Into the Highways and Hedges Part 12

Margaret read the letter all through before she spoke. A few months earlier she would have protested at her aunt's having broken the seal, and mastered the contents; now, rightly or wrongly, she felt that the issue of this contest was too serious for her to waste strength in resenting small grievances.

Mrs. Russelthorpe noted the change. Margaret was not quite so contemptible an adversary as she had been: she was growing more womanly.

Meg turned to her uncle when she had finished reading, as to a supreme court of appeal.

"If father had ever got my letter," she said, "he would not have written like this. Please judge for yourself, uncle."

"Charles' hand tries my eyes," murmured Mr. Russelthorpe fretfully.

"Then I will read it aloud," said Meg; and her aunt raised her eyebrows and laughed, but not very mirthfully.

"Margaret is determined on having a scene!"

The first part of the letter was all about the place Mr. Deane was staying in, and the people he was meeting. It was ill.u.s.trated with pen-and-ink sketches, and was charmingly descriptive and good-naturedly witty. Then came a tender half-playful recommendation to his daughter not to addle her brains with overmuch thinking.

"Your aunt actually tells me that she can't persuade my Peg-top to spin any more!" he wrote. "Of course I only wish you to follow your own conscience, dearest; but don't, even for heaven's sake, turn into a severe old maid, or get crow's-feet and wrinkles before I come home again. I couldn't forgive you! As for that delightful plan which we concocted last time I was at Ravenshill, I fear, on thinking it over, that it is impossible to carry it out,--at least, for the next few years. There are many objections to it, which I lost sight of before; and I believe, that, after all, you are better and happier in your uncle's house, than you would be wandering about with me. Your aunt always writes most kindly of you. It is a long time since I have heard from you.

"Your very affectionate father,

"CHARLES DEANE."

"That is all," said Meg; "and," looking at her aunt, "I am not in the least satisfied;" and then, with a sudden impulsive movement, she knelt down by the old man's chair, and the loose sheets of that rather unsatisfactory epistle floated aimlessly to the floor.

"Father is so far away, and nothing I do or say seems to reach him," she cried; and there were tears in her voice now. "Uncle, I am desperate!

_Do_ help me!"

Mr. Russelthorpe glanced nervously from her to his wife.

"Upon my word, Augusta," he began, when Mrs. Russelthorpe interrupted, her louder voice drowning his, as her quick decision mastered his slow championship.

"We've had enough theatricals!" she said. "Get up, Margaret, you are spoiling your dress and wasting your uncle's time, and mine too," with a glance at the clock. But Meg's eyes were still fixed on Uncle Russelthorpe; he had been kind to her when she was a child, and she had always consequently (though illogically) believed in him. Surely, surely he would take her part now.

He fidgeted, shifting his position as if to turn from her eager, pleading face. It was hard on him to be called so suddenly to espouse a side,--on him, who liked to smile at the fallibility of all causes.

Prompt action, too, was almost impossible at seventy, when at sixty he had let the reins drop. Yes! it was hard on him, though Meg in her pa.s.sionate youth couldn't see that.

"I--I don't see what you come to _me_ for," he said feebly. "You are so violent, Meg. Nothing is probably so bad as you imagine, you know; and, if you wait long enough, grievances burn themselves out, like everything else. You may be mistaken too, and fancy--fancy----"

"Yes--I was mistaken," said Meg slowly. She had risen from her knees while the old man mumbled on; the eagerness had died out of her face and left it rather scornful. "I did fancy you would help me, but I shall not fancy it again. I was foolish to trouble you, uncle. I am sorry. I never will any more."

She went out of the library, holding her fair head very high, and without looking at either uncle or aunt; but when she got to her own room she threw herself down on her bed and sobbed, all her dignity vanishing.

"Oh father, father, I do so want you! I can't be good all alone!" she cried. "Why aren't you ever here?"

CHAPTER VII.

I am too weak to live by half my conscience, I have no wit to weigh and choose the mean.

Life is too short for logic; what I do, I must do simply; G.o.d alone shall judge, For G.o.d alone shall guide, and G.o.d's elect.

--_The Saint's Tragedy._

The events of that evening followed on each other so quickly that it seemed to Meg afterwards as if she had been impelled by some power outside herself, though whether of Heaven or h.e.l.l she doubted later in life.

She heard the crunch of gravel under the carriage wheels, as her aunt drove away to the ball over which they had had such contention; then she dried her eyes and drew a breath of relief.

Meg always felt happier when Mrs. Russelthorpe was out of the house; and her antipathy was the more painful because she blamed herself for it. It was wicked to hate any one. Unfortunately, naming the devil doesn't always exorcise him!

