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.