Into the Highways and Hedges Part 10

"I do not know why I allowed him to go on so long. He is the most extraordinary person I have ever set eyes on! Upon my word, I believe he has walked straight out of Bedlam; but, mad or sane, this is beyond a joke. Margaret! if you so much as look at him again, I'll wash my hands of you. I'll make an end to this."

"Will you?" said Meg dreamily. She did not speak in defiance, only doubtfully, with a vague sense that Barnabas Thorpe's especial Providence might be too strong even for Aunt Russelthorpe. Had he not said his say in spite of her?

"Will you, Aunt Russelthorpe? But I don't think one has really much to do with what happens."

"I've something to do with it," said Aunt Russelthorpe grimly; "and so he will find." And so indeed he did find,--though not in the way she meant.

Another and widely different acquaintance was at least as deeply interested in the change in her. Mr. Sauls was the very last person whom any one would have expected to champion an impracticable enthusiasm; yet he certainly stood up for Margaret at this time, to her immense surprise and rather perplexed grat.i.tude.

This slip of a girl, who shrank from the least touch of love-making, but yet loved and hated so vehemently, who was more innocent than any other woman he had ever known, and who yet did such terribly rash things, who was full of shy dignity and sudden indiscreet revelations, was the first person who had inspired him with any awe of womanhood.

He laughed at himself a good deal, but thought of her, whom most people sneered at, with a sort of half-amused reverence. If in the first place he had been in love with Meg's good name and prospective fortune, his love for Meg's self was striking deeper roots than he should consistently have allowed; but we all of us fail to stick to our principles at times.

When the first faint rumour of a scandal reached him, Mr. Sauls went straight to Ravenshill to call.

He met Mr. Russelthorpe in the hall, and stopped to speak to him, being on very friendly terms with the old man, whose society he had cultivated of late.

"It is so long since I have met your niece anywhere, that I have come to inquire after her health," he said boldly.

"Hm! she has 'repented' and taken to religion, as I have no doubt you have heard," said the other; he held on to the banisters with one shrivelled hand, and peered up into George Sauls' strong dark face to see how his announcement was taken.

"Repented! but she was always a little saint!" cried Mr. Sauls.

"Ah! that's it," responded Meg's uncle. "It is the saints who repent; the sinners have other things to do."

Mr. Sauls stood twisting the cord of his eyegla.s.s rapidly round his finger: he had a trick of apparently absorbing himself in some physical detail of the sort when he was more than usually interested.

"I want to be converted," he remarked. "Do you think that she would undertake me?"

Mr. Russelthorpe chuckled. This young Jew, with his keen eye to the main chance, always entertained him.

"There's no knowing. Young women are very hopeful," he said. "Go on--go on and try."

Mr. Sauls went on into the drawing-room.

A buzz of conversation greeted him. Mrs. Russelthorpe was entertaining about twenty ladies; Meg was standing apart in the bow window.

Mr. Sauls joined in the talk at once; he made smart speeches to his hostess, and conversed with every one: he was never in the least shy.

Presently some one mentioned the ball that was to be given at the Heights. "You are going, of course?" she said.

The question sounded innocent enough, but it sent a thrill through the atmosphere.

Mrs. Russelthorpe made a distinct pause, and then said, in clear decisive tones: "My niece sets all her elders to rights on that subject.

You had better explain why we are not to go, Margaret; for your views are beyond me."

Mr. Sauls glanced at the girl's white face, and swore under his breath.

"I'd like to duck Mrs. Russelthorpe," he said to himself; and then he threw down his glove, to the general astonishment.

"If Miss Deane does not choose to give us the pleasure of her company, it is so much the worse for us," he said. "But society would become unbearable if it were allowed to demand explanations each time any one stayed away from an entertainment. I can't see why we should bother Miss Deane with impertinent questions, and I protest against them on principle. They encroach on the sacred rights of the individual."

He had diverted attention from Meg anyhow. What did it matter what rhodomontade he was talking? It was curious how that little nervous shudder of hers affected him; it had seemed to run like fire through his veins. How durst they distress her? prying closely into the secrets of her sensitive conscience, frightening her (for he could see that she was frightened) by their irreverent curiosity. Reverence was not a quality that any one had suspected in him heretofore, but Meg had awakened it.

He did not quite know her, however, in spite of his sympathy: she was thin-skinned enough in all conscience; but she was something else as well. She lifted her head and faced Mrs. Russelthorpe: she was not going to take shelter behind Mr. Sauls, though she was grateful to him.

"I have explained to you over and over again," she said. "I don't go to b.a.l.l.s because I don't think I ought. I like them so much I forget everything else when I do. I don't know about other people, I daresay that they are perfectly right to go."

Mrs. Russelthorpe laughed.

"Other people are on a lower level of sanct.i.ty evidently," she said.

"Come! We are all of us waiting to be enlightened. Where does the iniquity lie? You of the young generation are wonderfully quick at seeing evil--where is it?"

George twirled his eyegla.s.s furiously.

"Don't answer!" he cried, with a.s.sumed jocosity. "Miss Deane, your counsel advises you not to--this is a bad precedent--against all fairness."

Meg flushed painfully, there were tears in her eyes.

"In me, I suppose," she said softly, and left the room.

Mr. Sauls took up his hat.

"I think we ought all to feel pretty well ashamed of ourselves after that," he remarked; and he went out, shutting the door sharply after him.

He had burnt his boats, and he knew it. He had made an enemy, and forced his own hand; he had rebuked Mrs. Russelthorpe in her own drawing-room, and closed the Ravenshill gates against himself; and he shrugged his shoulders at his own rashness as he went downstairs. Meg was by no means won yet, and he had been bolder than he could well afford.

"I never guessed I was such a fool," he said to himself; and then he smiled in spite of his cooler after-thoughts.

"If, after all, my luck holds good, and I do get her, and I _will_," he reflected, "won't I make that aunt of hers feel the difference? I should like to see the woman who will bully my wife. I should like it immensely."

His sympathy for his shy lady was very genuine, but he felt a thrill of exhilaration all the same. Mrs. Russelthorpe's anger, the growing gossip, this very "religious mania," were all playing into his hands--they would drive the girl nearer to him.

He meant to be very patient; it was only once in a blue moon that his feelings got the better of him; he would wait, and watch; and when Meg's position became unbearable, he would step in and say, "Here am I! With me you shall do as you choose. Follow your very exacting conscience where you like; dip your pretty fingers into my purse, and dress in sackcloth if it pleases you." He would not bully Meg. She was none the worse for a touch of asceticism in his eyes.

Like many men who believe in little themselves, he held that the more beliefs a woman has the better--and the safer.

Let her be as saint-like as she chose; if he was of the earth (as he candidly allowed he was) his wife should be of heaven, a thing apart, set in a costly shrine which he would delight in decorating.

Her religion was a fitting ornament, a halo round her fair head! Far be it from him to wish to discrown her.

Women's pretty superst.i.tions became them even better than their diamonds--he would grudge Meg neither.

He went to the ball at the Heights three weeks later, and found, as he had expected, that Mrs. Russelthorpe cut him, that Miss Deane was not present, and that Miss Deane's name was overmuch in people's mouths.

One little bit of innuendo, which he happened to overhear, made his blood boil, in spite of his conviction that it was unfounded.

Miss Deane in love with a canting tub-preacher! Miss Deane, who was only too fastidious! If Mr. Sauls' idea of a woman's position had just a tinge of Orientalism about it, at least his respect for Meg was true enough for him to be sure that that scandal was absurd on the face of it. But it showed how her innocence needed protection.