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. |