Into the Highways and Hedges Part 33

"Walk!" said the landlord, "you don't look fit to walk a quarter of a mile, let alone fifteen! I'd provide you a trap very reasonable, ma'am, though it's late to be going all that way now--or--oh! here's Johnny Dale back; I sent him about the purse--well, have they got it?"

"Dun knaw nothin' 'bout it, theer," he answered, with a slow stare at Meg, who, on her part, was filled with a vague recollection of having seen this boy at the farm. "Granny's got round again. Will 'ee tell the preacher so?" he said suddenly, breaking into a broad grin. "And will 'ee tell Maister Tummas that I'm doin' well, and gettin' five shillings a quarter besides my keep, and granny's uncommon obligated to him for gettin' me th' place, and she's over here to-day marketing?"

"Ay, so she be; and that's how you can get back, ma'am," cried the landlord. "Why, Granny Dale 'ull have to pa.s.s within a mile of Caulderwell. She could put you down at the cross path, if you could run that bit in the dark. I'll be bound she'll do that much for your husband's sake, though that donkey of hers is precious slow; you won't be there afore eleven. Here, Johnny, where is that granny o' yours? In the bar, eh? She doan't hold with the preacher's principles 'cept when she's by way o' dying, the old sinner! But the donkey'll take you back safe. Shall I go and find her? Though I don't know," he added doubtfully; "Granny Dale's a queer sort of company for a lady like you."

And he went on his mission, the preacher's wife thanking him with the pretty grat.i.tude that won his liking. He little guessed that, at the bottom of her heart, Mrs. Thorpe would have rejoiced to know that she, personally, would never get home again.

It was very late when the donkey cart at last started. Granny Dale was a most erratic old dame. She would not be hurried--"Not for twenty Mrs.

Thorpes".

Her voice sounded suspiciously thick, and she smoked a short clay pipe.

She was horribly dirty, and smelt of gin. Meg hardly noticed her, though at any other time she would have been disgusted.

The reins hung loose in the woman's gnarled hands, that were brown and knotted like the branches of one of the stunted trees of that country.

The donkey trotted on steadily with a responsible air. On he went through the street, where the pa.s.sersby remarked on granny's companion, and where granny herself took the pipe from her lips to shout facetious observations in the broadest of dialect to her acquaintances. On into the open country again, where the view of the sky broadened, and one could see how the thunder-clouds were piled up, solid and threatening, like the battlements of a city--great purple ma.s.ses, divided only in one place by a narrow red rift.

Granny pointed towards them with her whip. "Theer be a starm coomin'

oop," she said. "Are yo' fleyed o' the thunder?"

Meg made no reply; she was thinking of many things past and to come. She _was_ "fleyed"--but not of the thunder.

"An' if yo' wur th' queen hersel', yo' moight fash yersel' to answer when yo're spoke to!" cried granny with a sudden burst of fury. "Eh, I know what they all says, that ye be quality born, an' ran awa' wi'

Barnabas Thorpe!--an gradely fule he wur that day!--and that yo've pined ever since. An', if yo' wur all th' quality o' th' land, theer's no call to be so high as not to hear a body as talks to 'ee--wastin' my good words, treatin' me loike th' dirt under yo' feet, who am nothin' o' th'

soart! 'specially"--indignantly--"when yo're ridin' i' my donkey cart!"

"I am very sorry," said Meg, effectually roused this time. "I didn't know you were speaking to me; I was thinking of something else.

Indeed,"--seeing that the excuse was likely to provoke a fresh storm,--"I didn't mean to be 'high' in the least; but,"--seizing on the point in her misfortunes most likely to appeal to granny's sympathies--"I lost my purse in the town, and it had money of my husband's in it."

"Eh!" said granny, twisting round in her seat and taking the pipe out of her mouth. "Theer's a pretty business! That do gi'e 'ee some'ut to think abeawt surely. My man 'ud ha' beaten me black and blue if I'd ha' done that; he wur free wi' his blows, Jacob wur, 'specially in his cups; but the preacher's noan o' that soart."

