They had travelled from village to village, the girl sometimes walking, sometimes getting a lift in passing carts, never owning to weariness, or pain, or discomfort; but living, apparently, on the preacher's preaching.
Her zeal had outstripped his, burning like a devouring flame. She had sung at meetings; she had gone with him everywhere unshrinkingly; she had given away the very food she should have eaten. And the man had watched her; first with amazement, then with an overgrowing sense of uneasiness; never quite understanding what revelations of good and evil he had brought her face to face with, or how desperately she was clinging to her religious faith, as a child, frightened in the dark, clings to its father's hand.
Meg had been not only innocent, but more ignorant of some phases of evil than would have been possible in a woman of the preacher's own class. Her brain had nearly reeled with the shock of new experiences; her horror at much she had seen and heard had often kept her awake when her body was tired out; and when she slept, her sleep had been haunted with dreams that exhausted her as much as wakefulness. The supernatural grew very real to her then; she was happy only when Barnabas was praying or preaching; she was feverishly eager, growing bigger eyed and thinner day by day.
As for her companion, he had made up his mind to do his best for the lass, who was his wife in name only, and whom he had thought to take through the world, guarding her as he would have guarded a younger sister; but, as day followed day, and week succeeded week, the "doing for her" cost him more—both in heart and mind; and, even in pocket!
He was a clever workman; and, though nothing would have induced him to take money for his faith healing, he had fewer scruples where his knack of bone setting was concerned.
He gave Margaret every comfort he could think of, but became more and more uneasily conscious with the flight of time that the physical hardships of her life were telling on her, and that he did not know how to prevent it; that there was something unnatural about her fervour, but that that, too, was beyond him.
He had got into a habit of watching her, and of taking note of her ways, silently as a rule, because, being accustomed to solitude, he was a silent man in ordinary intercourse.
For any thought he took for her she thanked him, with a gentle graciousness that was inherited from her father; but which seemed to her companion to belong only to this girl, and to have the curious quality of making his heart beat faster.
He was disconcerted when she cut off her hair; and she was surprised that he should even notice the loss. She was apt to be surprised in those days if Barnabas behaved like an ordinary mortal.
Then a change had come over them both—a strain in their relations, ever tightening, impossible to break through, impalpable, and, finally, unbearable.
The woman was aware of it first, and tried to ignore it. She sang, and prayed, and worked with even increased ardour. She was over-taxing her poor body, that was so unequally yoked; and she knew, and rather rejoiced at the fact.
Possibly, at the bottom of her heart, she felt that that was one way of escape from a difficulty that lay in wait for her, unfaced as yet, and "impossible".
It had been in the evening, after a long day's walk, that the difficulty had stalked boldly out of its corner.
They had arrived late at an inn; and Meg, too tired to eat, had exerted herself to amuse a fretful child, who was sitting beside her on a bench.
She seldom spoke to strangers, but, at that moment, she had experienced a sudden and almost overpowering distaste for her surroundings. The hot, tobacco-reeking room, the smell of food, the noise every one made in eating, the way the men spat on the floor, and the way the woman next her laughed, affected her with a physical loathing. She fought desperately against the sensation, having a nervous fear that, should she once stop talking, and let herself go, she might break down altogether. Her cheeks flushed with the heat of the room, her eyes shone like stars, and her tongue went faster and faster. The child stared at her, open-mouthed; the child's mother looked at her rather inquisitively; but the father, a young mechanic, put down his knife and fork, and tried to draw the stranger's attention to himself.
All at once Meg was startled by the preacher's pushing back his chair noisily, and putting a hand on her shoulder.
"If ye can't eat, there's no call for 'ee to stop here chattering. Ye'd better go upstairs," he said.
His voice sounded a little thick, and his face was flushed, though he never drank anything but water.
Meg turned and looked at him in utter astonishment; then rose and left them without a word.
It had been nothing to speak of, nothing to make a fuss about, yet when she had found herself alone in the tiny room upstairs that he had taken for her, she had hidden her face in her hands with an indescribable feeling of shame.
"What right had this man to speak so to her,—to look at her as if he were jealous? He might, in his capacity of preacher, have reproved her for breaking any law in the decalogue, and she would not have been angry; but this was quite different."
Alas! it did not bear thinking of. She had given him "right" enough!
She had felt she could not sit still; the restlessness that had been growing on her had made anything more bearable than the quiet of her room. She had put on her bonnet, and gone down again almost immediately.
She had found Barnabas leaning against the porch outside; he had heard or felt her approach, and turned the moment she had joined him. Voices from the inn had assailed their ears, in a gust of sound with the opening of the door; and then they had been alone, wrapped in the sweet solemn night, and Meg's anger and shame had died. After all, they two were pilgrims together, through a tumultuous and alien world, and she had been foolish to have been so disturbed. It had always been wonderfully easy to Meg to look at things from a purely spiritual point of view.
"Are you going out again?" she had asked him; and he had answered, with some constraint, that he was going to catch the lads coming out of the factory in the town, pointing to where the lights of Nottingham twinkled in the distance.
"Then I'll come too," Meg had said. "I can start the singing if you want it; and I always like to hear you speak."
But, for the first time since she had known him, he had refused her companionship, speaking still with the same constrained tone, and without looking at her.
"Ye are just killing yourself, lass; I canna let you do that."
The girl had evinced much the same half-reproachful wonder that she had shown when he had objected to the cutting off of her hair.
"If I am of any service at all," she had said, "you, of all men, should not try to stop me." And at that, the man had stood upright with a laugh and a quick passionate gesture, as if he would have stretched out his arms to her.
"I, of all men! I, of all men!" he had cried. "Lass, do ye suppose I am no' of flesh and blood, like the others? The Lord has angels enough; let me ha' the woman by my side; I of all men shouldna stay ye. Come then an' ye want to, Margaret!" And Meg, aghast, had stood for one moment with frightened eyes; then had turned and fled.
He had wakened her with a rough shock, and had brought her back to an earth that was no longer only "the road to Heaven".
It was a natural thing enough that had befallen the strange pair; only Meg, with her eyes fixed on the stars, had never dreamed of its possibility, and her heart had sunk.
The next morning the preacher had met her with recovered self-command.
"I spoke to ye as I shouldna have," he had said gravely. "An' I am 'shamed to ha' done it; an' yet it was truth, lass, that it isna possible to go on as we are. I canna stand by an' see ye get thinner an' weaker afore my eyes. Will ye let me take ye to my own home an' leave ye for a spell wi' my own people? Happen ye'll grow stronger at th' farm an' piece on your life again."
