CHAPTER V.
"A small piece of good fortune having fallen to Mrs. Thorpe's share, it's really time that her old acquaintances should ask what has become of her, isn't it?" said Mr. Sauls.
He was standing in Laura Ashford's drawing-room, whither he had come to extract any knowledge she might possess as to her sister's whereabouts. Unfortunately she knew nothing.
"I am very glad that my poor old uncle has left Meg that money," said Laura; "and that you mean to see that she gets it. Her cause is in good hands."
"Mr. Russelthorpe was uncommonly kind to me, and one has a foolish superstition about carrying out a man's last wishes," said George. "It's for his sake I am doing it. His widow means to dispute the will on the ground of incompetency; but she won't gain much by that. It is odd what a tendency women have for going to law. Of course it is fortunate for the lawyers; quite a 'special dispensation,' as no doubt Barnabas Thorpe would say."
There was a suppressed elation in his voice that was not lost on Laura.
"I wonder why he hates my aunt. How she must have snubbed him! This clever gentleman would keep a stone in his pocket seven years, and turn it, and keep it seven more, for the chance of hitting his enemy with it at last, I fancy. Well, well! we all rather condescended to Mr. Sauls before I married," she reflected; "but he has the laugh on his side now. Meg had better have taken him."
Her thoughts flew back to the evening of the ball at Ravenshill long ago, and she sighed.
"How pretty Meg had looked that night, and how set she had been on living with their father, and how unreasonable, poor child!"
Laura had grown stout and matronly since then. The philosophy of half-loaves had answered well enough apparently. If her husband was somewhat of a fool, why, her own excellent sense served for two. Well enough! But she would not recommend it to her own child as she had recommended it to poor Meg.
Motherhood had softened Laura; and, on glancing at Mr. Sauls seated under the lamplight, she recognised that he too had altered.
He had the ball at his feet now. He had always had plenty of self-assurance, but during this last year he had proved his strength, and justified his own belief in himself in the eyes of all men; he was no longer on sufferance anywhere, and his manner showed that he knew it. He was quieter and less eager than he had been; he looked successful, but he no longer looked young.
"Will you take charge of a letter from me to my sister, and give it to her, if you find her?" she asked.
"I will, when I find her," said Mr. Sauls. "I do not expect much difficulty. The preacher ought not to be hard to trace; for he certainly is not given to hiding his light under bushels; besides, my news will be to his advantage. We did our best to prevent his reaping inordinate profits, and he can't actually pocket much. There are a good many conditions, but, no doubt, he will live on her, and live in clover. Mr. Russelthorpe was fond of your sister, wasn't he? I do not remember her very clearly myself; I've a bad memory for faces. She had brown eyes and a fresh complexion, hadn't she? No? Ah! I must have been thinking of some one else. Well, if you'll write your letter I will deliver it."
"Meg's eyes are grey," said Laura shortly; and she turned to the writing-table with a sigh.
Poor Meg! who had so often been sinned against, as well as sinning, whom even her quondam admirer had forgotten!
Laura wrote her letter and folded it, then felt that it was unsatisfactory and tore it up, and tried again.
Mr. Sauls looked at his watch, and she took yet another sheet and scribbled a hasty postscript.
Her letter was stiff and rather cold, but in the postscript her heart showed itself; it was a warmer after-thought, such as had made her long ago turn back at the door to offer her silly little sister an unexpected kiss.
She thrust the loose sheet, which was thinner and of a different colour from the rest, into the envelope, and put her missive into Mr. Sauls' hands.
"Grey eyes and pale! I'll try to recollect. Good-bye," he said. "Oh yes, I'll give her your love, when I see her again."
"When I see her again!" His voice betrayed nothing this time; but he repeated the words to himself on his way down the stairs, not quite so calmly.
"When I see her again!" He would see her across a gulf; but, at least, he would know at last whether Meg on the other side of it was in heaven or hell. She was sure to be in one or the other; for there had never been much debatable land for her.
A fortnight later he had redeemed his promise. He had found his way to the preacher's house. It was, to Mr. Sauls' mind, the most God-forsaken spot he had ever come across. Holding Margaret Thorpe's hand in his, he tried to discover what had happened to Margaret Deane.
He was prepared for the meeting, and, even if he had not been, his natural instinct for the expedient would have led him to behave as if nothing very remarkable had occurred since he had last talked to her in her aunt's drawing-room; as if this encounter were the most ordinary thing in the world. But Meg, who was not prepared, started at sight of him as though she had seen a ghost.
Tom Thorpe, whom he had met about a mile from the farm, stood staring at them both from under his heavy eyebrows. Mrs. Tremnell hurried into the kitchen, attracted by the sound of a strange voice, and peeped over Meg's shoulder at the visitor, wondering in her own mind what Barnabas, who didn't like gentlefolk, would have said to him. But Mr. Sauls talked on in an even tone about his journey and the weather, to give Meg time to recover herself.
"Is my father well?" she said at last. "Oh," with a smile of relief, when he had reassured her, "then nothing else matters!" For a moment she had feared that this messenger from the past had come to tell her that her father was dead.
Mr. Sauls smiled a trifle bitterly. He had always known that Meg expended an immense amount of affection on her father, and that she had never had any sentiment to spare for himself; but familiarity does not always blunt the sharp edge of a fact, and at that moment he would have felt himself "less of a fool" if her emotion had been awakened on his own account.
