"Yes; I've come through; and it was worth while. Time will show," answered Jacob.
"A thoughtful moment, when first you see yourself as grandfather," commented Barlow, "and still more so when you've only got to wait till a little one can talk to hear yourself called 'great-grandfather.' That's how it is with me now."
"How d'you find yourself taking up the reins at the post-office once again?"
"The power is still there, thank God," answered Mr. Huxam. "But time don't stand still. Life goes pretty light with me, but in confidence I may tell you it doesn't go so light with my wife. You don't understand her and I don't expect you to do it, Jacob; and she don't understand you; but you've been through heavy waters; you've brought forth deep things out of darkness, in Bible words, and I may tell you that all's not right with my wife. She was a bit cheerfuller at first, when we went back into harness and let Jeremy and his family go to the residence, but it was a flash in the pan. Judy's brooding again and speaking in riddles, and I'm much put about for the future—the future here below I mean—not in the world to come."
Bullstone spoke quietly of his own thoughts on the subject of his mother-in-law.
"I've hated your wife with a deadlier hate than I thought was in my nature," he said. "But not now. Before I had my great illness, I always hoped to see her face to face once more and have speech with her; because I was much feared of a thing happening, Barlow. I'd meant to see her alone and warn her, by all that she held sacred, to play fair if she got to Margery before I did. Such was my blinded sight, then, that I thought it might lie in her power, if she went on before, to poison my wife's mind in heaven, as she did on earth, so that if I came I'd still get no forgiveness. But that was all mist and dream and foolishness, of course. If there was a heaven, there would be no bearing false witness in it. But there's no heaven and no meetings and no Margery. It's all one now. Things must be as they are, and things had to be as they were, because I'm what I am, and Judith Huxam is what she is."
"A very wrongful view," replied Huxam. "But, for the minute, your feelings are beside the question, Jacob, and I'm not faced in my home with any fog like that, but hard facts. And very painful and tragical they may prove for me and all my family. You'll understand that she never could forgive the fearful day we journeyed to Plymouth—you and me; and she held that I'd gone a long way to put my soul in peril by taking you there to see your dying wife. That's as it may be, and I've never been sorry for what I did myself, and I don't feel that it put a barrier between me and my Maker. But now the case is altered and I'm faced with a much more serious matter. Judy don't worry about me no more and she don't worry about any of us, but, strange to relate, she worries about herself!"
"I've heard a whisper of it."
"You might say it was the Christian humility proper to a saint of God; but this mighty gloom in her brain gets worse. Once, between ourselves, it rose to terror, at half after three of a morning in last March. She jumped up from her bed and cried out that Satan was waiting for her in the street. That's bad, and I spoke to Dr. Briggs behind her back next day."
"Her religion was always full of horrors, and the birds are coming back to roost."