And Meg had acquiesced. She would do as he liked, though he had fallen from his pinnacle and was no more an inspired prophet; for what else could she do?
"To piece on her life" would be a puzzling and difficult thing, far more confusing than to take the kingdom of Heaven by storm, and die of over-work and under-feeding, like a saint; but she had no choice.
While she sat at her window, her thoughts flew back over all that had happened, till the remembrance of Tom Thorpe's remark came as a sort of anti-climax to the painful gravity of her thoughts, and Meg laughed softly in the darkness.
"Which was the bigger fule?"
Well! if she had been that, there was no need to be a coward as well. The girl straightened herself with a touch of pride and determination that was a good sign. "I cut one knot—I'll untie the next," she said; "and live it out as best I can!"
CHAPTER III.
But the living out was difficult.
Meg awoke at the farm. After the strange and wonderful journey by the side of the preacher; after the days of wandering over hill and dale, with exhausted body, but with mind so fixed on the vision beautiful, that she would not have been surprised at any moment had the clouds parted, and the second coming of the Lord blazed forth; after that curious "intoxication" of the soul that such natures as hers seem liable to,—she "came to herself" in the old house among those northern marshes, and tried, a little desperately, to meet the demands of a lot she had not been born to.
The loneliness was all on her side; for to the Thorpes the advent of Barnabas' wife was, perhaps, on the whole a not unwelcome piece of excitement.
In the winter the road across the marshes was all but impassable for months together. Often from November till February the little stronghold which the first Thorpe had wrested, and his successors kept, from the devils of desolation, was left to its own resources.
The family characteristics had probably been fostered by the circumstances of their life; they were sufficient to themselves.
There were Thorpes; there were—but some way behind them—their fellow country, or rather county-men; and then there was the rest of the world. Weak-knee'd outsiders, with bad constitutions and "queer ways" and indifferent morals. The preacher's wife was not even north country; she was, in fact, almost a "foreigner".
Poor little "outsider," thrust down in their midst to take root in a strange soil, if she could; or to shrivel and droop with starvation!—which would she do?
"The best thing for the lass 'ud be to pack her in cotton wool, and send her back to her own kind," Tom Thorpe had declared. But the boats were burnt, and the going back was impossible!
On the whole, of all her new relatives, Tom alarmed Meg most; but "Cousin Tremnell" was the member of the family she liked least.
The prim little woman, with plaintive voice and sharp curiosity, with uneasy pretensions to "gentility" and small affectations, seemed more hopelessly out of touch with her than were her husband's rougher kinsmen. Cousin Tremnell asked questions with the eagerness of a born gossip, who had been starving for dearth of any subject more personal than "crops" and "horses"; and Meg shrank from her inquiries as if they were so many small stabs.
"It is not becoming for you to be sitting in the kitchen, ma'am," she had said on the morning after Meg's arrival, and had forthwith conducted her into the best parlour, which was the one ugly room in the house, with its carpet beflowered with magenta roses; its gauze-swathed frames, and bunches of worsted convolvuli under shades.
Mrs. Tremnell brought out her work, and settled herself down to see what she could "get out" of this extraordinary cousin-in-law, towards whom her feelings were at present rather mixed. It was something to have a connection who had been one of the Deanes of Kent; but what a degenerate Deane she must be! Mrs. Russelthorpe herself could not have had a keener sense of Meg's degradation.
"How could she ever have done such a thing?" Mrs. Tremnell kept repeating to herself, with little mental gasps and notes of interrogation; and the burden of her thoughts was embarrassingly apparent, even though something in the stranger's manner, a shy dignity that Mrs. Tremnell durst not quite outrage, prevented her from asking the question point blank.
"It must seem very strange to you here, ma'am," she said tentatively. "Of course, it can't be what you were accustomed to. I find my cousin's ways rough myself—not meaning no comparison to what your sensations must be. I understand you was brought up in a different station altogether."
"I have been in many rougher places than this," said Meg; "and the past is quite dead."
Mrs. Tremnell's eyes fairly twinkled with eagerness. The preacher's wife was "very peculiar-looking," she said to herself, glancing at Meg's short curls and shabby dress; but there was no doubt that she was a lady, and the lady's "past" possessed a wonderful fascination.
"Is your honoured father still alive?" she ventured; and the colour rushed to Meg's cheeks.
"Oh yes—I—I hope so!" the girl cried. But the idea that he might be dead and buried, for all she knew or would ever know about him, suddenly made her heart contract with a sharp spasm of fear.
She made a hasty effort to draw "Cousin Tremnell" away from the subject; and, asking questions in her turn, elicited a stream of information about the Thorpes in general, and Barnabas Thorpe in particular, a stream which was only checked by occasional little flights back to "the Deanes," whose very name seemed to attract Cousin Tremnell as honey attracts a bee.
It was curious to hear Barnabas spoken of familiarly; curious how the man's individuality was becoming stronger and the prophet's fainter to his wife's unwilling eyes.
"The Thorpes are all as sure as sure of everything," said Cousin Tremnell. "I take after my father's side myself, and he was a gentle-spoken man, and quite different; it was my mother was a Thorpe. And my dear husband was south country. I never saw much of Cousin Thorpe till after I was left a widow. Then, when my daughter was growing up, Barnabas used to be a deal over at L——, where we lived; but Tom and Lydia could never abide each other. I shouldn't have believed that I could ever come and live here then, nor that Tom Thorpe would ask me to; but blood is thicker than water, and I must allow that Tom's always kind, if one's in trouble. I was ill this spring, and I was sitting by myself, for I hadn't cared to have folks about since—since she left me, when Tom Thorpe walked in quite unexpected. I had got that weak and nervous—for living alone never suited me—that I fairly screamed when he opened the door. 'Now, you come along back with me, cousin,' says he; 'for I can't leave you here to think of your own funeral all the day.' And I hadn't the heart to say no, though I am half sorry now I didn't. I was that lonesome, you see; and a man does give one a feeling of support, especially if the man's Tom or Barnabas. Barnabas was the one I liked best as a lad, and, to be sure, I thought he would never forget—but there! it's nearly sixteen years ago now, since he was courting my poor Lydia."
Her voice dropped to a reverently lowered tone when she spoke of her daughter. The shadow of her grief momentarily dignified her pinched and rather fretful face; and Meg, who had been listening listlessly, looked up with awakened interest.