He sat down to the mid-day meal with them, Tom inviting him somewhat unwillingly; and Meg, after the first shock of surprise, lost her nervousness, and brightened up.
She had often in old days had reason to be grateful to Mr. Sauls for his savoir faire; now she was once more thankful for it.
He made no allusion to her former life; looked as if he were accustomed to dining in a kitchen at twelve o'clock, and discoursed on the breeding of horses, as if that, of all subjects in the world, interested him most. Tom talked with a broader accent than usual, and with an underlying antagonism that puzzled Meg. Mrs. Tremnell's manner became more superfine and her words longer; but, except for one moment at the end of the meal, Mr. Sauls was his ordinary and imperturbable self. It was a pleasure—Meg was ashamed to find how great a pleasure—to be again with some one who did not drop his h's, or answer with his mouth full, or put his knife between his lips, and on whose tact she could rely.
"What this poor lady must have suffered here passes a man's understanding, I suspect," George reflected grimly; and, although he was not a forgiving person, he forgave Margaret a good deal of the pain she had most unwittingly brought on him, when he saw Tom Thorpe help her to the dish in front of him with his own fork, and noticed that she tried to "look as it she liked it". Possibly the things for which he pitied her were not those which weighed most heavily on her; but even the warmest sympathy is apt to be undiscriminating.
Margaret was thinner and paler and gentler than she used to be; he noted each change with secret indignation. No doubt her short cropped hair and black dress accentuated the difference, but he fancied that an ordinary acquaintance would hardly recognise her.
There had often been a touch of defiance in her manner to Mrs. Russelthorpe; she was not defiant now, but on the contrary, painfully anxious to get on with her husband's relatives.
Meg had once believed that all her troubles were her aunt's fault; but, since then, she had failed entirely on her own account—an experience which, I suppose, comes to the majority of us sooner or later, and has a wonderfully humbling effect.
George observed also that Tom Thorpe was rather fond of her. He could not have explained how he knew it, but the fact irritated him.
"I wish ye'd coax dad to come and take a bite o' some'at," Tom said presently. And she went at once, leaving Mr. Sauls racking his brains to remember some remark he had heard about the preacher's father. Was it that he was melancholy mad?
Dinner was nearly over when she came back.
"I have tried and tried," she said rather sadly; "but it is of no use yet. I think he hardly knew I was there, and I could not get him to attend to me to-day. He would do nothing but walk up and down, and quote bits out of the 'Lamentations'. It is dreadful to see him like that. I'll go and sing presently; sometimes that does it."
George looked up from his plate with the sudden dilating of his short-sighted eyes that Meg remembered of old.
"It must be very bad for Mrs. Thorpe to try and try," he remarked decidedly. "And you ought not to let her do it."
There was a moment's silence, then Tom laughed aggressively.
"Oh we allus bully her when th' husband's away," he said. "We mind there's noan to look to her then, an' we make the moast on it: but that's our business; which in this part we stick to, an' let other foalk's affairs bide. Will 'ee have some more cider, sir?"
The preacher's wife looked from one man to the other in some anxiety.
"Why do you say that, Tom? it isn't true!" she cried. "You are all very kind to me!" And Mr. Sauls, meeting the look, shrugged his shoulders, and accepted the cider and the snub peaceably. He hadn't followed her in order to make life harder for her, or even in order to quarrel with her relatives-in-law.
She took him to a deserted mill after dinner, for he had hinted that he had news he preferred giving her alone. And there, under the black walls of the old ruin, with the marshes round them, he told her of her old uncle's illness and death—with more feeling than, perhaps, most people would have given George Sauls credit for.
"He slipped out of life, much as he used to slip out of a dinner-party, with no fuss, giving no trouble to any one," George said. "I had been to see him every day during the last week; for after—well, after you left, the old fellow seemed to have a sort of liking for me. One afternoon I found him on the sofa, instead of in his armchair, too feeble to sit up, and only able to whisper. I insisted on fetching a doctor, but he would not have his wife disturbed, and I saw no reason to send for her. She was out driving, and expected back in time for dinner. Mr. Russelthorpe fell into a doze, as the afternoon wore on. He was quite unable to read, but he had begged me to take down one volume after another, and he kept fingering them, and they were all piled round him on the sofa and on the table by his side. Presently he opened his eyes. 'Plenty of company,' he said; 'but you are the only bit of flesh and blood, Sauls, among them all, except Meg, who cries to me—and I didn't help!' And then he slept again. His hand was in mine (flesh and blood is what one clings to at the end, I suppose, and books must give rather thin comfort); I felt it grow cold while I held it; but he was often very cold. I stooped over him to listen to his breathing, but not a sound was to be heard. He was gone."
Mr. Sauls paused for a minute; his liking for Mr. Russelthorpe had been closely bound up with the love that was—unfortunately, he told himself—the love of his life. He saw Meg was touched by his story, and especially by her uncle's self-reproach. Yet the old man had done nothing; and he, who would have done anything, who would have moved heaven and earth for her in his youthful energy, had she only appealed to him, would never touch her at all.
"That, however, is not the really important part of my news," he went on, with a slight change of tone. "The point of it is that you have come in for a fortune—though only on certain conditions."
