Into the Highways and Hedges Part 20

CHAPTER III.

But the living out was difficult.

Meg awoke at the farm. After the strange and wonderful journey by the side of the preacher; after the days of wandering over hill and dale, with exhausted body, but with mind so fixed on the vision beautiful, that she would not have been surprised at any moment had the clouds parted, and the second coming of the Lord blazed forth; after that curious "intoxication" of the soul that such natures as hers seem liable to,--she "came to herself" in the old house among those northern marshes, and tried, a little desperately, to meet the demands of a lot she had not been born to.

The loneliness was all on her side; for to the Thorpes the advent of Barnabas' wife was, perhaps, on the whole a not unwelcome piece of excitement.

In the winter the road across the marshes was all but impa.s.sable for months together. Often from November till February the little stronghold which the first Thorpe had wrested, and his successors kept, from the devils of desolation, was left to its own resources.

The family characteristics had probably been fostered by the circ.u.mstances of their life; they were sufficient to themselves.

There were Thorpes; there were--but some way behind them--their fellow country, or rather county-men; and then there was the rest of the world.

Weak-knee'd outsiders, with bad const.i.tutions and "queer ways" and indifferent morals. The preacher's wife was not even north country; she was, in fact, almost a "foreigner".

Poor little "outsider," thrust down in their midst to take root in a strange soil, if she could; or to shrivel and droop with starvation!--which would she do?

"The best thing for the la.s.s 'ud be to pack her in cotton wool, and send her back to her own kind," Tom Thorpe had declared. But the boats were burnt, and the going back was impossible!

On the whole, of all her new relatives, Tom alarmed Meg most; but "Cousin Tremnell" was the member of the family she liked least.

The prim little woman, with plaintive voice and sharp curiosity, with uneasy pretensions to "gentility" and small affectations, seemed more hopelessly out of touch with her than were her husband's rougher kinsmen. Cousin Tremnell asked questions with the eagerness of a born gossip, who had been starving for dearth of any subject more personal than "crops" and "horses"; and Meg shrank from her inquiries as if they were so many small stabs.

"It is not becoming for you to be sitting in the kitchen, ma'am," she had said on the morning after Meg's arrival, and had forthwith conducted her into the best parlour, which was the one ugly room in the house, with its carpet beflowered with magenta roses; its gauze-swathed frames, and bunches of worsted convolvuli under shades.

Mrs. Tremnell brought out her work, and settled herself down to see what she could "get out" of this extraordinary cousin-in-law, towards whom her feelings were at present rather mixed. It was something to have a connection who had been one of the Deanes of Kent; but what a degenerate Deane she must be! Mrs. Russelthorpe herself could not have had a keener sense of Meg's degradation.

"How could she ever have done such a thing?" Mrs. Tremnell kept repeating to herself, with little mental gasps and notes of interrogation; and the burden of her thoughts was embarra.s.singly apparent, even though something in the stranger's manner, a shy dignity that Mrs. Tremnell durst not quite outrage, prevented her from asking the question point blank.

"It must seem very strange to you here, ma'am," she said tentatively.

"Of course, it can't be what you were accustomed to. _I_ find my cousin's ways rough myself--not meaning no comparison to what _your_ sensations must be. I understand you was brought up in a different station altogether."

"I have been in many rougher places than this," said Meg; "and the past is quite dead."

Mrs. Tremnell's eyes fairly twinkled with eagerness. The preacher's wife was "very peculiar-looking," she said to herself, glancing at Meg's short curls and shabby dress; but there was no doubt that she was a lady, and the lady's "past" possessed a wonderful fascination.

"Is your honoured father still alive?" she ventured; and the colour rushed to Meg's cheeks.

"Oh yes--I--I hope so!" the girl cried. But the idea that he might be dead and buried, for all she knew or would ever know about him, suddenly made her heart contract with a sharp spasm of fear.

She made a hasty effort to draw "Cousin Tremnell" away from the subject; and, asking questions in her turn, elicited a stream of information about the Thorpes in general, and Barnabas Thorpe in particular, a stream which was only checked by occasional little flights back to "the Deanes," whose very name seemed to attract Cousin Tremnell as honey attracts a bee.

It was curious to hear Barnabas spoken of familiarly; curious how the man's individuality was becoming stronger and the prophet's fainter to his wife's unwilling eyes.

"The Thorpes are all as sure as sure of everything," said Cousin Tremnell. "_I_ take after my father's side myself, and he was a gentle-spoken man, and quite different; it was my mother was a Thorpe.

And my dear husband was south country. I never saw much of Cousin Thorpe till after I was left a widow. Then, when my daughter was growing up, Barnabas used to be a deal over at L----, where we lived; but Tom and Lydia could never abide each other. I shouldn't have believed that I could ever come and live here then, nor that Tom Thorpe would ask me to; but blood is thicker than water, and I must allow that Tom's always kind, if one's in trouble. I was ill this spring, and I was sitting by myself, for I hadn't cared to have folks about since--since she left me, when Tom Thorpe walked in quite unexpected. I had got that weak and nervous--for living alone never suited me--that I fairly screamed when he opened the door. 'Now, you come along back with me, cousin,' says he; 'for I can't leave you here to think of your own funeral all the day.'

And I hadn't the heart to say no, though I am half sorry now I didn't. I was that lonesome, you see; and a man does give one a feeling of support, especially if the man's Tom or Barnabas. Barnabas was the one I liked best as a lad, and, to be sure, I thought he would never forget--but there! it's nearly sixteen years ago now, since he was courting my poor Lydia."

