Into the Highways and Hedges Part 40

She had been kept to the house for weeks; but there was no doubt as to her convalescence, when, on one fine afternoon in September, Barnabas carried her into the fields, where she lay under a rick watching the men at work, the soft pink of returning health in her cheeks, her eyes soft with pleasure at the wonder of summer growth and sweetness.

Meg had not much wished to live; but, after all, the world was beautiful!

As she sat leaning against the rick, watching the in-gathering of the scanty crop, listening to the rough voices a little mellowed by distance, the preacher's wife knew that both place and people had now a warm corner in her heart.

Her gaze wandered past the low boundary fence, far away over the flats.

How often she had run out of the house and down to the field to look at that view!

She had thought that she should not see it again; and, even now, while sitting there, a dreamy presentiment, that she could not shake off, came over her.

She felt as if she had got to the bottom of a page,--a page on which such strange things had been written, both good and bad. Efforts, desperate at times, to adapt herself to circ.u.mstances, failures sudden and overwhelming, courage lost--and found again.

"They have been very good to the stranger within their gates," she said to herself. "I wish I could show them how grateful I am now! I wish I were a saint to call down blessings on their harvest!"

And she wished it with that fervour which one cannot help hoping is not entirely wasted, even in the entire absence of saints.h.i.+p.

She was so full of her own thoughts that she did not hear steps coming over the stubble behind her.

George Sauls had been up to the house and found the door set wide open, and every one out; then, with a shrug of his shoulders at the primitive confidence that still reigned in these parts, had gone on to the hay-field, where he descried Mrs. Thorpe sitting under the rick.

He stood behind her now without speaking. He was shocked to see how ill she looked. He had always felt that Meg's beauty was of too spiritual a kind; now, her complexion was more transparent than usual, and the intent expression in her eyes made her look more spirit-like than ever.

George felt his hatred of her husband leap up like a flame; it was dangerously hot. She turned round and saw him.

"Ah, I beg your pardon!" he cried. "I have frightened you! I ought not to have appeared on the scene with such startling effect. I am a fool, Mrs. Thorpe" ("and a greater fool than you guess," he added inwardly), "and you? You have been ill?"

"I am sure that you bring me news. Tell me quickly," said Meg.

"I come from Mr. Deane; he has sent for you," answered George concisely.

He put her father's note into her hand, and turned his back on her, staring stolidly in front of him.

"Has he told her he is dying, or has he left that pleasing piece of intelligence for me to break to her?" he questioned.

What a remarkably ugly view it was! He wondered whether the preacher was among the men down there, or confined himself to preaching and left working to the sinners. What should he do if Mrs. Thorpe cried?

"Mr. Sauls!" said Meg; and he turned round and met her glance. She was quivering with happiness. Her eyes were misty with tears, but her joy shone through them. He had never seen any face that expressed joy so vividly as hers.

"No; he has not told her,--I can't," George decided hastily. He did not often fail in moral courage, and over-sensitiveness was not among his faults; but this woman always brought out a side of his character that was exceedingly unfamiliar to himself.

"I am so very, very glad that he will see me!" she cried. "You can't guess what it is to have a word from him again. I don't know how to thank you enough for bringing it." She looked again at the precious slip of paper in her hand, and a fresh thought struck her.

"My father says, 'I would have seen you before if I had known'. Was it you who found out that I tried to see him? and did you tell him so?--Yes? Oh, you have been a very good"--"_friend_" was on the tip of her tongue, but she suddenly remembered his odd disclaimer of friends.h.i.+p--"have been very kind to me; though I wonder" (thoughtfully) "that Mrs. Russelthorpe let you tell him."

"She was a little disinclined to allow an interview at first," said George smiling; "but--but she felt the force of my arguments."

"You must be very clever at persuading people."

"I _was_ very persuasive," he said drily.

The remembrance of his "persuasion" amused him somewhat; but he did not care about giving Meg the details of that scene.

"Look here, Mrs. Thorpe; I've brought you something else which you won't like quite so much as that sc.r.a.p of paper; but which I fancied you might be pleased to have, for I remembered that you once told me that you valued it." And he held out her locket.

"Why, it has come back to me _again_!" cried Meg. "The first time it was stolen; and Barnabas moved to repentance the poor girl who took it; but this time, I sold it of my own free will, and----"

"And I moved no one to repentance," said George. "I can't compete with the preacher; I paid over the counter. His was the more excellent way!"

Meg drew back a step. Whenever she felt most kindly to Mr. Sauls something in his tone jarred on her. It had been so in her girlhood; it was so now.

"There is no question of compet.i.tion," she said. "Shall we try to find Barnabas? Oh! there he is."

He was coming towards them across the field; but he did not at first see Mr. Sauls, who was in the shadow.

George would have preferred to meet Meg's husband when Meg was not by; but he stood his ground. He was not going to be driven away by the fellow, much as he disliked him.

He had often said to himself that it was more than possible that the canting humbug ill-treated the woman he had stolen. Such a belief would justify any amount of hatred; but he knew it to be untenable when he saw the expression of the preacher's eyes as they turned to Meg.

He ought, logically, to have hated the preacher less in consequence; but, on the contrary, a tingling sensation a.s.sailed his foot; he wanted to kick the man with a longing the fierceness of which surprised himself. Mr. Sauls was a highly sophisticated product of a rather artificial age; but certain primitive instincts have an astonis.h.i.+ng way of a.s.serting themselves at times.

"Barnabas, this is Mr. Sauls, who has brought me a letter from my father," said Meg. She felt a slight uneasiness while making the introduction; the two men were so thoroughly antipathetical. But she had great trust in the preacher's instinct of hospitality, and in Mr. Sauls'

_savoir faire_. She was not in the least prepared for what followed. The preacher's countenance changed when he looked at her visitor.

"I've seen ye afore, sir," he said in a low voice. "It pa.s.ses me how ye are not 'shamed to be i' this county again. If I'd been here, I'd not ha' let my wife sit at th' same table with ye."

His fingers clenched unconsciously, his face grew stern, his blue eyes very bright. Meg had seen him look like that only once before--when he had caught the idiot frightening her.

Mr. Sauls put up his eyegla.s.s and stared deliberately, and a little insolently. He always grew outwardly cool when an adversary waxed hot.

"You have the advantage of me," he said. "I don't know to what particular cause for shame you are alluding. Mrs. Thorpe has never, I believe, been the worse for _my_ acquaintance, either from a spiritual or worldly point of view."

The innuendo made Meg hot, but the preacher did not notice it.

"Ye need not tell me that," he said; "but ye are no' fit company for her, unless ye ha' repented."

Meg put her hand on his arm. "I don't know what all this is about," she said; "but Mr. Sauls has come a long way to bring me news of my father.

I am very grateful to him for that."

A month ago she would not have tried to remonstrate.

"You need not be afraid, Mrs. Thorpe," said George. "I don't quarrel before ladies; but, if your husband likes to attempt 'bringing me to repentance' when you are not by, I shall be delighted, and will promise to give him every attention."

He paused; but the preacher kept a tense silence. The appeal in his wife's voice, and, perhaps, the touch of her fingers, restrained him.

"Good-afternoon!" said George, and turned on his heel.

"Good-bye!" said Meg, and then held out her hand. She had been angry at the sneer at the preacher; but she could not bear, even seemingly, to desert any one who had done her a service.

"Please shake hands with me," she said. "And don't go away angry, after having brought me such good news."