Into the Highways and Hedges Part 31

"You've talked more than enough, Charles."

"I've taken a most mean advantage of my position. What a shame! And you've had to put up with me because I am in bed. I won't do it any more. Shall you have your dinner up here?"

"No," said Mrs. Russelthorpe. "Why should I? That Mr. Sauls is underbred and self-a.s.sertive at times is no reason for my being driven out of the dining-room, or allowing myself to fail in courtesy to our host. Don't laugh like that, Charles! You are making yourself cough."

"I beg your pardon, sis," said he; "but I wish--oh, I wish!--I could be there to see the encounter! Sauls is a pretty stiff antagonist too! I wonder which would get the best of a tussle? I think you would; but I am not sure--really, I am not sure."

"There will be no 'tussle'. Mr. Sauls is too much a man of the world to show any awkwardness at meeting me," said she. And she did him justice, for George betrayed no embarra.s.sment whatever; though the last rather unpleasant interview she had had with him about Mr. Russelthorpe's will was forgotten by neither of them. They dined at three at Lupcombe. In London, six o'clock dinners were the fashion; but fashions took longer in creeping into the country when they had to travel at eight miles an hour.

Mr. Bagshotte's guests were both good talkers. The pleasant tournament of wit, which was a trifle sharp-edged occasionally, went on briskly all dinner time, and the old gentleman believed them charmed to see each other. He got out his favourite Latin quotations,--it was George who gave him the opportunity; and he promised with great satisfaction to show Mr. Sauls the ancient bra.s.ses in the middle aisle.

Mrs. Russelthorpe secretly wondered what this very clever lawyer hoped to gain by playing up to the parson. But, to tell the truth, he expected to get nothing; he never grudged trouble where either his friends or his enemies were concerned.

The two men went into the quiet old church after the meal was over, where George examined all that was to be seen with great patience and minuteness. If he had only guessed! If he had had the faintest inkling of what was happening in the garden not much more than a stone's throw away, neither bra.s.ses nor parson would have held him long.

There seems an especially unkind irony about the fate that makes us lose a chance by only a stone's throw.

Mrs. Russelthorpe took no interest in bra.s.ses; she had a horror of "relics" of any kind. She left Mr. Bagshotte and Mr. Sauls to their own devices; and, her brother being asleep, planted her chair on the lawn with its back to the churchyard, so that she faced the front gate, which stood hospitably open to the village street.

She had had a hard time of it lately; and hard times often, perhaps in the majority of cases, have a hardening rather than a softening effect.

Mrs. Russelthorpe always felt that Providence made an unjustifiable mistake when she was visited with affliction.

Her morning's talk with her brother had left an unpleasant impression on her mind, and she reflected impatiently on the way in which, when one wishes to get rid of a haunting thought, everything combines to recall it. The reflection was called forth by a pale thin woman in a black dress who came along the village street, who held her head like a Deane, like Meg in fact, and walked like her too. Somehow, at the first moment, it did not strike Mrs. Russelthorpe that it _was_ Meg.

The woman turned in at the gate; stood still when she saw Mrs.

Russelthorpe, lifted her head, looking straight at her, and: "I have come to see my father," she said. "Is he better or worse?"

Mrs. Russelthorpe rose to her feet, her face a little pale; the antagonism that had never died, and scarcely slept, alert as ever, and a pa.s.sionate determination bracing her soul. This woman should _not_ see Charles! What! after dragging his name in the dust, and after linking it with that of a preaching vagabond, after setting at defiance all decency and obedience, she would "go to her father"! And he, he would be weak enough to forgive her. Illness had unmanned him; though men were always weaker than women, especially where Meg was concerned.

"My brother is better," she said slowly. "You have lost the right to call him father. You cannot go to him. He will not see you."

Meg shook her head with a faint smile, and walked on up the path to the front door. Her old fear of 'Aunt Russelthorpe' was dead. She recognised with a momentary surprise that she had lived past all that.

Mrs. Russelthorpe made a quick step forward and caught her by the arm.

She too knew instinctively that she could not coerce or overawe this sad-eyed woman, as she had often coerced the girl long ago; but she could still win the day, and she would.

"Margaret," she cried; "do you--do even you want to kill him?" And Margaret paused.

The two women looked in each other's eyes; both were unflinching and of set purpose, but Mrs. Russelthorpe had still the advantage, for she could "hit below the belt".

"It may actually and literally be his death warrant, if he should be awakened suddenly. He is sleeping now," she said. "I do not want to carry any message from you, Margaret. There need be no pretence of love between you and me. Yet I will go in and prepare him, if you choose.