He explained the conditions at some length; he generally spoke concisely, but there was no need to hurry this interview.
"He was very good to me when I was a little girl," Meg softly said at last, when every detail had been made clear. "When I grew up I fancied he did not care what happened to me. I spoke to him unkindly the last time I saw him. I wish! oh, how I wish I hadn't! So he remembered me after all!"
"To some purpose," said George drily. It was like Meg to be more impressed by the remembrance than by the actual money; and the dryness of his tone made her smile.
"I can't help being grateful," she said; "as grateful as if I actually possessed the fortune, which, of course, I never shall. Aunt Russelthorpe need have no fears."
Her smile and the little gesture with which she put aside the notion of benefiting by the legacy, filled him momentarily with the old half-tender amusement with which he used to listen to Margaret Deane's wildly unpractical utterances. Then the amusement was swamped in bitterness against the man who had taken advantage of her.
If Margaret had been his wife, she might have been as loftily unpractical as she chose, and she would have been no whit the worse for it.
George saw how the pretty hands, whose delicacy he had admired, were tanned and roughened; how the silver wedding ring on her finger, that had taken the place of the pearls she had worn once, was much too loose for her; how the dimples were gone that he had liked to watch for.
He had often said something to make his rather serious little lady smile for the pleasure of seeing them. Now, inwardly, he cursed the preacher with a vigour that would have startled his companion considerably if she could have read his heart.
"The conditions are absurd on the face of them," she was saying. "Barnabas could not agree to them; nor could I. To fulfil them would mean going back to——"
"To your natural position," said George. "Perhaps Mr. Thorpe's scruples might be overcome. Most men see the iniquity of wealth from a different point of view if they have a chance of handling it—I mean no disrespect to the preacher, naturally," he added hastily.
"I should hope not," said Meg; and her gravely surprised eyes made him wonder whether Barnabas Thorpe still took the trouble to deceive her.
"I daresay you know best about most men, but I know that Barnabas could never see things differently for his own advantage. I will write to him to-night, and you shall see his answer. I am quite sure of him."
"Ah! and you are not at all disappointed, and you are quite happy here, and his relatives are all very kind to you? You look as if you had had a remarkably easy time of it, don't you?" cried George. "I am glad you are so fortunate——" he checked himself suddenly. "I ought to be going," he said, with rather an abrupt pull up. He took out his watch and studied it, not her, when he took his leave. "I don't know whether you care to see me again? I had several things to tell you about—about your own people—your father and——"
"About father! Come again and tell me all you can think of," she said. "Come and talk to me about him; come soon."
"I'll come to-morrow," said George; and so he did, and for many following morrows. So long as he talked on that subject her interest never flagged; though it must be owned that he, on his part, occasionally felt the situation strained.
"What a fool I am!" he said to himself more fiercely every time he saw her. And afterwards, when he had left her and was back in London, those hot days spent at the "other end of nowhere," at the side of the woman who unconsciously played so large a part in his life, seemed to belong to a part of himself that he hardly recognised. He was so eminently sane as a rule, so little given to unprofitable expenditure, either of time or feeling; and yet, if he had never met Meg, he would have been a smaller man.
He wondered sardonically sometimes, between his pretty constant visits to Meg, how all this would end. It couldn't go on for ever! Would the climax come in his having the quarrel he was pining for with Margaret's husband when that saint should see fit to return to his wife? Would Meg herself wake up, and take fright, and bid him go? He knew perfectly well that, at a word of love, she would fly horrified from him; and his reverence for her kept his tongue within bounds. Had she been any one else, he felt there would have been a third possibility; but Meg's ice would never melt for him. It was, perhaps, some small consolation to discover also that it hadn't melted for the preacher; and Mr. Sauls was shrewd enough to arrive at that fact, even though Margaret Thorpe was not quite so transparent as Margaret Deane had been.
They were walking together along the cart road to N——town when she gave Mr. Sauls her husband's reply to her letter about the legacy.
The road was perfectly straight, flanked by a ditch on each side, and beyond the ditch a low mud bank. The croaking of the marsh frogs filled the pauses in their speech like a chorus. George took the letter unwillingly. How he loathed the sight of that laboured handwriting! A longing assailed him to toss it to the frogs; but, unfortunately, he might not gratify the impulse.
"I should like you to read it," said Meg, with a touch of dignity; "because you have imagined that the preacher would want me to take the money. You have not understood the sort of man he is."
"No! You see, I am not a saint myself," said Mr. Sauls. He adjusted his glass carefully. Ah, how he hated that man! "There's always a sort of mist here. I should fancy these marshes were not healthy," he said aloud.
("Don't stay a moment longer; come with me, away from these brutal farmers and their pestilent country," said the voice in his heart.)
"My dear lass," he read ("the impudence of the fellow!"), "I was glad to get a letter. I am glad you are well." ("Oh! curse his gladness!") "It doesn't seem to me as there can be two minds about the money. It isn't for us to be having a fine house and servants" ("for us! did he put himself on a level with her?"); "besides, I wouldn't have you beholden to any; and I would be 'shamed to have you live on another man's money, even though he be dead, while I've strength to work. If Mrs. Russelthorpe is oneasy, you can set her mind at rest. You are in my heart by day and by night. God bless you, my girl!"