Her voice dropped to a reverently lowered tone when she spoke of her daughter. The shadow of her grief momentarily dignified her pinched and rather fretful face; and Meg, who had been listening listlessly, looked up with awakened interest.

"Did she like him?" asked the preacher's wife shyly. Her quick fancy pictured the pretty girl, whom Barnabas had loved when a boy; and her sympathy was moved at once by the mother's sorrow.

Mrs. Tremnell, however, seemed half offended at the question.

"Oh, as for that, Lydia had plenty to admire her without Barnabas," she said.

And Meg could not guess how the little woman's sore heart was hurt, because the preacher's was healed; no one but her mother mourned for her pretty Lydia now.

"When he was a boy he would run the twelve miles from here to the town to get a talk with her; for all he was sure of a thrashing from Tom for playing truant when he got back," she went on. "But that's long past, and forgotten; and, perhaps, I shouldn't even have alluded to it to _you_, ma'am."

"Why not to me?" asked the girl; and then coloured, and laughed nervously when Cousin Tremnell's meaning dawned on her.

"To be sure, he is another man altogether since his conversion, and I hear the miracles he does is wonderful; though I do hope you'll persuade him to lay by and take money for his cures, now that he has got a wife and may have children," continued the plaintive voice, which was touched with asperity now. "He might make a very good thing of it, and people would think a deal more of him if they had to pay. Indeed, with your connection with the aristocracy, which is far beyond what he might have expected, I don't see why he shouldn't start a regular business. It was a sister of yours that married Lord Doran, was it not, ma'am?"

"Oh, _won't_ you understand?" cried Meg, with sudden energy. "That is all done with--I--I--don't think about it."

"I beg your pardon, I am sure, ma'am; I was not aware that I had said anything amiss," said Cousin Tremnell huffily. And to herself she remarked that Barnabas had gone far to fare badly.

Meg went for a solitary walk in the marshes after that, and tried to sort and adjust her ideas and to "lay" decently several ghosts Cousin Tremnell had brought out of their graves. They had never, perhaps, been so entirely buried as she had fancied.

The incidents of that first day at the farm always remained in her memory, standing out from the many rather monotonous days that followed; not that they were remarkable in themselves, but because first impressions are cut sharp and clear as with a new die.

She came in after the mid-day meal had begun. The two or three farm labourers who ate in the same room, though at the other end of the long wooden table, turned round to stare at her with a stolid and deliberate stare. Tom Thorpe remarked that she was late, and they had "nigh done,"

though more by way of something to say than as a rebuke; and then, in the middle of the meal, "Foolish Timothy" lounged in, and effectually robbed her of her appet.i.te.

The idiot shambled up to the table, and sat down beside her unasked, but unrebuked; and Meg could not repress a shudder of disgust.

The man's coa.r.s.e loose mouth, and cunning shifty eyes, with their furtive sidelong glances, were unspeakably repulsive to her; and Timothy, unfortunately, saw the shiver, and hated her on the spot with the malicious, easily roused hate of a low nature. He was one of those ill-conditioned fools who have just cunning enough to pretend to be rather more idiotic than they are, when it suits their convenience; he lived on the kindness of the countryside, and lived well, occasionally repaying hospitality by buffoonery of a somewhat profane kind; but, at the Thorpes, he was generally on his good behaviour.

"What's wrong wi' ye?" Tom suddenly asked his sister-in-law. "Isn't the food to your liking, or aren't you hungry?"

"Yes, thank you, quite--I mean it's very nice," stammered Meg; but some fascination made her look at the creature by her side, who was contorting his face into sudden, hideous grimaces whenever he could catch her eyes un.o.bserved by his host.

"What's the good o' telling lies?" said Tom. "It's plain ye can't eat that; and we all know ye've not been used to fare like us. Here, Timothy, make yourself useful, and fetch an egg from the barn; happen she'll relish it better."

"Oh no, please don't!" cried Meg, who felt that she could not for the life of her taste anything that Timothy had touched. "The pie is very good, but I have had plenty."

Tom frowned impatiently. "My good girl, _that_ you've not," he said. "I am not going to force food down your throat if you don't want it; but why you persist in saying you like it when you can't swallow half a mouthful, goodness knows. Lord bless us! I am proud of our cooking, as Cousin Tremnell 'ull tell you; but I don't make a meal off the people who don't agree wi' me. Hands off, Timothy! Where are your manners?" For Timothy had surrept.i.tiously stretched out a long-nailed, dirty hand towards the food in Meg's plate. She jumped up with a start at the touch of the idiot, and with a hastily murmured excuse fled from the kitchen.

Tom Thorpe gave vent to a long, low whistle.

"It's a pretty business," he remarked; "an' the hottest water Barnabas has ever got into. What had he to do wi' a fine lady, as can't even sit down to table by us?"

"I must say the way she has been trapesing about the country half the morning isn't much like a lady," said Cousin Tremnell.

"Well, I've done. Ye may tell her I've gone out. So she can come and pick up a few more crumbs in peace," he said good-naturedly. "An', I say, cousin, ye might tell her I am not such an ogre as I look, eh? The fact is, I've got so used to myself living here alone wi' dad, that I don't think how I scare other people, unless a stranger comes to show me."

But Cousin Tremnell was still huffy, and didn't see that she had any call to "run after Mrs. Thorpe".

It was not a remarkably good beginning; and the preacher's wife felt much ashamed when she had recovered from her sudden horror.