"Did she like him?" asked the preacher's wife shyly. Her quick fancy pictured the pretty girl, whom Barnabas had loved when a boy; and her sympathy was moved at once by the mother's sorrow.
Mrs. Tremnell, however, seemed half offended at the question.
"Oh, as for that, Lydia had plenty to admire her without Barnabas," she said.
And Meg could not guess how the little woman's sore heart was hurt, because the preacher's was healed; no one but her mother mourned for her pretty Lydia now.
"When he was a boy he would run the twelve miles from here to the town to get a talk with her; for all he was sure of a thrashing from Tom for playing truant when he got back," she went on. "But that's long past, and forgotten; and, perhaps, I shouldn't even have alluded to it to you, ma'am."
"Why not to me?" asked the girl; and then coloured, and laughed nervously when Cousin Tremnell's meaning dawned on her.
"To be sure, he is another man altogether since his conversion, and I hear the miracles he does is wonderful; though I do hope you'll persuade him to lay by and take money for his cures, now that he has got a wife and may have children," continued the plaintive voice, which was touched with asperity now. "He might make a very good thing of it, and people would think a deal more of him if they had to pay. Indeed, with your connection with the aristocracy, which is far beyond what he might have expected, I don't see why he shouldn't start a regular business. It was a sister of yours that married Lord Doran, was it not, ma'am?"
"Oh, won't you understand?" cried Meg, with sudden energy. "That is all done with—I—I—don't think about it."
"I beg your pardon, I am sure, ma'am; I was not aware that I had said anything amiss," said Cousin Tremnell huffily. And to herself she remarked that Barnabas had gone far to fare badly.
Meg went for a solitary walk in the marshes after that, and tried to sort and adjust her ideas and to "lay" decently several ghosts Cousin Tremnell had brought out of their graves. They had never, perhaps, been so entirely buried as she had fancied.
The incidents of that first day at the farm always remained in her memory, standing out from the many rather monotonous days that followed; not that they were remarkable in themselves, but because first impressions are cut sharp and clear as with a new die.
She came in after the mid-day meal had begun. The two or three farm labourers who ate in the same room, though at the other end of the long wooden table, turned round to stare at her with a stolid and deliberate stare. Tom Thorpe remarked that she was late, and they had "nigh done," though more by way of something to say than as a rebuke; and then, in the middle of the meal, "Foolish Timothy" lounged in, and effectually robbed her of her appetite.
The idiot shambled up to the table, and sat down beside her unasked, but unrebuked; and Meg could not repress a shudder of disgust.
The man's coarse loose mouth, and cunning shifty eyes, with their furtive sidelong glances, were unspeakably repulsive to her; and Timothy, unfortunately, saw the shiver, and hated her on the spot with the malicious, easily roused hate of a low nature. He was one of those ill-conditioned fools who have just cunning enough to pretend to be rather more idiotic than they are, when it suits their convenience; he lived on the kindness of the countryside, and lived well, occasionally repaying hospitality by buffoonery of a somewhat profane kind; but, at the Thorpes, he was generally on his good behaviour.
"What's wrong wi' ye?" Tom suddenly asked his sister-in-law. "Isn't the food to your liking, or aren't you hungry?"
"Yes, thank you, quite—I mean it's very nice," stammered Meg; but some fascination made her look at the creature by her side, who was contorting his face into sudden, hideous grimaces whenever he could catch her eyes unobserved by his host.
"What's the good o' telling lies?" said Tom. "It's plain ye can't eat that; and we all know ye've not been used to fare like us. Here, Timothy, make yourself useful, and fetch an egg from the barn; happen she'll relish it better."
"Oh no, please don't!" cried Meg, who felt that she could not for the life of her taste anything that Timothy had touched. "The pie is very good, but I have had plenty."
Tom frowned impatiently. "My good girl, that you've not," he said. "I am not going to force food down your throat if you don't want it; but why you persist in saying you like it when you can't swallow half a mouthful, goodness knows. Lord bless us! I am proud of our cooking, as Cousin Tremnell 'ull tell you; but I don't make a meal off the people who don't agree wi' me. Hands off, Timothy! Where are your manners?" For Timothy had surreptitiously stretched out a long-nailed, dirty hand towards the food in Meg's plate. She jumped up with a start at the touch of the idiot, and with a hastily murmured excuse fled from the kitchen. Tom Thorpe gave vent to a long, low whistle.
"It's a pretty business," he remarked; "an' the hottest water Barnabas has ever got into. What had he to do wi' a fine lady, as can't even sit down to table by us?"
"I must say the way she has been trapesing about the country half the morning isn't much like a lady," said Cousin Tremnell.
"Well, I've done. Ye may tell her I've gone out. So she can come and pick up a few more crumbs in peace," he said good-naturedly. "An', I say, cousin, ye might tell her I am not such an ogre as I look, eh? The fact is, I've got so used to myself living here alone wi' dad, that I don't think how I scare other people, unless a stranger comes to show me."
But Cousin Tremnell was still huffy, and didn't see that she had any call to "run after Mrs. Thorpe".
It was not a remarkably good beginning; and the preacher's wife felt much ashamed when she had recovered from her sudden horror.
She took herself to task for her disgust, as if it had been a crime, but could not prevail upon herself to return to the kitchen. Tom's deformity did not cause her the least repulsion; it was as it were accidental, and the man himself inspired her with respect; but Timothy seemed to her like some horrible brute, whose very likeness to humanity made him the more repulsive.
She sat down on the wide sill of the staircase window, and tried to forget the troublesome details of this rough-edged life, the while her eyes rested on the reed beds bowing in the wind, and the low grey sky, where a buzzard hung poised.
Thus seated, she clenched her hands; and, presently, began to sing very softly to herself, to the tune of an old Roundhead battle hymn. The inspiration of hard fighting was in it, and it did her good.
In the middle of a bar, she became aware that some one was listening; and, turning round, saw Mr. Thorpe standing on the stair above her.
The old man looked worn and tired; but smiled, and spoke to her with a rather melancholy gentleness that won her heart.
"Ye've a very sweet voice, lassie," he said. "Are ye for driving the old enemy away with it? Ye were singing as if ye were leading a forlorn hope. Ye had better not stop till ye've routed him."
The girl looked wonderingly for a moment; and then her heart went out to him with instinctive womanly sympathy. "I can sing as long as ever you please," she said; and she sang on with gathering courage, till the dusk began to creep over the landscape, and the shadows broadened on the stairs, and her voice failed from weariness.