That last sentence had a pencil mark through it. He ought not to have read it; he wished he had not; it was worse than all the rest; he wished he could cram the preacher's "blessing" down the preacher's throat; it made him feel sick.
"Have you read it?" said his companion. "I don't think that he 'sees wealth from a different point of view' now that he has a chance of possessing it after all, do you?"
"Apparently not. You have the best of that argument, Mrs. Thorpe," said George. "And the preacher's reply is a model of disinterestedness, as one might expect. Allow me to return it to you with many congratulations."
"You are angry," said Meg; for the bitterness in his tone was hardly concealed this time. "I wish you wouldn't be, for I was going to ask you to do something for me. I remember" (with the pretty smile that was rare now), "I remember that formerly you were often my friend when I was always in trouble with my aunt."
"Was I? I don't think so," said George; and his sallow face flushed. "I don't much believe in platonic friendships, you know—at least, not on the man's side. I was never hypocrite enough for that; but (well, never mind that) what do you want me to do?"
"It isn't a great thing," said Meg, "but I have no one else to ask." She hesitated a moment. Mr. Sauls might have been more gracious, she thought; but then she never quite understood him.
"It is a very small thing," she repeated deprecatingly. "It is only that I want you to persuade my father that my husband is a good man and an honest one. That was why I showed you the preacher's letter; that was why I tried to prove to you that he is, as you say, disinterested. It does not in the least matter what the world in general thinks. I don't care! it's not worth minding," said Meg proudly; "but I do care—I can't help it—I do care about my father. I shall never see him again, I suppose, and I cannot even send him my love, because perhaps he may not want it," she cried, trying to swallow the inconvenient lump in her throat. "I shall never be able to explain everything to him; but tell him, you who have seen me, that Barnabas is good to me; don't let him be unhappy for me; don't let him fancy anything else. You think this isn't necessary, perhaps, but I know father. He is so tender-hearted even when people don't deserve it. He will try not to think about me oftener than can be helped, and he has plenty of other interests. That was always the difference between us: he had plenty of interests, but I had only him. But, sometimes, he will suddenly remember, and then he will be sad; though my aunt will tell him I am not worth it. When father is sad, he is very sad," said the daughter who was most like him.
"Tell him, then, what I have told you. Do you understand?"
"Oh yes," said George slowly.
"And you will do it?" she entreated. She smiled again, but with eyes that were full of tears; and the April expression reminded him of the little girl who was always so easily moved to pleasure or pain.
"I'll make a bargain with you," said he. "I'll swear anything on earth to your father, if you will tell me the truth. My curiosity is—is excessive, I admit; but I was always curious, and you must allow that you gave your old acquaintance scope for conjecture. Tell me—are you happy, or not?" He twirled his eyeglass rapidly, and looked hard at her. "Has the venture been a success?"
Meg drew her breath quickly, and turned her head away.
"It is not fair," she said. "If any one had asked me to do for him so small and natural a service, I should not have bargained."
It was odd how this man always jarred on her when she felt most friendly towards him. She had been pleased that he had taken the trouble to seek her out, and to give her the details about her old uncle; but his over-eagerness offended her.
"No," he said; "you wouldn't have condescended so far; but then, you know, you wouldn't have cared. That's always such an advantage!" He ended the sentence with a laugh. "Well, I think I have the answer in your refusal to give it. I'll do my best for you when I see your father."
"Don't make a mistake," said Meg. She turned, and faced him with a touch of dignity, her confusion lost in something else. Meg had faults enough, heaven knew; but she carried with them all a crystal-clear sincerity that sometimes impressed him with a sense of awe. "Don't make a mistake. I have asked you to say nothing but the truth. It is I only who have failed. I thought I was better than I am. I fancied, for a little while, that I could live as Barnabas does, always praying and preaching and rescuing and healing. I was wrong—I am not good enough, or strong enough. I have found that out, and—yes—it makes me unhappy. It is as if one had fallen from a height; and I hardly know what to do, or where to turn." She hesitated for a second; then she went on more firmly, and an utterance that was on George Sauls' very lips was forced back. "But this is my fault, not his," she resumed. "And the preacher has been kinder to me than any one in the world, except—no, without exception. My failures are my own. You have made me confess them, though I am ashamed——"
"It is I who should be ashamed," said George thickly. "Well, I'll do anything possible for you, Mrs. Thorpe, even to taking myself off, since that's all I can do. I wanted to meet Barnabas Thorpe once, but—I'll endeavour to renounce that pleasure, and bid you good-bye here and now. So this is the end, eh?"
He held out his hand in a sudden revulsion of feeling, and Meg took it rather puzzled.
"Did you want to meet Barnabas? I wish you could!" she said. "For then you could not help being fairer to him. Good-bye, and good luck to you!" she added as an after-thought, moved thereto by the suspicion that Mr. Sauls was rather depressed; and he, lifting his hat, stood still and watched her out of sight.
"So that's over!" he remarked. "And I've given up my chance of speaking my mind to her precious husband. He'll get off scot free in this world, I suppose. Really I hope there is another, if only for the pleasure of seeing that astute humbug get his deserts. I think I could stand the lower regions myself, if only I might find the preacher there. 'Good luck! I am glad she wished it me. I am glad she is still the best woman I have known. Pshaw! she'd have lifted me into I don't know what heights of sentiment, if she had married me; and all one can say now is that even her husband hasn't dragged her down."
