He elaborated this opinion, while the other stared, hearing Judith Huxam rather than her husband.
"Oh, God—to what you and the likes of you can come!" he said. "You—the father of her, who have seen her sinless, spotless life, and the good she has done and the evil she has suffered—you to think her a mouthpiece for a devil. What do you make of God? Are you so blind that you don't know goodness and honour and patience when you see them? Let me speak with the tongues of the pit, if you please; flout me—condemn me—spit upon me. That is just; but to stand there—a man experienced in life, who knows human nature and believes in an all-powerful, all-loving Father—to stand there and tell me that her natural, woman's longing to see the home she made, and her heavenly forgiveness, ready to return to a worthless man like me—to say all that was the devil whispering through her lips—why, what damned filth do you believe about heaven and hell?"
Barlow felt a twinge before this indictment. He was too prone to accept Judith's interpretation of all that happened, too prone to assume that earnestness so tremendous and a faith that could move mountains, must of necessity enable his wife to probe more deeply into truth than saner people.
"Use your reason," added Jacob. "I've come of late through much torment of mind and grief of body, to see that reason's a gift of God, without which we fall back very quickly into the night of our forefathers. It was loss of reason that ruined me and my home. 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. She wants to see me and her home again; and I ask you, as one well thought upon for sense and human wisdom, if it will throw any shadow on her white soul to hold my hand, and let me hear her forgive me. You're married. 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. Don't stand in the way any more. If I thought that I would do her harm, in body or soul, I wouldn't ask; but who am I to do her harm? I'm human. I've done all the harm I shall ever do. My life—what's left—will be bent on atoning and doing good—first to her, then to the rest of the world. I only live for that. My own life is but a means for that. Oh, man, don't you understand what my days are now—what I've made of them? Can you come between me and the last ray of light that's left for me?"
"A soul is in the balance," said Mr. Huxam uneasily.
"Granted. But whose soul? Not hers—not Margery's. You're not going to pretend that anything I could say, or do, will endanger a soul as far above me as light above darkness. Say my soul's in the balance if you like, and pray God's mercy on a sinful and erring man. Be large-hearted even for me. We don't make ourselves. We don't sit at the Almighty's elbow when He plans us, and tell Him what to put into us; we can't stand beside Him fortified with the experience of human life and say, 'Make me brave; make me honest; make me patient; leave lust out of me; leave jealousy out of me.' We don't ask God to fashion us true and plumb, of stuff fine enough to withstand the trials and temptations common to all flesh. We can't demand faith, or sense, or the power to move our neighbour to goodness by example and precept. We have no hand in our havage, no hand in our understanding, no hand in our weakness of will. Then what, in the name of Christ, is left for us but to be merciful one with another? What is left but for the strong to deal tenderly with the weak? You stand among the strong ones. You've been blessed with a clear head, good health, perseverance, self-control and a sense of reality that keeps your mind sweet. You married a strong woman. You rise above the traps and snares of life and go your appointed way. You had a good daughter, married to an erring and faulty man. And he's ruined her life and brought her through dark places, where such a woman should never have had to tread. But she's not tainted—there's no stain on her—and now—now, at the eleventh hour, she stretches out her hands to him. And who knows best? Do you know better than she does? Is her mother wiser than she is? God tells her to want me, Barlow—God—God! For His own ends—for His own ends."
The other did not speak. This appeal, coming on his own knowledge that his daughter was dying, distressed him much. But it was still the face staring into his—a face written closely over with intense pain—a face haggard and a head growing grey—that caused him more misery than Jacob's words.
Barlow began to cry, where he was sitting, with his hand on his forehead by a table, and the tears fell down.
Bullstone said no more for some time. Then he spoke again—a brief entreaty.
"Help me to believe in the justice of God," he said. "Don't take my last hope. If she is so ill, do not deny me the one and only blessing left to me in this world: to see her again before the end."