THE OLD GENTLEMAN AGAIN.
Meg listened to the thump, thump of the little crutch going off into the
dusk, and to the sound of merry whistling, and she turned to pursue her
way. The thought of that small lad with his crooked leg and his great
courage roused her spirit. No obstacle now appeared too great to
overcome, no road too long to walk in order to achieve her object; and
she trudged bravely along.
She was very hungry. Her feet were beginning to ache again; but she was
not going to stop yet; nothing would induce her to do this; so long as
she could hold out she would walk. She would then look out for a proper
resting-place in which to spend the night, and set off on her journey in
the early morning. She tried to distract her mind by weighing the merits
of sleeping up in a tree, or down on the ground, or in a haystack; but
her thoughts would fix themselves upon nothing but upon something to eat
and drink. She passed a village where all the cottagers seemed to be at
their supper. Meg trudged valorously along, neither looking to right or
left. Still she debated whether the time had come for breaking into that
threepenny-piece. She looked at the matter all round. It stood between
her and starvation. Until she reached Mrs. Browne's house she had
nothing else to count upon.
Was she hungry enough yet? Had supper-time come? A whiff of the perfume
of buns and hot loaves from a wayside shop decided the question. She
felt weak and limp from longing for food, and she went in. There were
tumblers of milk on the counter. A halfpennyworth of milk and a
pennyworth of bread must make up her meal. The remaining penny and
halfpenny must be left to pay for her breakfast to-morrow. She drank the
milk in the shop, and she ate the bread in the open air, sitting on a
common outside the village among great ferns. Meg thought she had never
tasted bread so delicious as this. She felt as if she would like to
sleep here among the crisp ferns; but she got up, resolved to walk all
the way to London if the daylight would but last.
The fingerpost pointed down a road bordered on either side by pine
trees. It ran through a wood. The west glowed before her, and the trees
marshaled darkly against the light. The birds flew twittering across
the sky, and all the insects seemed to be singing good-night to the day.
The straight road seemed to stretch like a white ribbon before Meg. It
was very lonely. She did not like the solitude; but she would not admit
to herself that she was frightened. Yet an awe was creeping over her.
The trees seemed supremely dignified. She felt very small and
insignificant as she walked under their silence.
After awhile she heard a sound. It was a distant rumble. She looked
round. A cart was coming along. It was filled with hay. Meg thought how
pleasant it would be to creep within, tuck herself inside the hay, and
sleep while the plodding horse bore her on to her destination. She
loitered and waited until the cart passed, and then went right out into
the road; but at the sight of the large, red-faced man, whose chin was
resting on his chest and whose eyes were closed, Meg went quickly back
into the path. The rumble of the cart died away, and again nothing was
heard but the twitter of birds and the drone of the insects. Presently
she heard a voice spreading in song through the dusk. It sang loud and
discordantly. In Meg's childish experiences songs sung in such tones had
a place; she gave a fierce little shiver, and hid behind the trees. She
was naturally fearless; but she remained quiet as a little ghost until
the figure, with unsteady gait, had passed. Then Meg resumed her way
determinedly.
All at once she began to realize how tired she was. It seemed as if she
had lost all her strength. She must lie down. In the faint light and
silence, amid the calm trees, she must lie down and rest.
How quiet and still it was, as if all nature were bidding Meg trust to
its protection and sleep till morning.
She looked around. There were no hayricks, but there were clumps of fern
and soft sand covered thickly with the brown needles of pine. Then again
Meg thought she heard the rumble of wheels, distant like wheels heard in
a dream, not jolting wheels, but soft swift-rolling wheels. A carriage
drawn by two horses was driving down the road toward London. Meg
dreamily remembered how once she had driven in just such a beautiful
carriage by Mr. Fullbloom's side; how easily they had traveled. In her
weariness came a longing to be taken up into this carriage and to be
driven along. She stood looking in its direction. It came nearer. It was
an open carriage; a man was sitting inside it alone. She discerned the
gleam of white hair on which the western light fell. Then she became
aware of a stern face thrust forward, looking out at her. She had seen
that face before. Where had she seen it? She dreamily remembered. It was
that of the old gentleman who had bidden her never mention her
childhood.
