"He does nothing but good—a very honourable and upright man, and more than that," said Margery. "You must be all right if you make the world happier than you find it."
"It is your place to stand up for him," returned Judith, "and, in reason, a wife ought to say the best she knows of her husband; but actions may spring from all sorts of motives. Good actions may arise from bad motives, owing to the ignorance and also the devious cunning of men and women. All we've got to cling to is the Light, and if a man shows the Light doubtfully, then, however he may seem to shine, we can't be sure of him."
Margery had concealed from her parents the gap that existed in understanding between Jacob and herself. Her father cordially approved of him; her mother had ever expressed herself as uncertain. Now her daughter declared surprise at this fact.
"I've always got to champion Jacob against you," she said. "But I should have thought you'd have been the first to see his qualities. He's like you in a way—don't care for pleasure, or company, and keeps a guard over his lips, and works morning, noon and night. If Jeremy had been like that——"
Mrs. Huxam was not annoyed.
"You can't see all round the human character as I can, Margery," she answered, "and I don't blame you, because such a bird's-eye view only comes with years, and between husband and wife it often never comes at all. What the deep eye looks to is the foundations. In Jeremy's case I laid the foundation, being my work as his mother. And in your case I laid the foundation also. Jeremy has a character that you might call weak, and without religion he would very likely have brought our grey hairs with sorrow to the grave—if I was that sort of woman, which I am not. But the foundation is there, and as for the building, though it ain't very grand to the eye yet, that's the Lord's business. Jacob puts up a finer show, being a man with money-making gifts and experience; but where the foundations are doubtful, who can say what may happen if a shock comes?"
"I wouldn't call his foundations doubtful," answered Margery. "I should say his foundations were the strongest part about him. Not that I've ever seen them. Nobody has. Jeremy, for all his weakness and instinct for change, gets more out of life than Jacob. Jacob misses a lot by his nature."
"If he misses anything that he'd be the better for having, be sure there's a reason," asserted Judith. "Haven't I seen it thousands of times? Don't ninety-nine men and women out of a hundred miss a lot, just because the one thing needful—the absolute trust and certainty that all is for the best—be denied them?"
"He doesn't grant that all's for the best, because he doesn't think or feel so," answered Margery.
"There you are then! That's weak faith. That's what I'm telling you. The man who pits his opinions against God and doubts of the righteous fate of the world is next door to a lost man himself."