She slid down from her place, warmed and cheered by a sense of comradeship, and stood beside him as he thanked her. The preacher's wife became wonderfully clever, as time went on, in foreseeing and warding off the black fits of depression that laid hold on the man; but, on that first evening, he had helped her, as a stronger and more cheerful spirit never could have.
"I am ashamed to go back to the kitchen," she said shyly; "I was so silly at dinner-time."
"An' so ye are Barnabas' wife!" he answered irrelevantly. "Well, well, it's no wonder ye feel a bit strange; but ye have driven the devil back. Come along wi' me, lass." And they went down together.
The preacher came home in the evening; he had been out all day. His eyes turned at once to the chimney corner, where Meg was sitting with her head bent down, fondling a kitten on the hearth.
"How is dad?" he asked of Tom, who hopped into the room with a tablecloth, which was entirely for their guest's benefit, under his arm.
"All right," said Tom. "Thanks to your wife, she's witched away the blues this time, and I thought we were in for a spell of 'em. I'll forgive ye for having the bad taste not to like me, if ye can cheer up dad;" turning round on Meg. "But what are we to call ye? Ye can't allus be 'Barnabas' wife!'"
"My name is Margaret," said Meg slowly. "I suppose that is what you had better call me."
"Oh, not if you don't like it," cried Tom, who perceived with wonderful quickness the "unwilling" inflection in her voice. "I'd not call any woman by her name against her will. Ye needn't think it. Will 'ee sit down to supper with us, Barnabas' wife, or would ye liefer stay at a safe distance till we've quite done, eh?"
"Doan't ye heed him; he talks a deal o' nonsense by times," said Barnabas. And Meg was rather thankful for once to have his broad shoulders between herself and Tom's over sharp-sighted eyes.
And so the first day at the farm came to an end, and in the course of the many that followed the stranger settled down among the Thorpes, even if she didn't take root, and still remained more or less strange.
She grew fond of Mr. Thorpe, who pitied the "little lady" from his heart. She was uneasily conscious of Tom's shrewd observation, which was uncomfortably keen to live with; and she saw very little of the man who had been her daily companion for the last three months.
The preacher seldom came in till late, and then exchanged few words with her. There had been nothing like a quarrel between them, and Meg had the most absolute trust in him; nevertheless, she breathed more freely when he was not present, sitting on the bench in the kitchen netting or carving silently, and looking at her every now and then with a look that haunted her.
She had been some weeks at the farm, when, one day, something occurred to break the surface calm that seemed to have settled on them, and frightened her with a glimpse of the Thorpe temper that Mrs. Tremnell had talked about, and of something else as well, which she was unwilling enough to reckon with.
Barnabas Thorpe had been away for several days, and was striking home across the flats. He quickened his pace on nearing the farm. The dull ache of anxiety he constantly felt when absent, had changed to a sharper excitement that made his pulses beat fast, when suddenly the faint echo of a scream caught his ear, and with a shout that rang out over the snow-covered marsh, he ran at full speed towards the farm.
Tom, seeing him in the distance, and wondering at the headlong rush, followed him as fast as his lame foot would allow, and arrived five minutes after him panting and curious.
By that time the preacher was standing in the middle of the kitchen with the fingers of his left hand twisted in "Foolish Timothy's" collar, and his right arm raised in the act of striking. Timothy was howling like a wild beast, and livid with mingled rage and fright and pain; the weight of Barnabas Thorpe's arm was not light, and he did all things with a superabundant amount of energy. Barnabas' wife was standing in a corner with a face as white as the snow outside.
"I say," said Tom, "whatever Tim's been doing, I think ye'd better put off the rest o' that thrashin' till your wife's out o' the way."
Meg found her voice at the same instant. "Oh do let him go—I only want him to go!" she cried. And the preacher let his arm drop at the sound of her voice.
"All right, I won't hit him again. You needn't look at me like that. He's not half so much hurt as he deserves," he said. And then, half twisting the idiot round with a turn of his strong wrist, he spoke between his teeth.
"If I gave you your deservings," he said, "I'd thrash you till you hadn't a whole bone left. I can't do that now; not that it wouldn't do you good, but it's against my calling. You'll get off a deal too easy; but if ever I catch you frightening my wife or any other woman again, I'll take it it 'ull be my duty to pay ye with interest; and I swear you shall have enough to last your life. Off wi' ye! and don't let's see your face under this roof again."
With that, he loosened his grasp; and Timothy, choking, made for the door. Before passing through it, he turned and shook his fist at Barnabas.
"I'll be even with you and your fine wife yet!" he cried. "Curse you both! Bad luck is on your scent, Barnabas! She always follows them as lays hands on me; and you've tempted her before. You've taken to wife a maid as wasn't born for the likes of you or yours, and every drop of blood in her body shrinks from you. She's pining after her own people already, and she'll go back to them and leave you to whistle for her. She's theirs, not yours! and if ye try to hold her she'll hate you. You can force man to obey you, but you can't make a woman cleave to you. She'll leave you, I say, and there'll be worse to follow. I'll live to see you brought low, and——"
"Clear out!" said Tom. "Or ye'll sartainly live to see yourself 'brought low' in half a second." And Timothy fled; but the brothers looked at each other with foreboding in their faces. Neither of them was above superstition.
"It is terrible unlucky," said Tom, "to lay a hand on such as him. I wish ye hadn't, lad!"
"He may think himself fortunate. I'd not ha' dealt so gently by him once," said the preacher grimly. "But," with a sudden change of tone, "I've scared my poor lass nigh as much as that varmin did!"
He turned to Meg, who was still standing with a blanched face in the corner. "How came it ye were alone wi' him?" he asked.
"Mrs. Tremnell and your father have gone into town to-day," said Meg, trying rather vainly to steady her voice. "Tom thought I was with them, but my head ached, and I stayed behind. I didn't come down to dinner because Timothy was there; but, after dinner, I heard him go out with Tom, and thought it was quite safe. He crept back when I was alone in the kitchen." She shuddered, and Barnabas clenched his hand unconsciously.
"Do you mean to say ye had ever reason to be scared of him before?" he asked thickly.
"It was chiefly my silliness before," said Meg. "He only made faces at me and tried to pinch me one day when Tom's back was turned; but, of course, I knew he hadn't all his wits, and I didn't like to make a fuss. Oh, Barnabas, please don't go on talking about it; let's forget."
"I am sorry, lad," said Tom, who was watching his brother curiously. "Aren't you wishin' you were unconverted an' free to wring his neck? But," with a swift wheel round, "doan't ye think ye really were a little fool not to ha' told me, Barnabas' wife? Ye might ha' known, by this time, tha' I'd not ha' let that scamp bother you."