When he wakes, I will say to him whatever you wish me, and I will bring you his answer. Go now, if you like, and force your way in and startle him. The choice is between your own wilfulness and his safety. It rests with you."

She let go her hold on Meg's arm, on completing her sentence. She had gained her point.

"I will wait for you," said Meg. "I will sit here on the doorstep till he sends for me. Only promise that you will take my words as I give them; that you will add nothing, nor take away anything; that you will not try to persuade him not to see me. You swear it?"

She did not move her eyes from her aunt's face; and long after, Mrs.

Russelthorpe could not close her own without seeing them. Ah, how Meg had altered!

"I will add nothing to your message, nor take away from it," she repeated.

"Then I promise too," said Meg. "If he says he will not see me I will go away--but he will." Her voice shook. "I know that my father will."

"Well," said Mrs. Russelthorpe; "I am waiting."

Meg covered her face with her hands. "Ah, it will sound differently when you say it," she cried. "Tell him I only beg to see him once more; that I do so long to! That I have thought of him. That I have wanted him often. That I _know_ that he has not forgotten me. That, when I heard he was ill, I could not stay away--I could not! but it is only for a moment. I must ask him to forgive me. Then I will go back, because I have promised," said Meg with a sudden choke, "and because I am _his_ daughter."

Mrs. Russelthorpe turned silently away; and Meg sat down on the doorstep and waited, her eyes fixed unseeingly on the grey church, where the parson and George Sauls were dawdling over inscriptions.

How long she waited she did not know; it might have been half an hour, it might have been five minutes; but she had no doubt as to the result of the message: she could never quite outlive her faith in her father.

She sprang to her feet on hearing a step behind her. "He is awake!" she cried. Her aunt looked away from her; past her into the garden.

"Yes," she said in a dry voice. "He is awake--but he will not see you."

Meg drew her breath quickly, as if she had been physically hurt. "He--he did not mean it," she said. "You have not understood--he did not mean that--he will not. Tell me the words he said."

"He said," said Mrs. Russelthorpe, "'Where would be the use? If she is happy, what have I to say? If she is unhappy--why, as we sow, we reap; both she and I, both father and child.' Those were his very words--and he was right."

Meg looked at her with a strange mournful smile. "Oh, yes, he was right.

Tell father he was quite right." And she turned and went.

The parson and Mr. Sauls came back to the parsonage five minutes later.

Mrs. Russelthorpe was still standing in the garden; and Mr. Sauls, whose short-sighted eyes saw rather more than most people's, noticed at once that she looked worn and tired.

"Is Mr. Deane worse?" he asked.

"Oh no; I believe he is still sleeping," she said; "I will go and see."

And this time she really went.

Her brother was sitting upright, flushed and rather excited.

"Sis, has any one been here?" he asked, the moment that she entered the room. "No? Ah well, it was fancy then--but--but I thought I heard my little daughter call me." The flush faded away; he lay back again disappointed. The wish was father to the thought!

"Charles," she cried, with an eagerness that surprised him, "do let us go away from this place! You will never be yourself till you have left it behind. If we travel by very easy stages I really think we might leave to-morrow. It seems a sudden idea on my part," she went on hurriedly; "but, indeed, the house is not healthy; I am convinced of it. I have had violent headaches ever since I have been here, and you are aware that I am not in the least liable to such ailments. I do not remember ever having felt like this before, and I cannot sleep or eat properly. Then, too, we are putting our kind host to immense inconvenience. The position is intensely awkward for me, though I have refrained from saying so. As for the stories about the fever, they are simply shocking--half the village died of it. I am not nervous; but it is really horrible to find every person one meets in mourning for some near relative."

Mr. Deane looked at her in undisguised astonishment.

"Why, my dear, I've never in my life before seen you possessed of a whim," he cried. "If it were not you, sis, I should say that it was a feminine attack of 'nerves'." And, to his farther surprise, she actually accepted the suggestion.

"I suppose it is," she said. "There, I own it; your illness has shaken me. I feel as if I could not possibly bear this dismal house any longer.

All the family who used to live here are gone, and are buried just outside the gates. It is too melancholy; I dream of funerals! Do go, do go! You will be well as soon as we get away. You shall have no trouble; I will arrange everything. I will explain to our host, only let us go!

Dear Charles, do let us go to-morrow."

Her voice trembled with unwonted earnestness, and Charles was much amazed and rather touched; it was so utterly unlike her to show any weakness of this kind, to stoop to entreaties. She must, indeed, have been anxious about him, since anxiety had so unnerved her. He had always been sure, he said to himself, that, in spite of what some people said, his sister was very warm-hearted in reality.