Into the Highways and Hedges Part 9

The preacher started up as if the coin falling on his brown fingers had burnt them.

"Here, ma'am. Please take it back. I thought I'd made it clear, I'll ha'

none o' et," he cried; and there was a ring in his voice, which sounded as if the "Old Adam" were not quite dead yet.

"I shall certainly not take it. I do not approve of unpaid services,"

said Mrs. Russelthorpe. And Barnabas with a quick movement drew back his arm, and pitched the sovereign over her head, far away into the park.

It span through the air like a flash of light, and Mrs. Russelthorpe's lips compressed as she saw it.

"That was a most insolent exhibition of temper for one who preaches to others," she said coldly; but the answer surprised her.

"Ay, an' that's true; so it was," he said, reddening.

Mrs. Russelthorpe was not generous enough to take no advantage of her adversary's slip.

"Your rudeness to me can only injure yourself," she went on, "and is certainly not worth remark; but I am glad to have this opportunity of saying that I believe you to be doing great harm by your preaching.

Religious excitement is always bad, and I have had to remonstrate seriously with my niece, who is very young and foolish, about the ideas your unwise words have put into her head. She sees her mistake now,"

added Mrs. Russelthorpe, rather prematurely. "But had I not been at hand to guide her, you might have done an infinity of evil in attempting to dictate to her about the duties of a position which you cannot in the least be expected to understand."

An anxious look came over the preacher's face; his own pride was forgotten on the instant.

"Tell me," he said eagerly, "she is surely not turning back?"

"I do not understand your expression," said Mrs. Russelthorpe; "but Miss Deane will shortly accompany me to London, and take her part in society as usual. I am glad to say she recognises the folly of your teaching."

That last a.s.sertion was unfounded; but then, "If it is not true yet, it shall be," thought Mrs. Russelthorpe, and she couldn't resist a triumph.

She departed after that, with the last word and the best of the encounter, well pleased; but if she had known the preacher better she would not have told him that his disciple was "giving in".

"She is doing the devil's work, an' the poor maid is over weak," he reflected, "an' hard beset; an' what shall I do?"

He took his worn Bible from his pocket and laid it open on the road; the wind stirred the pages gently, and the man shut his eyes with a prayer for enlightenment. Then he opened them and picked the book up. He read in the bright glancing sunlight one sentence: "And He saith unto him, Cast thy garment about thee and follow Me".

Mrs. Russelthorpe and Meg were sitting together in the drawing-room.

The girl looked ill and nervous. The constant strain of a conflict with a stronger willed antagonist told on her. She had slept little of late, she had suffered a veritable martyrdom in the carrying out of Barnabas Thorpe's principles.

All at once the blood rushed to her white face.

"I hear footsteps in the hall," she said.

"You are going crazy about 'footsteps'!" cried her aunt impatiently, and then lifted her eyebrows in some surprise. "Some one _is_ coming upstairs. Who can be calling at this hour?"

"It is the preacher. They are his footsteps that I've heard coming nearer all the week," said Meg quietly, and before Mrs. Russelthorpe could say a word of reproof to this extraordinary statement, Barnabas Thorpe stood in the doorway.

"I ask pardon for interrupting you, but I ha' a message for this maid,"

he said. "I ha' been told that havin' put your hand to th' plough ye are in danger o' turning back. Is it true?"

"The man is mad!" cried Mrs. Russelthorpe, "or he is drunk!"

She stood upright, putting her frame aside without haste or flurry. She had never felt fear in her life, though her indignation was strong.

"Go at once, sir!" she said.

"Is it true?" said the preacher.

His eyes were fixed on Meg. He was too eager to be self-conscious. In the intensity of his effort to arrest and turn again a wavering soul, he did not even hear Mrs. Russelthorpe; and for a moment his absorption, his utter imperviousness to all that was "outside" his mission, impressed even her.

The preacher was as "one-ideaed" as a sleuth hound in pursuit of his quarry. The simile is not a pretty one, but it flashed across her mind, when her command fell futile and powerless.

"Is it true?" Then, while Meg, who had been sitting with dilated eyes staring at him, covered her face with her hands, his voice melted into entreaty.

"Perhaps it is so," he said. "But the Master is full of pity. Still He says 'Come'. He knows our backslidings. He bears wi' us again and again, as a mother wi' a bairn who stumbles running to her. His feet bear the bruises o' the stones by the way," cried Barnabas. And again, as on the beach, his blue eyes had the expression of eyes that _see_ that of which they speak. "An' ye shall not be afeard o' th' path they trod! His hands are marked wi' th' nails o' Calvary, an' by those marks they shall lead us men, who are feeble and sore discouraged. Behold, I _know_"--and his voice rang through the room, making Meg wonder whimsically in the midst of her excitement whether the very chairs and tables were not startled in their spindle-legged propriety--"Behold, I know that it is sweeter to walk wi' Him through th' valley o' death, than to walk wi'out Him through th' sunshine o' the World."

"My good man," said Mrs. Russelthorpe, "whatever may be the case in 'the valley of death,' you are very much out of place in my drawing-room. We have had enough."

She pointed to the door while she spoke.

Outside in the road the man had had the worst of it when he had crossed swords with her; here, strangely enough, she had no more effect on him than a child's breath against a boat in full sail.

He was acting under authority now. He believed himself as much bound to testify as ever Moses before the Egyptian king.

"My Master has called this maid," he said; "who is it bids you hinder?

Promise," and he turned again to Meg, "that ye will follow Him to the giving up of all He disallows. Promise! an' I will go my way in peace."

Meg let her hands drop on her lap, and looked at him with the saddest smile he had ever seen. The pathos of it touched the man as well as the apostle, though he wasn't himself aware of that fact; and his innermost thought of her was free from any taint of self-consciousness.

"I will promise nothing," she said; "I should only fail."

Her low voice sounded weary and dispirited, the very ant.i.thesis of his.

This time she said to herself she would not let herself go.

His enthusiasm might carry her a little way by its own strength, but she knew what the end would be. This narrowly strong preacher, with his northern burr, his gesticulations, his intense conviction, came, after all, from another world. She envied his a.s.surance, she admired his courage, but he could not "help her".

"I may be miserable, and know I am wrong, and yet give way at last, unless something happens," said Meg. The "something" meant support from her father. Then she was ashamed of her own words.

"I will try--but I won't promise," she said wistfully.

There was a tense silence. "I have a message for ye, an' I canna understand it," said Barnabas at last, "but the Lord will make it clear.

Listen, these are the words, _And the angel said unto him, Cast thy garment about thee and follow Me._"

"The man is raving!" exclaimed Mrs. Russelthorpe. And she put her hand on the bell; but he had already turned to go.

He would add no words of his own to the inspired "mandate"; and he walked out of the room and out of the house unmolested, as he had come.

Mrs. Russelthorpe drew a deep breath, that was not so much of relief as of utter astonishment.