At a word from him the carriage stopped, and he beckoned to Meg. She
hesitated to come forward; she felt inclined to run away. There was a
vague motive in that impulse of flight. It partook of all the past alarm
and misery, and she felt very much as if she stood on the brink of a
precipice. The old gentleman beckoned again impatiently, and a grotesque
idea flitted through Meg's mind that she must have lain under that tree,
gone to sleep, and had a dream. The carriage, the horses, the servants,
the dreaded old gentleman, were all a vision that would pass if she made
an effort. She shut her eyes. When she opened them there was the figure
still bending forward.
It beckoned to her. "Come here!" said a voice; but Meg did not move.
"Drive on!" exclaimed the impatient voice, and the carriage moved off.
A sudden revulsion of terror seized Meg as she watched it driving away.
She roused herself and began to run.
Again the figure stooped forward--beckoned to her as the carriage
stopped.
Meg approached.
"Are you not Meg--Meg Beecham?" the old gentleman said in a voice of
stern surprise.
"Yes, sir," Meg answered faintly. There was a pause; the cold blue eyes
rested heavily upon her as they had done that day, and their gaze
suggested dislike.
"Come inside. I do not hear you," her interlocutor said, opening the
carriage door. He did not stretch his hand out to help her; and Meg
scrambled up, and at his bidding sat down on the seat opposite.
"Why are you here at this hour and alone? Why is your dress and your
whole appearance so soiled and tattered? Have you strayed from your
teachers? Have you lost your way?"
"No, sir," answered Meg.
"No, what?" repeated the old gentleman. "I do not understand your
answer."
"I have not lost my way," said Meg.
"Then where are the persons in whose charge you are? Where are your
schoolfellows?"
"They are not here. I did not go out with them," said Meg, and paused
again.
Her dauntlessness was quelled by fatigue, and by the chill weight of
these eyes fixed upon her.
"Will you answer me plainly? Why are you here, and why are you alone?"
"I have run away," said Meg with a flicker of her old spirit.
"Run away from school?" asked the old gentleman in an icy voice.
Meg nodded.
There was an awful pause.
"Why have you run away?"
"Because," said Meg, "they despise me--they say I shame the school.
That's why I've run away."
"You say you have not lost your way," replied the old gentleman, taking
no heed of her answer. "Where were you going to?"
"To London."
"To London!" repeated her interlocutor. "What would you have done
there?"
"I would have gone to Mrs. Browne. I would have asked my way until I
found her house."
There came a pause, during which the old gentleman looked at her and
muttered himself.
Meg thought she heard him say, "Like parent, like child. The same evil
disposition." Then lifting his voice, he called to the coachman, "Drive
to Greyling; when you get there ask the way to Moorhouse, Miss Reeves'
school for young ladies."
"No, no! I will not go back!--I will not!" cried Meg, jumping to her
feet as the carriage began to turn round.
"You shall go back," said the old gentleman, pushing her down in the
seat opposite and holding her there.
The carriage moved swiftly, and so noiselessly that Meg heard every word
her companion said.
"You shall go back this time; but if ever you seek to run away from that
school again, no one will take you back again. You shall be left to
achieve your own willful ruin. I will wash my hands of you forever.
"Listen," he continued, with upraised finger, as Meg, awed by his
manner, did not reply. "Do you know what will happen if you try to
escape from that school again? You will become a pauper. You will have
to beg by the roadside. You will sink lower and lower, until you get
into the workhouse."
"No!" cried Meg, with a flash of confidence. "Mrs. Browne will take me
in."
"Mrs. Browne has left that house. It is occupied by strangers who do not
know you, who would shut its doors upon you."