"No," said Meg; "he is not that sort." In a lighter mood she would have smiled at the statement. She was not afraid of physical violence. Even in her wildest terrors (and Meg's imagination was apt to become unreasonable in proportion to the overstrain on her bodily powers) she knew that _that_ would be as impossible to Barnabas as to her own father.

Yet granny's suggestion, like Long John's story of "Maister Tummas,"

presented the more brutal side of life to her, and depressed her yet further. She shrank with increasing nervousness from the thought of that alien element of roughness at the farm.

She was fearfully tired; and, in the reaction from the excitement of the morning, could fight no longer against a melancholy that swept over her, as the clouds steadily rising from the east swept over the sky.

She saw the rest of her life in as unnatural and lurid a light as that which now lay in a streak across the marshes, and in which the polished stalks of the marsh gra.s.s shone red.

"There is such a glare under the clouds! how it makes one's eyes ache!"

she said; and then she became aware that her charioteer was giving her a great deal of highly seasoned advice on her behaviour to her husband.

Granny hated all ladies. She hated them even in their natural place. She had an old and standing grudge against them. But when they chose to descend from their una.s.sailable platform--when they were silly enough to force themselves into the grade of honest workers--then they ought to be made to mend their ways, and eat humble pie in large mouthfuls--not to keep up their old airs and insult their betters.

"Oh, I know," said Meg, speaking more to herself than to granny; "but I can't help being different from the others; I have tried, but it is of no use. There are things one can do, and things one can't do; the thing I have tried I can't!"

And granny had no more idea what hopelessness lay in that confession than if Meg had spoken in a foreign language. It even irritated her the more, as a fresh avowal of a claim to the "fine-ladyism" which to her was like a red rag to a bull.

"Can't help!" she cried. "An' let me tell 'ee this, young woman, if I wur your husband I'd mak' yo' help it. Ah, an' he wull one day. You think the preacher's made of naught but b.u.t.ter; but yo'll find out theer's more nor that in him. It's all fine for a while. Oh yes, I've he'rd o' yo're stand-off ways wi' him; but a mon 'ull ha' some satisfaction from the woman he feeds and clothes. I suppose you've not thought o' that? Ye fancy becos ye are young, and ha' got eyes that look as if they saw through stone walls, that ye can do as ye like wi' a mon!

An' so 'ee con, so 'ee con for a bit; but it's only fur a bit wi' ony of 'em, it don't last. Eh, I knaw. I con tell thee, I wur a greater beauty than ever yo' wur, my la.s.s; and Jacob wur as big a fule over me afore he married as ever yo' see'd; an', afore that I'd been his'n a month, he kicked me so that----"

"I don't want to hear, please!" said Meg; but granny laughed scornfully, and proceeded with the recital. Whether because she took a fierce pleasure in shocking her companion's sensibilities, or because she thought it would be good for the lady to realise what she might have had to suffer if Barnabas hadn't been "softer nor some," she spared no details.

"It wur no marvel Timothy wur born quare," said granny; "he wur cliverer than most to live at all, poor lad; tho' ye do look down on 'im." And there was a kind of fierce affection in that last speech; a defiant love for the lad she had born in the midst of sore mis-usage, that woke Meg's pity more than the horrible stories of gross cruelty that had been poured into her unwilling ears.

"But all men are not like that, granny," she said at last.

"Naw; some be too fur th' other way abeaut," said granny. "Barnabas Thorpe 'ud ha' brought yo' to knaw yo're place by now, ef he'd made ye feel him maister; but he won't stand yo' for ever, an' so I tell 'ee; and he'll be i' th' right too. Yo' con go on talking i' that quare mincing way, as a body can't understan'; yo' con go on lookin' as if ye weren't made o' th' same stuff as us (just because ye've been fed and pampered all yo're life), and pretending not to hear what's said to 'ee, and holdin' him off wi' yo're airs; but he'll be sick o' that one day, and where 'ull yo're foine ladyship be then?"

"I don't know," said Meg apathetically. "Perhaps I shall have learned not to feel any more. People can't go on caring about things always, I suppose. One will grow old some day, mercifully."