"I thought you would say I was behaving like a fine lady, and fancying myself different from the rest of you," said Meg.
And Tom laughed loudly. "There wouldn't be much fancy needed," said he.
The episode seemed, by the very fact of its having stirred their emotions, to have brought the woman's aliency into stronger relief. She looked longingly at the door, and made a step towards it, when Barnabas interposed.
"I'll leave ye in peace in a moment, Margaret," he said; "but afore I go, will 'ee promise me one thing? Will ye tell Tom next time if aught troubles ye while I am away? or I'll have no rest for thinking some'ut may be wrong with 'ee."
He spoke insistently, and Meg hesitated for an appreciable second; then shook her head, the colour coming back to her cheek with a rush: she had already promised this man more than she could perform.
"I would rather not promise," she said. "I might not want to. If you say I must, I will, because you have a right, I suppose; but I would rather not."
Tom grunted impatiently; Barnabas picked up the stick he had broken across Timothy's shoulders and turned away.
"Do as ye choose; it'll be a bad day for us both when I take to saying ye must do a thing because I've a right," he answered.
The moment the door had closed upon his brother Tom swore.
"Do 'ee want him made o' ice?" he said. "Why didn't ye give him a word or a kiss, lass? Barnabas has no end of patience with ye. If ye were my wife——"
"What would you do?" said Meg, looking up with a sudden flash in her grey eyes. "Beat me? I have seen husbands do that; it generally answers, I suppose, if they go on long enough."
"Hullo! we've struck a bit o' fire this time. Thank the Lord for that!" said Tom. "But ye've a nice opinion of us, haven't ye? Well, there's no knowing what atrocities I mightn't ha' gone in for, if a merciful Providence hadn't made it clear impossible for me to marry."
Nevertheless, when Meg came down the next day looking whiter and shyer than usual, he held out his hand to her with a kindly twinkle in his eyes. "Ye'd much better be friends wi' me, Barnabas' wife," he said. "Happen ye'll improve our manners in time."
"I oughtn't to have been angry," said Meg quickly; for she was at least as susceptible to kindness as to unkindness. "I was all wrong, and one ought to obey one's husband."
"Oh! ye do plenty o' that," cried Tom. "Lord love ye, my dear, if ye obeyed him a bit less, an' liked him a bit more, Barnabas 'ud not quarrel wi' the change, and he might bide at home a spell."
Which last suggestion made Meg feel sick at heart, with a half self-reproachful, wholly miserable sensation, that fairly frightened her at times.
She went with the preacher that afternoon to a tiny hamlet, some miles off. She had not accompanied him of late, and it was strange to find herself alone with him again.
The marshes were still snow-covered in parts; the last vestige of green was frozen away, the ground lay stretched in drab and grey; save where, here and there, a salt-water pool showed black against the snow.
The preacher was on his way to baptise a child that had been born in one of a cluster of wooden huts, that were planted like brown mushrooms under the scant shelter of a group of alders.
His feet and Margaret's made a track all the way from the farm; and the girl kept glancing back at the double row of footprints, as though they had a fascination for her.
It struck Meg that the baptism was regarded as a sort of lucky charm, or incantation; but, when Barnabas stood outside the huts to preach, there was no doubt that, as usual, he carried his hearers with him.
Meg stood a little apart and watched him with new eyes.
She had thought of the message, not of the messenger, when she had first fallen under the spell of his enthusiasm. She tried now—and she found it strangely difficult—to keep possession of her soul; to stand aloof mentally, as well as actually, and to look on.
The man's reddish hair and beard and sunburnt face made a spot of colour in the leaden grey landscape; his vigorous personality was in strong contrast to the impersonal solemnity of the marsh. And his religion was personal too; it was the passionate uncalculating loyalty of one who has seen his God in the Man of Sorrows, and cannot rest for following those blood-stained footsteps that have drawn so many after them, and have left so deep a print in the world's history.
The half-dozen men and women who surrounded Barnabas were of as low a type as Margaret had ever seen; a wizened, stunted race, dwarfed by marsh fever and unhealthy living. But more than one of them were moved to tears, at the words they heard. How much did they really understand of his discourse? and how much was due to the curiously overpowering and personal influence that Barnabas possessed? This power "from the Lord,"—was it indeed from the Lord? or would he have wielded it, whether "converted" or not, purely by reason of his undoubting decision, and splendid physical strength? What had turned his life into this channel? and what—her eyes turned again to the double line across the snow—O God, what was to come of it all, in the many years before them?
It was bitterly cold, and the grey mists clung around them on their walk home.
Born and bred in the marshes, the preacher knew his way blindfolded, but the pathless expanse had something awe-inspiring in it. Meg reflected aloud that strangers might be drowned in a salt pool, and be never heard of more, if left guideless.
"The wild ducks would scream over one, and there would be the end of everything!" she remarked.
"Dunnot say it, lass! Ye'll not be wandering alone here when I'm not by, will 'ee?" cried the preacher, with a ring of pain in his voice; and her reassurances seemed barely to satisfy him. Timothy had filled him with forebodings, though he had also brought matters to a climax.
It was partly to turn the subject that Meg asked him one of the questions that had filled her mind during his preaching.
The preacher reddened, so that, under all the sunburn, she could see the flush mount to his forehead.
"There are things it goes against a man to talk about," he said. "My Master knows where He found me." But, after a few minutes, he added wistfully: "But an' ye care to hear, Margaret, I'd tell ye anything".
The story came out rather jerkily then, while they struggled against the wind. Meg, seeing the effort the telling caused, was sorry she had asked; was touched, too, with a painful feeling of compunction at the eagerness of his desire to more than meet hers.
Every now and then his speech was blown away from her; and once, when she lifted her face to listen, he paused a moment and said, with rather a sad smile: "But ye'll not understand it all, Margaret, any more than the snowflakes would". The snow was resting on her black hood at the time.
"When I was a boy, dad couldn't bear the sight o' me," he continued, stating the fact with an outspoken simplicity that was characteristic.
"It made him a bit sour to see me straight and hale, when Tom, as was worth a dozen o' me, was bent like a crooked stick. That was why I took to going over to Cousin Tremnell's whenever I could.
"Tom was keen on my getting schooling, though, and sent me over the marshes an' back every day, till I was too big a lad for any man to send. I wasn't fond o' learning, nor ain't now. It seems to me people stuff their minds too much wi' other men's thoughts. God's truth can't shine through the tangle, and they doan't give their own souls the room to stretch in. I cut the books and ran away to sea, when I was sixteen, wi' a cargo of oranges.