From which it may be opined that fairness to Margaret's husband was one of the things not possible to George Sauls.
After all, however, he had not seen the last of that country.
The next day, while waiting in no very good humour for the London coach at the market-place of N——, the landlord of the "Pig and Whistle" came panting up to him with a letter. To his great surprise it was from Mr. Deane, and written in a very shaky hand.
"I am tied to Lupcombe by an attack of hæmorrhage. I can't write long explanations, but think I am rather bad. I hear you are at N——; if so, can you come to me? There is business——"
The letter broke off there, and there was a postscript which George gathered was from Mr. Bagshotte, the rector at Lupcombe, explaining that Mr. Deane had been taken suddenly ill at the parsonage.
Well, if he could do Meg one good turn now, he would, if only for the sake of having done something besides wasting time in that abominable country; and afterwards he would go back, and be "sane".
CHAPTER VI.
Mrs. Tremnell sat in her room staring at a bit of a letter that lay before her, an expression of half horror, half doubt on her face.
She had never said in her heart that she disliked Margaret; she was not the kind of person to look at her feelings boldly, or to own to experiencing either love or hate in undue degree. She had never consciously gone further than "not thinking much of the preacher's wife," or "hoping that Barnabas would not have cause to repent"; but Meg's reserve had chafed her, and so, perhaps, had Mr. Thorpe's deference to the "little lady," and Tom's kindly partiality. She was a conscientious woman according to her lights. She believed she was dismayed at what she had discovered; not exactly surprised, perhaps; of course, not pleased,—but, "pride cometh before a fall". She had always known that Margaret was proud, and here was the fall that proved it.
"My letter sounds cold; but, after all that has happened, it is difficult to write to you as I feel. Only I want you to know that my home is always open to you, Margaret."
That was all. It was the hurriedly scribbled postscript to a letter, the rest of which was in Meg's pocket still.
Mrs. Tremnell, looking out of her window, had seen Mr. Sauls give it to the preacher's wife, on taking leave of her the day before; had seen Meg colour on receiving it, and read it through more than once after he had gone. Afterwards Mrs. Tremnell had picked up this stray sheet in the field where the two had stood. No one but Margaret, surely, would have been so careless as to let such a document blow away. "'His home open to her,' and she the wife of a professed preacher! To think that it had come to that!"
Should she show it to Barnabas? No; somehow she shrank from such a course. The consequence might be too serious altogether. He took things hardly. She didn't want to raise a tragedy.
Should she speak to Margaret? She had only "done her duty by her"; but Mrs. Tremnell grew rather red at the thought of how Meg would "look". Of course, she ought to look guilty; but that, somehow, was impossible to picture.
Should she tell Tom? He really made too much of Margaret; it would be a good thing that he should see she was just like other girls. His temper was colder than his brother's, and his common-sense more habitually awake.
Supper was on the table when she went downstairs. Margaret was still out.
"She's walking wi' that gentleman fro' London. Lord bless us! he must ha' plenty o' time to spare. When's he going home?" said Tom. But when Mrs. Tremnell, agreeing with him with unusual warmth, also asseverated that it was "time Mr. Sauls should go," and furthermore suggested that the way Margaret received visits from him was most "unsuitable," she might almost say "improper," he twisted round to Meg's defence with startling rapidity.
"Oh, she's right enough, an' honest as day; any baby might see that!" he cried. "I'd be fair ashamed to hint aught else to her. I doan't like that gentleman, an' I doan't fancy he comes for th' pleasure o' talking about horses to me; but I doan't believe he's a downright bad un, an' no man who wasn't a brute 'ud dare say a word he hadn't ought to Barnabas' wife, no more than to a child. She's homesick for her own kind, poor lass, tho' she won't own to it, an' that's why she likes to hear that swell talk. Small blame to her!"
Mrs. Tremnell shook her head mysteriously. It was all very well to laugh at her, but she wasn't one to speak without reason. The acidity of her tone increased in proportion as Tom's grew impatient and indignant.
"She's a very good lass, an' if she was a little fool to throw up her own kin for Barnabas, it's not for his folk to make her feel that worse nor she must. You're a rare hand at making a fuss!" said he; and his last words brought Mrs. Tremnell to a decision. She held Meg's letter out to him.
"Eh, what is it?" said Tom. "'My letter sounds cold after all that has happened—my home open to you'—but your name ain't Margaret! Who gave this to you?"
"Who gave it to your brother's wife? you should inquire," said Mrs. Tremnell. Something in Tom's voice made her nervous, but she tried to speak with dignity.
"It is my duty to say as Mr. Sauls gave it to her; and to ask you, Thomas, whether you consider that the proper way for him to address her."
Tom's fingers closed hard on the paper, crushing it into a tight ball. He turned his back on Mrs. Tremnell and pitched the letter into the fire, stood a moment watching it blaze, and then turned round with a look that scared her.
"An' now where did 'ee steal it?" he said.
Mrs. Tremnell burst into tears, and covered her face with her apron. She felt as if Tom's scornful eyes were burning holes through the linen.