And she looked at the witch-like old hag beside her, who had been the country beauty once, and whose husband had kicked her when he was tired of her (within a month), and who had found consolation in smoking and drinking. "Or perhaps I may die," she said; "which would be much better!"

A flash of lightning almost blinded her, even while she spoke, and the quickly following crash of thunder drowned her last words.

Granny leaned forward, shifting the whip in her hand, and struck the donkey with the b.u.t.t end.

"We'll just get to th' miser's hut i' time," she said; "but I'll put ye out o' the cart if ye talk o' death in a thunder-starm; it's temptin'

the Lard."

It was quite dark now, except when the lightning opened the sky, and momentarily lighted up the stretch of marsh land. The donkey's pace quickened, and Meg held on to the side of the cart, while they jolted rapidly over the uneven track. What a tiny speck they seemed under that vast canopy of cloud!

Every other living thing was in hiding, except a gull, flying inland, and very close to the ground.

Meg heard its harsh cry, and saw, with a thrill of envy, the gleam of the white wings as it swept past.

"'Oh that I had wings like a dove; for then would I fly away and be at rest.'" But there was no flying away for her, no escaping the slow reaping that would follow the hasty sowing, so surely as the thunder followed the flash. Ah, there it was again, running along the ground like a fiery serpent; and the thunder, this time, seemed to burst close to their ears, and fill the whole air, and shake the earth.

They were at the deserted hut now; and Granny Dale got down and took the trembling beast out of the shafts, and led him in.

She had much more sympathy with her donkey than with Meg, who further tried her temper by standing at the entrance to the hut watching.

The old woman crouched down on the mud floor by the fireplace, rocking to and fro, muttering something that was meant for a prayer, and casting malevolent glances at the figure in the doorway. The donkey rubbed his head on her shoulder; he too was "fleyed o' the starm," which increased in fury every minute.

"Look 'ee here," she cried at last, "I'll ha' no more o' this. It ain't fittin' to gape at the Lard's judgments, as if they wur a show, and it 'ull bring Him down on us. I won't be struck cos o' yo', and yo'r uncanny ways. Come in, like a Christian, an' say yo'r prayers, and hide yo'r eyes; or else be gwon wi' you; an' a good riddance!"

The lightning lighted up Meg's pale face as she turned round; the sadness of her expression struck granny afresh. "Theer be some'ut unlucky about 'ee," she cried. "I'm wishful I'd not brought ye; I doubt ye'll not bring much good to any one. Timothy said as much. Eh, an' what are ye after now?"

"I know my way from here," said Meg. "I am not afraid of the storm. I won't stay and bring you bad luck, Mrs. Dale." And she slipped out into the darkness.

The old woman rose with difficulty and hobbled to the door, which Meg had shut gently behind her. The wind was rising now, and blew against it with a shrieking gust. Mrs. Dale battled with it for a minute, then succeeded in opening it, and looked about. At that moment the heavy clouds broke, and down came the rain!--dashing down, whistling through the air, like a solid sheet of water, leaping up again on its fall.

Blessed rain, that had been needed all these hot weeks; that the farmers would rejoice to hear while they lay in their beds; that the earth would greet, with a sweetness which would rise like incense! The earth spurted up, the willows bent under the onslaught of water. It frightened the birds in their nests, and made all small animals cower and peep in their shelters. It was not a night in which any living being should be out in the open.

Granny Dale shut the door again, and relighted her pipe; the danger was over, so there was no further need to pray. She puffed away philosophically instead: it was lucky she had brought plenty of "'baccy"

with her. The rain was too violent to last. When it should stop, she and the donkey would jog on again. As for that crazy woman, who couldn't speak her own mother tongue properly, she must be getting pretty drenched; but she was the preacher's affair, not Granny Dale's. No; she was nowhere to be seen; she had vanished like a ghost, or a storm spirit,--why bother about her?

Granny swore once or twice; she could not help being bothered; and, when the storm cleared at last, and she and her donkey started, splashing through ooze and slush, making deep ruts in their progress, she peered anxiously to the right and left, seeing Meg in stunted alder trees, and in clumps of pale reeds, and, even once, in the reflection of the moon in a pool. It looked to her like the girl's white face, upturned and floating.