I won't say I wouldn't have read it; but that's only to admit I haven't got the strength to judge right in a crisis like she has. But there's no doubt that in that letter he said things we might, as Christians, have been glad to hear—for his own soul's sake."
"Mother was right, however," declared Margery, "and whether he ever could endure to see me, or whether he could not, it's very certain I must be myself in that matter. I hope to God he knows he was wrong and is convinced of it, but go back to him—I couldn't now; but—oh, I'm weak as well as strong. Jacob wasn't all, father. A husband isn't a home. I loved such a lot of little things. Being denied pleasure away, I made my first and dearest pleasure there, and I did so care for plants and trees and childish things. And the river and the hills—to me all such like meant a lot. The garden was work and play both. If smoothed the harsh edges. I made it and I made my children altogether. And the river and the hills meant love—for I loved them; and they helped me to love Jacob when I felt I never should again; because they brought back the old Jacob I fell in love with. All this sounds silly to you; but twenty years is a long time—the cream of my life—the greatest part of it for a woman, when she's reigning in her home and bringing her children into the world. Red House means more than I can say—everything—good and bad alike. To me it's like the shop to you—life. You know where to put your hand on everything. You could serve blindfold. And, if I went back to-day, I could shut my eyes and go to the flowers in the garden and know which were out and which were dead and which were in bud. And—but—no, no, no! It all means nothing now. I couldn't go back—never—never."
He soothed her, but felt considerable alarm himself before these confidences. For if Margery entertained such thoughts now—removed from her wrongs by only a few months—how might she regard the situation in a year, or two years? That she should even assert that she could not go back, argued most unexpected weakness in Mr. Huxam's opinion, for when a woman was at the trouble to say she would not do a thing, that generally signified the action was by no means ruled out for her.