"To be so spoken to! and me a defenceless woman in your father's house," she sobbed. "Me to be miscalled a thief, who have always been most respected before, even in the best families! If I have been unfortunate it's not been my doing, nor was there any one who treated me in such a manner as you do, who are my own relation, and who I expected to behave as such."
"Where did you steal it?" said Tom.
"I—I picked it up," she cried. She was frightened now, but angry as well. "I saw him take it out of his pocket, and slip it into her hand, Tom. And, if you had been there to notice how she changed colour, and read it over and over after he had gone, and——"
"Oh, d——n you!" said Tom. "I don't want to hear all that; and," with an unconscious change of tone, "here is Barnabas' wife to answer for herself."
Meg stood in the doorway, looking weary and rather dismayed. She had no great love for Mrs. Tremnell; but Tom ought not to swear at her, especially when she was crying. It always made Meg wildly indignant to hear another woman roughly spoken to; so indignant that she lost her own nervousness, and became quite bold on such occasions. Indeed, though Margaret minded rough words a great deal too much, and considered herself a coward, she was seldom wanting in courage on behalf of another.
"What is the matter, Cousin Tremnell? What a shame to speak to her so, Tom!" cried the preacher's wife in a breath.
Mrs. Tremnell made hastily for the door, and Tom laughed.
"Why do 'ee go now ye've got a defender? Ye ought to stop an' hear what Barnabas' wife has to say, since ye've been doing your duty by her all this blessed afternoon!" he shouted after her. "Well——" turning to Margaret, "have ye missed your letter?"
Meg looked so very far from guilty that he added hastily:—
"I doan't believe ye could hinder it, lass, nor that ye'd ha' ta'en it if ye'd guessed what it was. Cousin Tremnell brought it to me, but I'd not ha' read it if I'd known it was yours."
The preacher's wife raised her eyebrows with a touch of haughtiness which she seldom showed, but which Tom, at that moment, liked her the better for.
"Mrs. Tremnell had certainly no business whatever to bring you my letter; I can't imagine what she was dreaming of," said she. "Where is it, please?"
"In the fire," said Tom bluntly; "an', let me tell 'ee, that's th' best place for such things."
Meg stared at him in unfeigned astonishment.
"Why?" she said. "I do really think you've no shadow of right to put my letters in the fire, Tom. I have only had two since I married, one from Barnabas about some money, and the other from my sister. His is in my hand at this moment, so you must have burnt hers; and I am sorry, for it was good of Laura!"
Tom flung the book he was holding up to the ceiling with a triumphant shout, and caught it again with a clap.
"What a sell for Cousin Tremnell! I allus knew ye were all right; but I'll tell ye one thing, Barnabas' wife. I doan't fancy she'll be in a hurry to bring me tales of ye again," he cried.
Meg wondered a little over this episode in the quietness of her own room. What had Tom meant? and should she call Mrs. Tremnell to account for her odd behaviour? But no, she hated a quarrel too much for that to be worth while. When Meg was excited, she could say what she thought pretty strongly; but, in cold blood, she had a morbidly strong aversion to anything approaching a scene.
It was rather dreadful that any one should be capable of reading private letters, and passing them on, she thought, rather scornfully. Then she dismissed the subject altogether. It never even occurred to her that Mrs. Tremnell's inexplicable suspicions had any connection with Mr. Sauls; he, indeed, had but small place in her mind, which was over full just then of that spiritual failure that so weighed on her.
If she was not good enough to be an Apostle, what was she to be? If she was not strong enough to live that life of voluntary poverty and intense effort that has attracted the nobler souls among us in all ages, what should she do?
Smaller perplexities seemed hardly worth sifting compared to that. Such a nature as Margaret's was bound to grow morbid if it were unsatisfied. Her very virtues tended that way. Indeed, the dividing line, between virtues run wild and so-called vice, is apt to be elastic; and the very qualities which might be our salvation become our perdition when they take the wrong turn—a depressing fact until one remembers that it cuts two ways.
Certainly, if the idealists among us are terribly given to missing what is under their noses in their attempts to strain after the stars, the majority can be trusted to remind them of earth, with a salutary sharp shock on occasion, or even without it.
Some imp of mischief must have haunted the farm on the evening of Mr. Sauls' departure. He had been baulked once, but was not to be suppressed. Tom was in a teasing mood, his curious greenish hazel eyes alight with rather revengeful fun, and he kept harassing Mrs. Tremnell with a fire of jokes which she could not understand; she had given him an uncomfortable quarter of an hour after supper, and now she should pay for it. But his triumph, alas! was short-lived. Meg had coaxed her father-in-law into coming down, and sat next him, singing song after song for him, trying to pierce that periodical black cloud which would wrap him in cold lonely misery. Mrs. Tremnell tatted with a very injured air, and was on the verge of tears.
It was in the hope of interesting Mr. Thorpe that Meg began talking about the fever at Lupcombe.
"Barnabas does not say much about it. I have his letter here," she said: and, putting her hand in her pocket, drew out the wrong one.
"No; that is my sister's. This is his," cried Meg; then stopped short, aware of something in the air—of two pairs of eyes fixed eagerly on her.
"Hallo! How's this?" said Tom. "Why did ye tell me that it was your sister's letter I burnt, eh? an' that ye'd had no others?"
