“Weeks ago, John, I remember, as in a dream, that I lived in a mad horror of death. That has passed, I know not quite how. But I leave the judgment in your hands, my son. Do with me what you please.”
He seemed to grow very weary of a sudden, for his strength was but the strength of a sick man, and the grim truths of life seemed heavy on him. His son went to him, and, putting an arm about his father’s body, helped him to his feet, and led him back to the bed in the kitchen.
“I am not your judge, father,” he said, very gently; “there is another one who should judge, and from whom forgiveness may have come.”
He was thinking of Barbara, but my lord thought that he spoke of God.
The meadows about Furze Farm were full of the bleating of lambs those days, and the youngsters skipped and butted one another, galloping to and fro on their ridiculous legs, while the stupid old dames baaed, each to its own child. There had been one sick lamb that Christopher Jennifer had brought home in his arms, and the little beast had been laid upon hay in a basket beside the fire. There were also two cade-lambs in a pen in the orchard, and Barbara, who had many hours to herself now that John Gore rode almost daily to Thorn, had asked Mrs. Winnie to let her have the tending of the two motherless ones, also the feeding of the early chicks and the gathering of the eggs. The whole life at the farm was fresh and quaint to her, and brisk life it was those spring days—a cackling, bleating, lowing life, with the thrushes singing in the beech-trees and the blackbirds in the hedgerows. The bloom on the apple and pear trees in the orchard would soon be pink and white, and there were daffodils nodding their heads at Furze Farm as well as in the wilderness of Thorn.
The evening after Stephen Gore’s confession at Thorn, John Gore took his love away over the uplands where the furze was all a glitter of gold, with the green slopes of the hills and the brown ploughlands making a foreground to the distant sea. They desired to be alone that evening, to feel the spirit of spring in them, and to watch the sun go down and the twilight creep into the valleys. Their happiness was the greater because others were not forgotten in the romance of their two selves. Moreover, the glamour of the morrow had the delight of a plot in it. Mrs. Winnie alone was suffered to taste the spice in the secret, though the duty fell to her of sending out for clean rushes, taking down the rosemary and bay from the beams in the pantry, and gathering flowers to spread upon the coverlet of the bed.
She smiled to herself very pleasantly when John Gore and the “little lady” rode out early next morning as though for nothing more solemn than a morning’s canter. She knew that the gentleman had smoked a pipe in the parson’s parlor more than a month ago, and Mrs. Winnie was quite wise as to what was in the wind. There was to be no stir made, and Chris Jennifer’s wife rather approved of being the solitary holder of such a secret. Her attitude was quite motherly. She spent the morning sweeping Barbara’s room, and strewing rushes and flowers about it, and putting posies of bay and rosemary upon the pillows.
The pair were back at Furze Farm by dinner-time, looking mild and innocent, even hungry, as though nothing serious had befallen. They walked into the kitchen just as Mr. Jennifer was settling himself to carve the meat. John Gore glanced at Mrs. Winnie, who had run forward to kiss and embrace her “little lady.” That occurred behind Mr. Jennifer’s back, and son William had too brisk an appetite to trouble about the emotions of his elders.
“Shall I give you a dump o’ fat, sir?”
And so they sat down to dinner.