Into the Highways and Hedges Part 38

"You had a right to object, if you chose."

"Do you suppose I think I've a right to ill-treat ye? I'm sorry for us both, if ye do," he answered gravely, and then his voice softened. "Oh, Margaret! I was sore afeart all th' night. When I was lookin' for 'ee in the 'marshes,' it came over me that there was some evil comin' nigh to 'ee; I've had the feelin' all the week, but last night it were terrible close: I stayed an' shouted to 'ee; I felt as if I must save 'ee fro'

summat; an', my little la.s.s, I didn't know how to thank G.o.d enough when I saw ye, though ye were half scared o' me."

Meg buried her face lower in the hay. "You are thankful for small mercies," she said, in rather a choked voice. "It's not worth your while to care like that, Barnabas."

"The things a man 'ull die for take a grip on him fro' th' outside; an'

he doesna reckon, is it worth 'so much' or 'so much'?" said the preacher. "Ye are more nor all th' world to me now, whatever happens; an' it wasna I that set out to love ye, my maid; but the love for ye that just took a hold o' me."

"Whatever happens?" said Meg. She looked at him with a curious wonder.

"If I had done something very bad, or if----"

"Ye need make no 'ifs,'" he cried. "It's not h.e.l.l--no, nor yet heaven, that 'ull take ye out o' my heart now!" And Meg's eyes fell before his; she had her answer!

She could not hinder this strong love. Barnabas would never count costs either in the things that pertained to G.o.d, or in the things that pertained to man.

"Well, la.s.s," he began again, after a minute's silence, "I found this this morning" (holding out her note).

"So ye thought we'd take a satisfaction in makin' th' rest o' your life miserable? Did ye get to your father?"

"He wouldn't see me," said Meg; and there was a ring of pain in her voice, that went to the man's heart. "Father could not forgive me, though I asked him. He said, 'Tell her that as we sow, we must reap;'

and it is very true--truer than anything else in this world, only I did so want to see him--oh, I _do_ so want to!"

The preacher walked up and down the loft with quick strides. "I hope,"

he began; and then swallowed the rest of that sentence. He hoped in his righteous indignation--possibly also in his jealousy--that Mr. Deane might receive a like answer when in need of forgiveness for himself; but he did refrain from saying that to Meg.

"There was a king's daughter who forgot her own people an' her father's house; but there's only one thing as makes a woman do that, I fancy," he said at last; "an' ye've not got it. See now, la.s.s, I'm asking ye for naught but th' right to help ye if I can. Let's get to th' bottom o'

things together; doan't 'ee think ye might gi'e me that much?"

He spoke gently; but there was always an intensity about the preacher that made Meg, whose more complex nature was swayed by many different emotions, feel rather as if she were being coerced into self-revelations against her will.

"What is the use? There are some things better not talked of. It is sometimes a sin even--even to regret," she whispered. Her great grey eyes had a beseeching wistfulness in them. "It's all been unfair to you," she cried, the conviction that had been growing on her finding voice. "But I meant, when I came back, to put all that belonged to the old life quite aside--never to speak of father any more. If you give me time, I'll do it. Only don't make me tell you too many truths, Barnabas; they may be better let alone."

"I'd be loth to _make_ any one do aught," said the preacher. "It's what I'd never do."

"What he would never do!" And how many times had she not seen his strong personal influence making people go his way?--making the drunkard throw away gin untasted, making crowds fall on their knees as if moved by one spirit; yet he spoke in all good faith: such compulsion was not his doing, but "the Lord's," in the preacher's eyes.

She leaned back against the hay, and watched him pacing up and down the loft. Her thoughts flew back to a day that had almost been forgotten in the events that followed it,--the day he had testified in the drawing-room at Ravenshill.

It had been very like Barnabas to do that--very characteristic both of his strength and his limitations. Well! she, at least, had learned much since then; among other things, perhaps, that the most earnest of preachers is a man first,--and last.

"Ye shall never feel forced to aught, an' I can help it; we'll go on as we did before, if you choose. Only it's not true that any truth is better not 'faced,'" he said finally; and there was a steady self-restraint and patience in his tone that woke Meg's confidence.

The preacher's judgment was not infallible; and she knew that now: his opinions were mixed with strong cla.s.s and personal prejudices, his very goodness was dashed with fanaticism;--and yet, for all that, he was true to the very core. She had meant to play her part better; but to this man, of all men, she could not offer pretences. Since this was all he asked, he should have it. They would face their mistake together; even that mistake which she had thought it sin against both G.o.d and him to own as one.

"Ask what you like then," she said. She could no more give half a confidence than he could give half a heart. "But, as to helping--every one must do his own reaping, unless he is mean enough to try to escape it. I used to fancy that, being father's daughter, I could never do a mean thing, though I've done plenty of rash ones; but one learns." And the reflection of the night's learning deepened the tragedy in her eyes.

"One learns that one might be tempted to anything."

What had she been tempted to? The preacher's breath came more quickly with the quickness of the thoughts that flashed through his brain.

She was young and had love to give, and a heart that some one else might have touched, though _he_ could not. If that was the temptation, the nethermost h.e.l.l was too good for the man who had tempted her. But _she_ was blameless, anyhow; he knew that,--knew it with an absolute certainty he longed to declare.

He would have defended her against herself, reading self-accusation in her tone. G.o.d helping him, no hot jealousy should scare or scorch her this time.

