Into the Highways and Hedges Part 25

Her thoughts flew back to the evening of the ball at Ravens.h.i.+ll 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-a.s.surance, 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 h.e.l.l. 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 G.o.d-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 rea.s.sured 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 pa.s.ses 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 wis.h.!.+ 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."