"I thought it was hers, but it could not have been, since I still have it," said Meg. "Why! what could you have burnt then? It wasn't mine at all. I suppose it must have belonged to some one else."
She got up quickly, and left the old man, who sat with his head on his hands quite unmoved by this stir and excitement.
"Why do you look at me so?" she cried, crossing over to where Tom sat, still but half understanding.
Tom put his hand before his eyes. Barnabas' wife had bewitched him into believing her once, in spite of evidence. He wouldn't be bewitched again. There was no other "Margaret" at the farm; she could not have "forgotten". It could not have belonged to some one else! Why did she say that? Why did she tell him lies? He had been so sure that she was true, even though that London gentleman might have been trying to "make hay" in her husband's absence. He had been too sure.
"It must have been the letter of some one else—not mine at all," she repeated. "It——"
"Doan't!" said Tom in an odd husky voice. "'Tain't worth while."
He looked so unhappy that Meg, still more perplexed, went on hastily: "After all, it doesn't much matter, does it? Perhaps when Barnabas comes home, he will be able to find——"
"Barnabas!" said Tom.
The indignation in his voice startled her this time, woke her up to a faint realisation of what he meant.
"He's over good for 'ee; and he swears by ye; but, an' ye tak' advice, ye'll not tell lies to him. He thought ye ower heavenly mind to warm to any man!" cried Tom, with a laugh that ended in something very like a groan. "Ye may break his heart times, an' he'll not hear aught against ye, or have ye fashed, cos he holds ye o' finer make than himself, or all of us. O' finer make! an' ye'll take a love-letter when he's away, fro' a black-faced Jew."
"Tom!" she cried, shuddering with disgust, "how can you, how dare you, say such things to me?" And at the warmth in her tone his cooled.
"Ye see I believed in 'ee too!" he said. "I thought ye weren't the soart to tell lies to save—I was going to say your skin; but it warn't even that, for ye couldn't ha' thought I'd harm ye."
"I told no lies. I never do!" said Meg.
"No! Happen ye call 'em some'ut else where ye come from; but it ain't my affair! Ye needn't be feared I want to interfere with 'ee. I never will again," said Tom. And Meg, too much offended at the time to attempt further vindication, yet recognised, with a sense of increased loneliness later, that he kept his word. She might be as late as she chose, she might eat or fast; Tom's kindly teasing had ceased. She missed it even while she resented his suspicions with an almost scornful wonder and disgust.
Meg had absolutely no instinct for flirtations, her love and hate were both deep; but when china vessels and iron pots journey together, we know which gets the worst of a collision; and her moral rectitude wasn't all the support it should have been.
"I think," she said one day to Tom, "that, if you think bad things of me, I ought not to stay here and eat your bread."
"You eat your husband's," said Tom. "He pays for it—an' where would 'ee go to, eh?" Then his own words shamed him. Where could she go, poor lass, if they were hard on her?
"I doan't want to be unfriendly," he said; "seeing that, happen, ye didn't mean much harm, an', arter all——"
"Thank you; but, if you can't believe me, I don't want that kind of friendship—I must do without," said the preacher's wife. Her gesture forbade his completing his sentence, and actually made Tom feel rather small, though her voice was gentle enough. Yet, in spite of those brave-sounding words, she was not the woman to "do without". She was by no means cast in a self-sufficing mould; whatever heroism she might be capable of would always have its roots in the strength of her affections, and his "where would 'ee go?" made her feel very helpless.
The preacher came back a few days later. Meg, coming down early one morning, found him asleep on the wooden settle, with his head on the table.
Meg shut the door softly, and stood considering him—this man who had been her prophet, and was, alas, her husband!
He had tramped a long way, and he slept heavily.
Should she tell him the whole inexplicable story when he woke, or not?
There was a force of character, an uncompromising arbitrariness about all the Thorpes that she rather shrank from; but Barnabas was always good to her.
She had declared to George Sauls that she trusted the preacher absolutely; and so she did—so she must—for what would happen if she didn't? As the question rose in her mind, Meg's heart answered it with startling clearness. She could not afford to lose one tittle of her carefully nourished respect for Barnabas. She was afraid, not of him, but of herself. She couldn't risk this thing; if he, like Tom, were to tell her she lied, she knew she should hate him; for she was too much in his power.
The sun was beginning to pour into the room. With the tenderness for a man's physical comfort that is ingrained in most women, Meg drew down the blind to prevent the light waking him, and left him to have his sleep out.
"Are ye surprised to see me?" he asked her later; and longed to add "Are ye glad?" but forbore.
He knew, before he had been many minutes with her, that his lass was more constrained than she had been. He had a horror of pressing her with questions, lest she should feel bound to answer them; but the unspoken inquiry that was always in his mind, and that she met in his eyes whenever she looked at him, oppressed her. Meg longed to escape from the whole family of Thorpes!
Barnabas waited all that day and the next in the hope that she would tell him what was amiss. On the third day something happened. A letter came for Margaret. She gave a cry of dismay, her colour fading, and her eyes dilating while she read it.
"What is it? Who has made ye look so?" said Barnabas. But his wife did not hear him: the hot kitchen, and the three men all staring at her, and the hum of bees through the open door, all which she had been conscious of the moment before, grew dim and very far off. The letter dropped from her fingers.
"She's going to faint," said Tom.
