The estrangement fell awkwardly, for now came the great change in the life of the Huxams. The bustle and business consequent on leaving the post-office for their new home offered a respite, but all was soon accomplished and presently the husband and wife found themselves thrown together after a fashion unfamiliar since their earliest married days. Only when their retirement had been completed did they gradually come to perceive all that it implied, and the dislocation of their lives, that resulted from thus dropping the habits of half a century. The change completed Judith's cure and restored her vitality and energy; but one aspect of the new existence they had not paused to consider, and now it was forced upon them. Neither had been concerned with their future occupations save vaguely; but such plans as they had formed proved wholly unequal to filling the startling and immense spaces of leisure now thrust into their lives. Barlow had imagined himself gardening with Margery, and thus ordering his time and energies; he designed, too, some weekly hours at the shop, that he might assist Jane and his son and launch them into the details of the business. For the rest he had not planned anything; while Judith hoped that her new existence would offer more leisure for reading desirable books and aiding her neighbours. They came thus into a world of new experience; and when all was done, the house arranged in every detail to Mrs. Huxam's liking, the new garden at a stage when nature's more leisurely processes succeeded Barlow's zeal, they found themselves faced with a generous gift of time and some difficulty to fill the lengthening days.
It was then that the cloud he had hoped to dispel settled into a permanent canopy and Barlow found that his wife was changed. In no actual relation could he declare any alteration, but the former, mental understanding had failed. She did not trust him as of old and her outlook on life had taken a new colour also. It was tinged with melancholy. Grey and austere it had always been, but not downcast as now. He almost fancied sometimes that the note of triumphant assurance had left her voice. The change influenced him a great deal, and on an occasion when he was at the shop with his daughter-in-law he uttered an alarm. They were good friends and Jane was old enough to understand some of his difficulties.
"It's fear for my future that's at the bottom of all this," Barlow told his son's wife. "People think that Mrs. Huxam is a bit under the weather, because of the great change into our villa residence; but a thing like that is of no account to her. She's troubling about me—that's the anxiety. When I took Jacob Bullstone to his dying wife, I did a thing that your mother-in-law felt to be above measure wrongful. She may be right and, if I thought she was, I should confess as much; but I can honestly look back and feel it wasn't a wrong thing. The sufferings of that man were real; and I was rent myself to know that Margery was going home; and between my own grief and his, what more natural that I should take him to say his last farewell? He was an evil man and he'd done fearful wrong, but one thing I never will allow—that he could by word, or touch, have cost Margery her salvation. Far more likely a word, or touch, from her might have saved him. And so I took the man; but the shocking upshot, Jane—the shocking upshot is that my dear wife no longer feels sure whether I haven't doomed myself for all eternity by that deed!"
Jane begged him to banish any such painful suspicion.
"I'm sure it's at the very foundation of things that you're saved, just as much as she is," said his daughter-in-law. "There's some great truths we take for granted, and that's one of 'em. If I was you, I'd have it out with her."
"A woman like my wife, who lives, you may say, with one foot in the other world, will sometimes find the heavenly light to dazzle her, if you catch my meaning, Jane," said Mr. Huxam. "With her standards of conduct and her face always lifted to the divine perfection, she may well perhaps lose the sense of proportion and forget that if we was all perfect, there wouldn't be any need for us to be saved. She probably don't allow enough for the power of Jesus Christ to fetch in His lost sheep."
Barlow raised the question again on the following Sunday, when Mrs. Huxam, during the stagnation between dinner and tea, had permitted herself an hour with a book. It was a work that Lawrence Pulleyblank had discovered at a second-hand bookseller's shop in Plymouth. For he was a strenuous reader himself, within limited boundaries, and this work, entitled "The Sabbath of New England," had given him infinite satisfaction. He had sent it to Judith as a peace-offering in some sort.
Mrs. Huxam now learned what a Sabbath might be, and had actually once been, as ordered by the Pilgrim Fathers—they who sailed from Mr. Pulleyblank's own Barbican in times past. She had seen the white stone which recorded their departure, and now she pursued the book and marked the many passages her brother's black lead pencil had underlined.
Pain and pleasure accompanied the perusal. If England chastised sin with whips, it appeared that these New Englanders had wielded scorpions for their ungodly. The details of their rule braced Mrs. Huxam's spirit, while it drooped a little when she reflected that such discipline was lost to the world for ever.
She read the Blue Laws of Connecticut and other literary survivals. She considered the penances and penalties inflicted on those who broke the Lord's Day, and found therein a code of perfection beyond even her own dreams. She learned how the law drove all to worship and locked the doors upon them until the exercise was ended; how Tabitha Morgan was fined three shillings and sixpence for playing on the Lord's Day, and Deborah Banks—a deeper sinner—paid five shillings for a like offence; how Jonah and Susan Smith were seen to smile and suffered accordingly; how Lewis and Sarah Chapman—sweethearts—were found in goodman Chapman's garden sitting under an apple tree—branch of ill omen—and fined for their levity; how Elizabeth Eddy was seen to hang out clothes upon the Sabbath Day and mulcted ten shillings for her lapse.