For a season the soul of Jacob shrank from all life and found its only peace in solitude. Now and again, for a day or two, the wish to be alone would leave him; then he would go to Marydrew, or Adam Winter, and pour out a flood of futile opinions. They bore with him and strove to restore his peace. But he would soon seclude himself again and, on one or two occasions, he spent the night alone at Huntingdon. He had determined to dwell there in time to come; but those that cared for him trusted that before spring returned he would change his mind. William, when opportunity offered, pressed occupation on his friend and assured him that only by way of work would serenity return; but Jacob could not work. His restlessness drove him to be moving always. He left his business in the hands of Peter and was impatient if either he, or George Middleweek, even desired his advice.
He would not see a doctor. He declared that the physician who attended upon his wife had poisoned his mind against all doctors. But he spoke kindly of his own attendant at the Cottage Hospital. Sometimes he was violent and blasphemed before his children. He often went to his wife's grave, to see if the soil were sinking. Auna was glad on the days that he chose to do this, because it made him easier. His furies seldom extended to any at Red House, though he turned much against John Henry and Avis, because they did not come to see him. Once or twice he set out to visit them on horseback, yet always changed his mind and rode into the moor instead.
Auna often begged to come with him when he wandered away; but he rarely suffered her to do so. For a time he seemed indifferent even to her—a phase that represented the extremity of his distemper.
"You're too much like your mother," he told her once. "I doubt I'll be able to endure you much longer. It's living with her ghost, rather than her child."
In one of his wildest moods he had said that; but she knew he did not mean it. He was careless of his garments and person now and looked to Auna for a thousand attentions—indeed had long done so.
She suspected that her father wanted to die and asked old William what should be done about it; but Mr. Marydrew advised nothing.
"Let him go his own gait," he told her. "If he dies, he dies; but more like he'll grow easier and come back to himself presently."
Jacob brought news from the moor. His values had all changed and sometimes a sort of peace did crown his lonely days; but it was not a sane peace. He talked as though human beings signified nothing; he lifted the unconscious creatures and their good and evil to first place in his speech and showed an interest in the prosperity of the coneys, the welfare of the fox and her cubs, the providence of the badger and his shifts to live through the naked winter months. At no time could it be said that he spoke as one insane; but he hovered on the brink of mental disaster and displayed a distortion of perspective akin to craziness.
George Middleweek suspected that Bullstone was concealing himself behind a pretence; but Adam Winter, to whom he explained his view, knew Jacob better.
"He couldn't pretend," he said. "His brains are on the knife's edge. All we can hope is that his bodily strength will save him, and that his mind will right itself."