She pulled herself together. "No—I'm not," she said, in rather an unsteady voice. "I have had bad news. My father is ill; I must go to him. He is at Lupcombe parsonage. Oh, Barnabas, did you know that? You never told me! Mr. Sauls writes from Lupcombe. How soon can I get there?"
"Ay, I knew!" said the preacher slowly. "Ye can't go, Margaret. Ye might get the fever. Besides,—are ye sure he wants ye? Has he asked for ye?"
"No; but I want him!" she cried. "It is so long, so long since I have seen my father, and I have so longed for him! Let me go, Barnabas, let me go. What does it matter about the fever, if I see him first? I must go to my father. Let me go!"
The insistent, reiterated cry rang through the room.
It roused Mr. Thorpe, who had paid little attention to any one or anything of late; it filled Tom with illogical compunction. The woman who cared so for her father couldn't be "light" after all, he said to himself. But Barnabas drew his fair eyebrows together, frowning as if in pain.
"She's pining after her own people, an' she'll go back to 'em, an' leave you to whistle for her." It had come.
"No, no; ye are mine, not theirs!" he cried. "I'll not let ye go." And there was in his voice the defiance of a man who strives against a closing fate.
"Shame on ye, Barnabas!" said Mr. Thorpe; and with that he put his arm round Margaret. "She's in th' right. If her father's ill, it's a sin to keep her back. Ye'll have to let her go."
"I'll not have any man," said Barnabas, "interfere atwixt me an' her. Not you or any man. Do 'ee think my maid needs you to stand up for her? Margaret!"
Meg drew herself up and put her hands to her eyes, as if their vision were still a little misty.
"I am sorry I made such a fuss," she said. "I—I was taken by surprise—I didn't know that father was ill. I should like to think over the news by myself. No, don't come, please!" And she went out of the room, shutting the door softly after her.
"Well! we all seem to ha' got very put about!" Tom said ruefully; but Mr. Thorpe looked at his younger son with a fiery indignation that, somehow, brought out an odd likeness between the two men who were usually so dissimilar.
"Ye are just mad wi' jealousy o' the poor little lady's own father," he said. "Ye did her a cruel wrong by marrying her, an' now ye add to it! Ye were wrong-headed an' obstinate from a lad, Barnabas! I pity the lass wi' all my heart. She's like a caged bird here, wi' never a chance o' being set free."
"There's only one thing 'ud do that," said Barnabas. "The fever might ha' led to it—but it didn't; it wasn't my fault it didn't. A man hasn't leave to open that door himsel', but I ha' never ta'en over much care o' my life." He turned away heavily; his anger, which, after all, was made up of pain and love, had died as suddenly as it had risen; but he went out with a sore heart.
As for Meg, she never hesitated at all. For the last month she had been beset by doubts and uncertainties; had been wearying herself in trying to discover an end by which she might unwind the very tangled skein of her life, growing a little morbid the while in her endeavours, and more perplexed day by day. Now her doubts were at an end; her heart spoke a decided, undeniable must. If her father was ill, she would go to him. All the preachers in the world should not prevent her.
Meg dipped her face in cold water, and poured out a tumblerful and drank. Her throat ached with the dull ache that means anxiety and unshed tears. She could not cry, and there was no time to, but her eyes felt hot.
"Your father seems to be seriously ill. If I were in your place I should come." The words, in Mr. Sauls' thick upright handwriting, kept swimming before her.
Should she ask Tom to help her? He was angry with her just now; but, somehow, that silly, vulgar misunderstanding seemed to fade into nothing, and she knew instinctively that Tom was to be depended on in an emergency.
Barnabas might listen to reason from him. He was fonder of his brother than of any one in the world, except—(and a sudden hot blush rose to Meg's cheek)—except herself. No! she wouldn't ask Tom. If she chose to disobey Barnabas, that was between him and her, and she would tell him. She owed him that, at least.
The preacher's letter was in her pocket. She tore the envelope open and wrote inside it in pencil: "I am going to Lupcombe to see my father. I shall put Molly in the cart and drive myself to N——town. I know that you told me not to, and that you will all be very angry with me. I will come back to-night, I promise." Meg's pencil stood still for a moment; then she underlined the promise. She had room only to think of her father now, but she knew that she should dread returning. She would bind the coward in her to come back.
"And then you can say anything you like, and be angry all the rest of my life," she wrote. It sounded a little desperate, but there was not time to consider overmuch; besides, she never made excuses.
She folded the scrap of paper, and ran up to the attic her husband slept in, and put her note on a chair.
His knapsack lay on the floor; mechanically she picked it up and hung it on the nail; it brought back to her mind their strange honeymoon—the extraordinary experiences of her first months with him.
Barnabas had been very good to her then, and, indeed, always till to-day; and Meg, at the bottom of her heart, understood a little what to-day's sudden gust of passion meant.
"He feels as if he were pulling one way, and father, backed by the world and the devil, I suppose, the other," she said to herself. Well, after this she would merge her interests in his entirely; there should be no more serving two masters. Perhaps, if she saw her father once, only this once more, he would forgive her, and she would be more at peace.
This one day she would be her own self, her father's Meg; and Margaret Thorpe for ever afterwards. "But I hope the 'ever afterwards' won't be very long," she thought.