"It were after I came back fro' my first voyage that I fell in love wi' Cousin Tremnell's girl."
"I know," said Meg softly. "Cousin Tremnell told me."
There was a long pause; then: "She ran away to another man," he said shortly. "An' I followed, being wistful to kill him, an' mad wi' the longing for her. He had come fro' London, I knew; so I went there an' walked about the streets looking for her all the day long; an' times I would strangle her an' I met her, an' times I would kiss her; but either way, he shouldna hold her ever again, nor should any other maid be th' worse for him. I hankered so after the open flats when I was hemmed in by that cursed town, that I used to wake mysel' o' nights fighting wi' the wall o' my room thinking an' I could knock it down I'd see God's world again the other side. I made my knuckles bleed, but the others thought it war drink, an' didn't interfere.
"It was like a nightmare, a horrible hell! But I'll go back there yet; there are souls to save there too; an' the Master is there: ay, even i' the lowest depth. It's a fearfu' place, Margaret; the very air o' London is foul wi' their iniquity; I was sick wi' the taste an' smell o' it. Well, I traced her at last, and found her dead; I saw her coffin.
"They buried her in a great waste o' graves; I disremember what they call it. I hid among the stones, being possessed like the man i' the Bible, and scared lest they should take me away; and after they shut the gates I crept out an' sat by the side of her.
"The soft slush o' mud hardened to ice in the night; but I was hot, not cold, an' I wondered whether she couldna feel me through all the new-turned-up earth. It seemed as if she must. I bided all through the darkness, for she were always scared o' being alone at dusk; an' when the day broke, I saw the Lord. He came in the early morning, walking over the mounds.
"At first I didna know Him. He was dim like a shadow, through the orange fog; but He called me by name, 'Barnabas, Barnabas!' and my soul leaped up; an' He came nearer an' stood by her grave, an' touched me; and the devil went out o' me; and I got up to follow Him, and to call all who I met to follow Him, who is the very God, till the day when I see Him again."
The preacher's breath came quickly while he told the story. It was real to him, as the ground he trod on; no one could listen to it and doubt that.
But, after a moment, he recovered himself and looked at her with a kindly smile.
"No one knows this but Him and you," he said. "Nor ever will! I told ye, because ye asked me, my lass; but doan't ye look sad; it war sixteen years ago, an' it war worth the pain."
The tears stood in his companion's eyes; she was both touched and puzzled.
"But it wasna to tell ye that that I wanted ye to come wi' me to-day," he went on, after a pause. "I've summat else to say to 'ee, Margaret."
He looked away from her over the marshes, and his voice took the tone of dogged resolution that Meg was beginning to recognise.
"I'm going to leave you here and tramp to Lupcombe, an' happen I shall be away some months. They've got the black fever there, and I doubt they'll have a pretty bad bout. There was three houses struck last week, an' the game's only just beginning. I've fought wi' that fever once before, an' happen I'll be some help. The doctor was the very first down, an' the scare's terrible. I'm going to start this evening when I've seen ye home. I canna bear ye to be out o' earshot since that rascal——Margaret," and his voice changed, "it's just all I can do to leave ye!"
"Shall I come with you?" said Meg in a low voice. "I'm not afraid of any fever. Would you like me to come?"
"Are ye glad or sorry I'm going?" said the man suddenly. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked for a moment into her face.
"No," he said; "ye shan't come. God forgi'e me! but that 'ud be more nor I could stand. Look now, I want to give ye what I've saved. Here! I wish it was more, my girl; but anyhow, ye'll be beholden to no one wi' that; it 'ull more nor pay dad for your keep. Hold out your hands, lass," and he held the money out to her.
"Oh, Barnabas, it's all wrong!" cried the girl sadly. "I wouldn't take it if I could help it."
"Ye needn't grudge me the working for 'ee," he said; "I think I'd go mad if I couldn't do that much. I'll try and save more next year. I never have before, not thinking as I was one to marry, or to hanker after any woman." He stood still, they were just in sight of the farm, and held out his hand as if that were the natural ending of his statement.
"At least, I'll not fash ye," he said. "I canna bide here unless ye'll like me better. The best thing I can do for 'ee now is to leave ye; but take care o' yourself, since I'm no' to take care for 'ee; take double care, my lass."
"You need not be afraid," said Meg. "Nothing is in the least likely to happen to me. It is those whose lives are worth the most who run the risks; I shall probably live to a ripe old age."
The perplexed self-reproach that had weighed heavily on her all the way home prompted the speech. She hardly knew herself how sad it was, until she saw him wince, as if she had hurt him.
"Are ye so unhappy?" he said; "an' I'd give my soul for yours! My little lass, what shall I do? If there's aught i' this world 'll make ye happier, I'll do it somehow. I'd be glad if the fever took me, if that 'ud be easiest for ye; but it's easy saying I'd die for ye, when it's the living is the puzzle. Ay, I know I am scaring ye even now; I love ye a deal more nor ye want me to, but ye are a woman after all. Margaret, Margaret, have ye no heart for me?"
Meg covered her face with her hands; the appeal moved her, though not to love.
"Don't, don't!" she cried. "It's my fault that it's not in me to care—like that. I can't help it, Barnabas; but it's all wrong from the beginning to end; and it's my fault."
Barnabas drew himself up with a quick gesture.
"Shame on me!" he said. "I hadn't meant to ha' said that. Ye must forget it, lass. Ay, it's time I went. See now, I'm going. But doan't 'ee cry so; gi'e me one look; for I canna leave ye like this. I'm sore ashamed to ha' made ye cry."
Meg lifted her head and looked at him, ashamed too, though with a smile through her tears.
"It was something in your voice that made me so silly," she said. "But I am not going to be unhappy, and I wasn't crying for myself."
"Good-bye," said the preacher steadily. "But I want no pity, my lass. I'll not have ye waste tears for me. We've not come to the end yet."
With that he turned away, and set his face in the other direction. He was glad there was a stiff bit of work before him; after facing the problem of life, it was somewhat of a relief to turn to a grapple with death.
CHAPTER IV.
The churchyard of Lupcombe joins the vicarage garden, and slopes downhill to it. First comes the church on the top of the hill, with its squat square tower, weather-beaten and sturdy; then the churchyard, the God's acre, in which a large proportion of the graves bear the date of the terrible fever year; then the parson's house and the doctor's; and then the irregularly flagged village street which runs to the bottom of the hill.