One thing at least was clear to the girl,--it was impossible to go on "for the next few years" as they had been going on lately; and that lightly written sentence of Mr. Deane's stung her almost into despair.

Then she remembered that at least she had his address now, and could send the letters that Aunt Russelthorpe had refused to forward, and in which she had poured out all her difficulties, and asked his decision on them, as if he had been confessor as well as father. Meg looked upon that refusal as a piece of gratuitous and incomprehensible cruelty; but then, in spite of Laura's plain speaking, she never quite understood Mrs. Russelthorpe. She might have abjured gaieties if she had only refrained from claiming her father's sympathy and counsel in her temporary insanity; though even if she had fully recognised that fact, it is doubtful whether she would have sold her birthright. She threw it away instead, which, to some temperaments, is easier than selling.

b.a.l.l.s were early in those days, and it was only eight o'clock, when, with her letter in her hand, she started for the Dover post-office.

It was a long lonely walk; and an older woman than Meg might have thought twice about it, but the girl was too ignorant of evil to be afraid.

She had scruples about asking a servant of her aunt's to accompany her, but she had no doubt that she was justified in her own action.

Her father had told her to write to him,--that was reason enough, and to do anything was a relief to her.

Meg's strength and weakness both rose from the same source: she could be unhesitatingly daring for the person she loved, but if that support should fail, would slip into confusion and despair. Even now there was a leaven of bitterness working in her, a terror that was making her restless. Were Aunt Russelthorpe and Laura right? Did "father" not "care" much after all?

She turned instinctively from that suggestion, and tried to fix her mind on the topics that had lately filled it. As she took the short cut over the cliffs, and walked quickly along the footway that skirts their edge, she thought of that still narrower path which Barnabas Thorpe had pointed out as the only way of salvation.

The sky still glowed behind Dover Castle, though the sun had disappeared; there was hardly a breath of wind to stir the short crisp gra.s.s, the broad downs lay still and peaceful in the gathering dusk: Meg was the only human being to be seen, but the little brown rabbits scurried by, and peeped at her from a safe distance, making her smile in spite of her sadness. She was as easily moved to smiles as she was to sighs.

It had been a hot summer, and there were ominous cracks across the footway, which had been deserted of late. Meg, who was Kentish born, ought to have known what those fissures and gaps meant. Perhaps the rabbits would have warned her if they could; for one of them loosened a morsel of chalk as he leaped, which bounded and rebounded down the side of the cliff. She watched it idly, not considering the signification.

Earlier in the day there had been a heavy thunderstorm, which was growling still in the far distance. Meg lingered a moment, listening to the echo among the chalk caves below,--smuggling haunts, where many a keg of brandy had been hidden.

If she had not paused, her light footsteps would have carried her safely over the dangerous bit. As it was, the "crack" she had just stepped carelessly over suddenly widened to a chasm, the earth seemed to give way under her; she stretched out her arms with a wild cry, and fell,--fell, with a vision of clouds of white powder and flashing lights, stopping at last, with a sharp jarring shock, to find herself grasping desperately at something steady, just above her, in a reeling tumbling world! She lay on her side on a narrow ledge a quarter of the way down the cliff, her right shoulder and arm bruised by the fall; but she was hardly conscious of pain, her mind being set on clinging fast to the friendly poppy root that was keeping her from death.

She could hear the sea washing hungrily, with a sullen break, and a strong backward suck, many feet below; she shuddered, and then screamed with all her might, again and again, waking the echoes and the seagulls, who answered her derisively.

She was in terror lest her fingers should relax their hold, in spite of her will. She lost count of time, and began to feel as if she had lain for ages between earth and sky.

Her left arm was getting numb, and her brain dizzy; she was dreadfully afraid of losing consciousness, and tried hard to keep possession of "herself," knowing that if she fainted she would slip down at once, and the green water would roll her over and draw her back.

"Like a cat with a mouse," thought Meg. Her reflections were getting indistinct, and she gathered her strength together to scream once more.

A horror of losing her ident.i.ty, of being swamped in a "black nothingness," was strong on her.

"Help me!" she cried, with an effort to make the words articulate, that was followed by a vague recollection that she had asked some one to "help her" once before, but he never did or never could.

She couldn't quite remember how it was: her past life seemed to have got far away, to have dropped off her, leaving her soul all alone, face to face with this black empty s.p.a.ce that was trying to engulf it.

"There isn't any help," she said to herself. "It's all really like the sea, or cats and mice, and my fingers don't seem to belong to me any more," and then----