"Gone!" repeated Meg, aghast. "Where is she gone to?"
"You will never know," said the stranger. Then after a moment he
resumed: "If I had not been driving down that road this evening you
would have begun your downward course already. Remember what I say to
you. If you try to escape again you will become a little casual. A
ruffianly porter will let you in and order you about, you will be put
into a dirty bath, obliged to wear clothes other beggars have worn
before you."
"No, no! It can't be--it won't be!" cried Meg.
"Who will prevent it?" said the old gentleman.
"Mr. Standish. He is my friend--he shall prevent it! I will write to
him--he will fetch me away!" cried Meg incoherently, with a despairing
sense of the futility of her assertions.
"Where will you write to him?" asked the stranger sharply. "Listen,
child. You do not deserve that I should trouble myself on your account,
and it seems as if you did not care to deserve that I should. There was
one whom I loved who proved base and ungrateful. I left him to his
fate."
He paused. Meg had not understood this mysterious speech. Her blood grew
cold. After a moment the stranger resumed: "I do not doubt this Mr.
Standish showed you much kindness, and I will not blame you because you
are grateful to him; but from the moment you left your former life Mr.
Standish passed out of it. He does not know where you are. He never will
know. You do not know where he is. I do not know it; I could tell you
nothing about him. Dismiss him from your thoughts." He made a gesture as
if, with his uplifted hand, he were tearing the tie between her and that
friend of her childhood. "Remember you owe duty and gratitude to another
now. Be silent!"
"Oh, I want to know where he is--I want to know!" cried Meg, breaking
again into incoherent appeal.
The old gentleman did not reply. He sat there silent, his face growing
dimmer as the evening deepened. Suddenly Meg realized the desolation
that had overtaken her, and throwing herself forward with her face prone
down upon the cushions, she burst into weeping, with speechless sobs.
The stranger made no effort to comfort her. When the paroxysm of weeping
had spent itself Meg turned her head, and saw that the night had come.
The stars were out in the sky. By their light she dimly discerned the
old gentleman's face. She thought that he was looking at her, then she
saw that he lay back with his eyes closed, as if asleep.
She did not move. A hope and an assurance which had hitherto filled her
heart had gone out of her life, and she lay there an atom of despair
lost in a void of desolation. The carriage drove noiselessly on. She was
vaguely aware of the still freshness of the night spreading about her.
She knew when the carriage stopped, and when lights flashed, and
familiar voices, speaking excitedly, sounded near. Still she did not
stir.
She confusedly heard the old gentleman ask for Miss Reeves, and this
lady reply. She recognized Miss Grantley's accents angrily asserting she
ought not to be taken back. Then again she knew the stranger requested
that she should be put to bed and given some food, while he had a
private talk with the head-mistress.
Meg felt herself taken out; she recognized that she was in Rachel's
arms. She was carried upstairs and undressed. She made no resistance,
except to refuse the food Rachel pressed upon her.
At last she lay in bed and in the dark, communing and wrestling with
her soul--living the troublous day over again. Sometimes thinking
that she was once more struggling up that dusty highway; that she was
falling and stumbling along; drifting away and then coming back to
half-consciousness; and then dreamily hearing the thump, thump of
crutches coming toward her, and catching a glimpse of a bright, bold
face looking at her.
As she lay there oppressed by the weariness and bewilderment of that
feverish time, a thirst for comfort rose in her little heart. She
vaguely heard the rumble of carriage-wheels driving away, and she knew
the old gentleman was gone.
In her sadness and longing for solace Meg was dropping off to sleep,
when suddenly and softly she felt a kiss alight upon her forehead. She
did not stir or question; she was too exhausted to wonder or to fear.
After the day's fever and alarm she could not quail or wonder any more.
She fancied she heard light steps leave the room; but that kiss had
brought the solace she yearned for, and she fell asleep.