The parson stood by the grave of his first-born, one May afternoon.
At the time of the boy's birth the churchyard had been white with snow, and comparatively empty of graves; and when the parson had gone to church, people had grinned and bobbed to him on each side of the way, and had asked after his "good lady". The "good lady" slept by her boy now; and the two little daughters close by; and only the parson was left, with a heart dry as the turned-up earth.
He read the service with a steady voice; in the presence of this mighty visitation, who was he to complain?
"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
Barnabas Thorpe buried the boy; for the gravedigger was dead.
The preacher and the parson fulfilled almost every office under the sun; a pitiless sun that beat down on the parson's uncovered head, which had whitened during the last month.
He held out his hand to Barnabas across the grave, when their work was finished.
"Thank you. My arms are old," he said. "If it hadn't been for you we should have had to do as they did in the plague year. That's the fourth to-day. Come in now, and eat and rest. Our dead can do without us, but you'll want all your strength for the living." And Barnabas followed him down the well-worn path to the garden gate.
In this strange "time of the Lord," no one even gossiped about the strangeness of the coalition, though it had been well known before that Mr. Bagshotte hated dissenters as he hated Whigs and liars.
The parson was short and spare, a clear-eyed, ruddy-complexioned English gentleman, a bit of a scholar, and a judge of good wine, but neither epicure nor bookworm. A healthy-minded man with a fund of common-sense, who had never thought too much about things spiritual, but had preached the same set of sermons year in and year out, and had christened, churched, married and buried his parishioners very comfortably for the last thirty years.
Now, in this storm of trouble, he had preached the same sermons still, till no hearers were left; when he locked the church door, and put the key in his pocket, observing merely that he had "enough to do in reading the burial service; and the people were right—while God was speaking there was no need of his comments".
Barnabas Thorpe preached on the green instead, when he had time. He prayed by the dying, too, and, as we have seen, he buried the dead. Some he saved alive. Indeed, the villagers put down every survival to his agency; and he certainly was a tower of strength, both morally and physically. Probably his influence really did prevent some deaths; for, from the evening of his first sermon, the public houses emptied.
The disorganisation and terror which the parson could not cope with, gave place to a religious "revival," which he also disapproved at first; but he had come round to Barnabas now. The preacher might be uneducated and fanatical, but he was risking his life gladly and hourly; and the parson knew a brave man when he saw one, and knew, too, the value of the example. So he and Barnabas Thorpe stood shoulder to shoulder, and worked in the presence of death, unshrinkingly, and as a matter of course; and when the parson's wife and children were struck down, the parson showed what manner of man he was; and the preacher wondered whether all the sleepy, easy-going clergymen he had rather despised had the same depths of courage in them. He thought, also, of his own wife; and reverenced his fellow-worker, as he had seldom reverenced any man before.
The parson unlocked the iron gate that opened on his garden from the churchyard; he paused a moment there and looked back.
"At this rate the churchyard will soon be fuller than the village," he remarked. "There are more brown graves than green now. There is a larger congregation there than I ever drew; but I never was much of a hand at preaching."
The roses in the garden were straggling over the path; all the flowers were suffering because the gardener was down. Mr. Bagshotte instinctively felt for a knife with which to prune them; he had been proud of his garden, and it had repaid him well; but he threw the roses he cut off in a heap behind the shrubs—it was useless now to carry them indoors. His wife, who had loved roses, needed his no more; though it crossed the parson's mind that he could barely believe—as perhaps he ought—that all the flowers of heaven (if they have flowers there) could "make up" to her for the familiar roses he had always brought—she had been very fond of them, and him.
He fetched bread and meat for his guest with his own hands. The cook had gone home, the old nurse was sobbing in the empty nursery, the housemaid was dead.
Barnabas ate without much appetite; the strain was beginning to tell, even on him. The desolate house oppressed him, and a grief he could not assuage made him miserable.
Mr. Bagshotte stood with his back to the fireplace and looked at the preacher thoughtfully: his scrutiny might have disturbed some men, but Barnabas had not a grain of self-consciousness in him.
It was strange to reflect that this tremendous experience, which was the one startling event of the old man's life, which had robbed him of all the sweetness in it—he was too manly a man to say even to himself of all that made it worth living—was probably only one of many experiences to this younger brother, whose years, shorter than his own by thirty at least, were yet probably ten times as full of incident.
"You must have seen some odd things," he remarked. "I suppose that when we are through this, we shall pick up what remains of us, and steady back into our ordinary jogtrot as best we can. But you will go away and come in for fresh upheavals and what you call 'revivals' somewhere else, and we shan't meet again."
"No," said the preacher. "Very like we shan't—till the day when Christ's kingdom comes."
His blue eyes brightened at the thought of that time,—which thought, indeed, was always more or less present with him.
"H'm," said the parson. "It has come to a good many poor souls this week. I wonder——" It was on the tip of his tongue to say, "I wonder what they make of it!" It was so difficult to imagine his stolid L——shire parishioners translated into a purely spiritual atmosphere; but the observation struck him as unclerical, and he bit it off short.
"Mind you, I don't like ranting, and never shall," he said. "But there's no doubt men had better turn in their despair to God than to gin or begging; and a time like this seems bound to bring out either the beast or the angel in us." He paused, and took snuff emphatically.
"I hope I should have stood to my guns," he resumed; "but all the same, if it hadn't been for you, the beast would have got the best of it in the village. Go on eating, man! You ought to eat at the rate you work. I'd offer you beer, only I suppose you won't touch it. I heard you stigmatising it as 'accursed poison' on the Green last week. You're wrong, you know, quite wrong."
Mr. Bagshotte was usually a deliberate and placidly silent man, but grief made him curiously restless and talkative.
Barnabas lifted his eyes from his plate and looked at his host, who had just buried his son.
"If you'd felt that drink devil tearing inside you, you'd not care about playing with him; nor about seeing others do it," he said. "But my preaching isn't to you, nor such as you, sir. I've not felt called to speak to them above me, except once." He stopped rather abruptly, and got up.
"I've done, thank 'ee; an' there's some one coming up the garden. Ay, it's Polly Taylor, an' she looks as if it was pressing."
He walked to the window; and the child, seeing him, poured out an urgent message, interspersed with sobs.
Perhaps nothing could have more strongly set forth the general topsy-turvyness than the fact of the revivalist preacher's receiving a call through the rectory window, with the parson standing by unsurprised.
