Into the Highways and Hedges Part 15

"I haven't got a mother," said Meg. "n.o.body's heart will break for me, so it really doesn't much matter, you know, what happens, and I am too tired to think; besides, it's done now!" Her eyelids closed again, almost while she was speaking; and Mrs. Cuxton left her with a muttered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, worn out with weariness and excitement, sleeping like a child over the very threshold of the new life.

It was in Sheerhaven that Meg was married to Barnabas Thorpe. She took that last irrevocable step with a curious unflinching determination,--a sense, half womanly, half childish, that having gone so far, there had better be no going back; that having trusted him so much, the responsibility was his altogether.

"I can't do any other way," he had told her. "I couldn't take ye with me without that; ye must have the protection o' my name, and give me that much right i' the eyes o' the world to fend for ye,--that's all I am wanting. I ha' never thought to marry since I was 'called'."

The girl, standing in the door of the black hut where he had brought her the night before, was quite silent for a full minute, her face full of conflicting emotions.

"If you say we must do it, then--very well," she said at last. "I may as well be Margaret Thorpe as Margaret Deane."

The preacher turned quickly; her quiet a.s.sent discomposed him, though in his heart he believed his own words: for the sake of the maid's good name there was no other way.

"La.s.s!" he said earnestly, "it seemed to me a call o' the Lord's, an' I had no doubts; but ye are young, an' I'm no natural mate for ye. If ye choose, I'll find that father ye talk of, wherever he may be, an' make him understan' the truth. I'll leave ye here this hour and go; but, having come out o' the city o' destruction, to my mind ye had better stay out."

"You will find my father?" Her face brightened and flushed for a second, and then rather a painful look crossed it, and she shook her head.

"Aunt Russelthorpe will see him first," she said; "so it is of no use."

No stranger could ever understand how much despair there was in that last sentence.

"Then there's just naught else possible," said the man: and she bent her head in a.s.sent.

She did not see him again till she saw him in the church, where they exchanged vows. Mrs. Cuxton gave her away with grim disapproval.

The guest whom the sea had brought in the early dawn, and who had spent two whole days under her roof, had charmed the heart out of the woman like a white witch.

Meg's fineness and slenderness touched the big fish-wife. Meg's sweet smile, the manner that was her father's, and her pretty voice, when she sat singing the whole of one morning to the little cripple lad whose life Barnabas Thorpe had once saved, were all part of the witchery.

During the whole of her chequered life there were always some people (and generally people of a very opposite type to her own) who were inclined to give her that peculiarly warm and instinctive service that has something of the romance of loyalty in it; her home had been somewhat over-cold, but more than once the gift of love, unexpected and unasked, was held out by strange hands as she pa.s.sed by.

It was a gusty morning, and the break of the waves sounded all through the short service when Meg was married. She paused when they stood on the steps of the church and looked across the sea,--a long look--(somewhere on the other side of that water was her father); then they went inside.

The bride had on a close-fitting plain straw bonnet that Mrs. Cuxton had bought in the village, and her white dress was simpler than what might have been worn by a woman of the preacher's own cla.s.s; but the old clergyman who was to tie the knot (blind and sleepy though he was) peered hard at her, then looked at Barnabas Thorpe uncertainly. They were a strangely matched couple, he thought. If Meg had seemed frightened he would possibly have spoken; but when her courage was at the sticking-point she did not hesitate, and nothing would have induced her to show the white feather then. It was a plainly furnished church, small and light. The walls were whitewashed, the communion table was covered with a much-patched cloth. It was so small that the fishermen seemed almost to fill it.

They were a deeply interested congregation. All of them knew the preacher; many of them were bound to him by close ties.

Meg's fresh sweet voice, with its refined p.r.o.nunciation, troubled the clergyman afresh; but it was too late to ask questions, and the service went on undisturbed to its conclusion.

The two signatures are still visible in the vestry. "Margaret Deane," in the fine Italian hand that Mrs. Russelthorpe had inculcated; and underneath, in laboured characters like a schoolboy's, "Barnabas Thorpe".