"Margaret," he said slowly, "what was the temptation?"

"I told you," she cried. "It was to _escape_. Oh, Barnabas, we made a great mistake. We have both seen it, I suppose, and repented; but what difference does that make? One may water one's sowing with tears--they don't prevent the harvest! As we sow, we must reap. Even father said so.

Granny Dale said worse things than that----" She stopped abruptly.

"Well?"

"I couldn't tell you all," said Meg, her face flushing. "She said that men got tired of their fancies, and that, though you were better than most, you wouldn't stand my ways any more some day. Don't look _so_, Barnabas; I didn't believe it! I knew you were too good; but some of it was true. She said you fed and clothed me and got nothing for it; and that was true. She said I was a fine lady. I have tried not to be, but it is so difficult to alter the way one has been made. And she told me horrible stories of--of what her husband did to her when she was young.

I couldn't repeat those--they were too terrible." And Meg shuddered.

"But, when one hears of such things, it makes the whole world dark, and G.o.d seems too far away to care."

"Do 'ee think so?" said Barnabas. "But it's just the knowledge o' such cruelties and horrors and black wickedness that drives a man to be a preacher, la.s.s. They burn at th' bottom o' one's thoughts, an' one has no rest till one has given one's life to th' fighting o' them."

"I know, I know," said Meg. "Oh yes, you have taught me that; one has no rest for thinking of them! But, if one fights and fails? Barnabas, you will not understand this, because you never despair, and you don't know what it is to be beaten, and you are never afraid; but I was. Ah, look the other way, I know it was cowardly, but it tempted me so; and I wanted to get free of--of everything; of trying and failing, of loving people who can't bear to see one, of being a weight on strangers; of the hopeless tangle. The longing came over me quite suddenly, I had not thought I was so wicked. I knew, all at once, that I was horribly afraid of living, and death pulled me so hard, as if there were something stronger than me in the water; and then you called' Margaret, Margaret!' and I pulled myself back. I was ashamed of being such a coward. It was as bad as a soldier who deserts, except that I didn't quite--though even that I did not was more your doing than mine."

"Neither yours nor mine," said the preacher; "but the Lord's!"

He leaned his arms on the half-door of the loft, and looked away over the flat country, glistening with water, sweet and fresh after the baptism of rain. Had he, in leading the woman he loved from the evil of the world, brought her to this?--this horror of despair and loneliness, that temptation which she had only just escaped, whose shadow he had surely felt!

He thanked G.o.d she was safe, but with an intensity of realisation of her peril that went through him like the sharpness of steel.

"I'm sore to think that the devil had power to tempt ye. I'm sore to think ye met him, wi' me not by, Margaret. How shall I comfort ye? What shall I say?" cried the man.

If she had loved him he could have comforted so easily; if he had not loved her, he would have had no doubt what to say. He made an effort to put that human love aside, and turned to her at last, his blue eyes very bright. "Doan't believe him who was a liar fro' th' beginning," he said.

"The good must allus be th' strongest, la.s.s, i' th' end. It's against lies an' black shadows that we fight. With us is the power an' th'

glory. You an' I, Margaret, will win through our failures and our sins, and count them dead at our feet one day!"

Meg shook her head. "I know you think so," she said; "I am not so sure--I don't think I am sure of anything,--if even father----" the sentence did not bear finishing. Alas! though human love first teaches the divine, the failure of "the brother whom we have seen" shakes our belief in a Divinity we have not seen, as nothing else can. Then a smile touched her lips.

"But I daresay _you_ will see all your sins and failures dead at your feet," she said. "I think you would win through anything; it is the very sure people who do; and you will be quite triumphant and happy one day!"

"But I'd have no content," said Barnabas, "nor wish to have, without ye had it too. No, not in heaven--it 'ud be h.e.l.l an' I lost ye, Margaret!"

"Hush!" cried Meg, amazed. "Do you think it is right to say that?"

"Ay, I do; most right," he said, with the strong conviction in his voice that Meg always felt overpowered argument. "Shall I think better than my Master? Was He content in heaven? An' He had been, He'd not ha' drawn _us_ after Him, la.s.s. I'm not feared o' loving ye too much," he went on rather sadly. "Happen, if I love ye enough, I'll learn in time not to scare ye; an' then th' next old wife ye meet won't leave ye fit to drown yourself wi' her tales o' men's wickedness! So ye think we made a great mistake, eh? an' ha' both repented? For me, I ha' _not_ repented. It wur a clear teaching, an' naught's a mistake that's right. An' it seems so afterwards, that's part o' th' witcheries o' th' devil. Still, ye think so?" drawing his light-coloured eyebrows together in perplexity, but with a patient attempt to follow her thought that touched Meg.

"You were doing what you believed right," she said. "I was very miserable and Aunt Russelthorpe hated me, and I her, and father was away, and it was easier to go--anywhere--than to stay. I did really believe it was 'a call' too; it wasn't only discontent. I must have been wrong, though, or it would have turned out right," Meg said, with a simplicity that was always part of her character. "But, when I look back, I can't disentangle my motives nor even remember exactly what I felt then; I was so different, and knew so little----"

"I'd let it be," said Barnabas. "There doesna seem much doubt to me."

He paused a moment. There was never "much doubt" to him about anything.

It was hardly possible to this man, who was essentially a man of action, of unhesitating zeal, to comprehend self-torturing uncertainty.