"Her mother's took bad an' her brother's dead," said Barnabas; "but"—with a moment's hesitation—"will ye no gi'e yourself an hour, sir? I'll manage."
The old parson straightened himself, and took up his hat and stick.
"Not now," he said. "When the bullets have stopped flying, we'll count our dead." So the two went into the village street together.
Barnabas Thorpe, with his weather-beaten face and long swinging stride; Mr. Bagshotte, trotting along by his side in clerical hat and gaitered legs—these two were the most familiar of sights now; brave men both, who, whatever their differences, would never duck their heads under fire, whether visible or invisible.
A starved dog, whose owner lay in the churchyard, crept after them whining, and thrust his nose under the preacher's hand. Dogs always followed Barnabas, who, from his childhood, had been bound by a specially strong tie to the brute creation. Already he had been adopted as master by four cats and two mongrel dogs, as he remembered with rather rueful amusement.
"Go home!—I've no room for ye," he said; but, on the dog's explaining that he had no home, that nobody had any room for him, and that he was sick of being stoned, his legs having got so shaky that he hadn't energy to get out of the way, Barnabas relented and picked him up. It was absolutely impossible to the man to pass on on the other side in any case, whether advisable or not, as his fellow-worker remarked. Mr. Bagshotte's liking for Barnabas was, sometimes, touched by something that would have been pity if the preacher had not been too strong a man to feel sorry for.
"A bit of a fatalist (though he doesn't know it), a bit of a fanatic, and a bit of a saint, with an inconveniently big heart," thought the parson. "The man gives the saint some trouble, I fancy. I wonder what his wife is like!"
Three weeks later the "bullets" began to slacken.
There was a paragraph in a London paper describing the terrible scourge that had devastated the little northern village—reducing the population to less than one half of its original number, and sweeping away whole families at once. Mr. Bagshotte, the vicar, had lost his wife and three children, the report said; and several of his contemporaries, who remembered Bagshotte at the university, wondered whether this was the same man they used to know, and, if so, why he had buried himself in the country.
Mr. Bagshotte himself read the meagre account with rather a sad smile. It would mean so remarkably little to the people who did not live in the village; and the village had been his world for so long.
He had been essentially a domestic man, loving the routine of everyday life, absolutely happy with his wife and children, whom he had surrounded with little old-fashioned tender observances. He had lost touch with the friends of his youth; though, his friendships being of sturdy growth, he had prided himself on not forgetting them. He was alone now, so far as companionship went; and, healthy-minded as he was, he got to dread the emptiness of the rooms, and would cheat the loneliness that awaited him by hurrying up the back way, avoiding the drawing-room door, which used always to open at the sound of his footstep.
Possibly he came to feel his losses more when the pressure of excitement was over.
It would have been unworthy to pray for death. A man has no business to whine for a speedy release because his duty has become irksome; but he was conscious of some disappointment. He had believed, when he had buried his son, that his own turn would come when the shots began to "thin". He was willing to wait till then, indeed it would never have done for his wife to have been left alone; but now, when the shops were opening again, when the world was regaining its balance, and men, meeting in the street, talked of weather and trade, and discovered that the "Last Day" was, after all, not so very imminent, the old man was conscious of a slightly surprised disappointment. "The king can do no wrong," but he had hoped things might have been otherwise ordered.
He was just turning in at his own gate one Sunday morning; the usual Sunday services had begun again, and he was considering how to fill up the gaps in the church band, when some one called him by his Christian name.
He turned, frowning slightly, and a good deal surprised; then his face changed.
He knew the stranger at once; the twelve years that lay between this and their last meeting seemed to come like a haze before his eyes. He rubbed them vigorously, but he had no doubt as to who it was.
"Deane! Charles Deane!" he cried.
"I saw it in the paper, and I came at once. My dear old friend!" cried the new-comer; and the two men grasped each other silently by the hand.
It is one of the advantages of riches that good impulses can be carried out with comparative ease, while they are still hot.
Mr. Bagshotte threw open the gate with a jerk.
"Come in, come in. You are more than welcome," he said. "To think that you should have come like this! It's—it's extraordinarily good of you, Deane."
The old man was more touched than he would have cared to show. He had admired his brilliant friend immensely in the olden days; but he had, somehow, hardly expected that Charles Deane would have remembered him.
"I wish she could have welcomed you. We seldom had any visitors, and she would have enjoyed it so," he said simply. "So you saw it in the paper and came! I had fancied I was quite forgotten."
Mr. Deane put his hand for a moment on the parson's shoulder. "But one doesn't forget one's oldest friends," he said; and the sympathy in his musical voice was good to hear.
It certainly was fortunate that he had come on the spur of the moment, before anything had occurred to prevent him.
Mr. Bagshotte led the way into his study, with a brighter look on his face than it had worn for a long time.
On opening the door, he found Barnabas Thorpe awaiting him.
"They told me that ye would be out o' church in a minute, so I just waited for 'ee," the preacher began; then stopped short suddenly.
Who was this? this stranger who was yet not a stranger? Who was this who had stolen Margaret's eyes?
Barnabas actually flinched; the likeness hurt him, combined, as it was, with the utter scorn and distrust that those eyes expressed.
"You are my wife's father!" he cried abruptly, his thoughts treading on each other's heels, and tumbling confusedly through his brain while he spoke.
Mr. Deane had turned rather white. Like Meg, his colour went when he was very angry. He flicked the dust off his boots with his riding whip; then looked up with a fine smile.
"It is a little late to remember that she had a father," he said. "She forgot that she was my child when she became your wife. The best that can happen to her now is that she should continue to forget it—for ever, if possible. I sincerely hope it may be possible—for her own sake. No one will disturb your possession."
He turned away when he had spoken. He could not condescend to quarrel with this man.
"God bless my soul!" cried the parson. "Mr. Deane's daughter your wife; but—but——"
"But she was never born for the likes o' me, eh?" said the preacher. "Is that what you'd say, parson? It's her own flesh an' blood she should ha' clung to, when they miscalled her, an' cast her out? an' I should ha' shrugged my shoulders an' walked away?" His heart was hot within him. Mr. Deane's voice and face and manner, the strong indissoluble tie of blood that made Meg his, even when he denied her, awoke the man's fierce jealousy, and awoke also a certain sore despondency that he himself hardly understood.
"An' so ye'll not disturb me?" he went on slowly. The two men's eyes met for a second, and Barnabas Thorpe laughed rather grimly. "An' that's a true word," he said. "I am no' o' your kind, thank God; but happen I know one thing. I can take care o' the woman who is mine."