Meg's pride carried her safely through the meal that waited them on their return; it was spread in the kitchen, and some of the fishermen who had been in the church lounged in, and stared silently at her through the sheltering clouds of tobacco. She made a valiant attempt to eat, and then escaped to change her dress, for the blue serge skirt and cotton body, that Mrs. Cuxton had got with the slender stock of money Meg had had in her pocket.

Mrs. Cuxton followed her after a minute.

"Barnabas is writing them word at home that he has married you. He says have you aught to say?" she said.

"No," answered the girl; "there will never be anything more said between them and me."

Mrs. Cuxton nodded: her manner had changed slightly since the deed had been done, and the last gleam of doubt as to Meg's "really going on with it" had disappeared.

"I don't know what led you to this," she said, putting her hand on Meg's shoulder; "but you say true--you've done it! And whether the blame was mostly yours or not, it's you that must take the consequences! But you've a bit of a spirit of your own, that I fancy may carry you through; and Barnabas Thorpe is a good man, for all I blame him for this day's work. You just stick by him now, and don't never look back at what you've left--it's your only way!"

Meg made no answer: an odd frightened expression crossed her face; then she drew herself up. "I am ready," she said; "only just say 'Good Luck'

to me before I go."

"G.o.d help you and bless you," said Mrs. Cuxton earnestly, "and him too!"

There was a hush when the bride came in, as unlike a fish-wife in her fish-wife's gear, as well could be.

Barnabas Thorpe sprang to his feet and cut leave-takings short. A cart was waiting for them; he threw up a bundle and lifted Meg in, before she knew what he was about, and they were off at a rather reckless pace down the uneven street.

Meg leant back to wave her hand to Mrs. Cuxton; she had not said good-bye, or thanked her, but she watched her till they were out of sight. It seemed to the good woman that those grey eyes were saying a good deal that Meg's tongue had not said; and as the cart dwindled to a speck in the distance she turned indoors with a heavy heart.

SECOND PART.

CHAPTER I.

Ravenshill was shut up after its brief season of gaiety, and the Deanes came back to it no more.

Margaret's father felt very bitterly the blow that had fallen on him.

Both his affection and his pride were outraged; and he was wanting in neither quality, though, in the first shock of the news, the latter seemed to outweigh the former.

That Meg, his special pet, his favourite daughter, of whose beauty he had been so proud, whose very failings were so like his own that he had felt them a subtle form of flattery, that Meg should have done this thing,--it seemed monstrous and impossible.

At first he absolutely refused to credit her aunt's letter, throwing it into the fire with a quick scornful gesture and an angry laugh; but by the time he had reached England, the reality of what had happened had entered into his soul.

Mrs. Russelthorpe was not a sympathetic woman, but she cared for her brother; and the sight of his face on their first meeting in the drawing-room made her blench for once, and avert her gaze.

He uttered no word of reproach, he asked few questions, and made no comments.

If Margaret had been dead he would have wept for her; but she was too far away for tears. She had given the lie to her past; and, had he found her in her coffin, he felt that she would have been less utterly lost to him.

Death might have drawn a veil between them, but it is only life that can separate utterly.

Mrs. Russelthorpe made one faint attempt at consolation; but consoling was not in her line, and she did it awkwardly.

Mr. Deane lifted his head and looked at her, with a face that seemed to have grown grey, and eyes that were terribly like Meg's.

"Don't, please!" he said; "you mean well, sis--but you don't understand.

She was my child, and is my grief." And Mrs. Russelthorpe was silent. If she had ever felt moved to a revelation of what had led to Meg's flight, she said to herself now that her brother's own entreaty sealed her lips.

No one spoke to him of Meg after that, though every one felt sorry for him. The quiet dignity with which he bore his trouble awoke more sympathy than any lamentations would have aroused; but he was a man who always and involuntarily awoke sympathy, whether in his joy or in his grief.