Into the Highways and Hedges Part 39

Then his love for her gave him the sympathy which he could never have reached intellectually.

"But, happen, I doan't rightly understand," he said gently. "Well, He understan's, whose strength is stronger nor our sins, an' His wisdom nor our mistakes. Say it wur a sin an' a mistake, la.s.s!--tho', mind, it's not I who'll ever think so--even then, He can bring ye past it. Failure isn't for us who are on His side. Things hide themsel's an' take queer shapes i' th' smoke o' th' battle; but in th' end the shadows 'ull roll away, an' the day be His an' ours!" cried Barnabas.

Meg, looking at him, knew how he _saw_ that battlefield, where the Man of Sorrows stood alone triumphant.

Well, the preacher's arguments might not always convince now; but yet, so long as she lived, his unswerving devotion would wake an answering chord in her. It is, after all, what a man is that impresses us; and the reflection of the Eternal goodness in our neighbour's soul refreshes ours, be the neighbour broad or narrow, of our creed or of his own!

"I am glad I have told you," she said.

Barnabas put his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her, in his face an anxiety he could not repress.

"Ye ha' told me all?"

"No. There is something else; I have lost the money you gave me, and----"

He interrupted impatiently. "Eh? that's no matter, and it was yours to do as you would with; I'd not ha' saved it for mysel'. There's naught else? I've thought times--happen, when someone came along wi' just all the ways I'm wanting in--book-larned, perhaps, and clever--so I've heard--and a gentleman. Doan't fancy that I'm not sartain ye would never listen to a word ye shouldn't fro' any--I am sure o' that--but meaning no blame to 'ee, Margaret--only seein' ye are still young, an'--an'----"

He stammered in his eagerness, and Meg felt that his hands were shaking.

It was extraordinary and amazing to her that Barnabas should care like that.

"I am not breaking my heart for anybody," she said rather indignantly; "for Mr. Sauls least of all. Every one is rather silly about him, I think--even Tom."

"An' what about Tom?" asked the preacher; and Meg, in some dismay, found herself let in for even greater revelations than she had intended.

Barnabas was more indignant on her behalf than she expected or wished.

He listened to the rather confused story in silence, except that he interrupted once to ask: "Why didn't ye tell me? Didn't ye know I'd ha'

come fro' anywhere to take your part?"

"It's all past now, and Tom and I have made it up; and it does not matter any more," Meg wound up. She was anxious to forget that sore subject, which had been such a perplexity to her.

"There would have been no use in telling you when I couldn't prove that I was speaking the truth. You see, I could not explain about the letter; I can't understand, even now, what it was that Cousin Tremnell picked up, but I have thought since that, perhaps----"

"_I_ doan't want explaining to. Ye needn't fash yoursel'!" cried Barnabas. There was something more like reproach in his tone than anything she had heard before. Her explanation died.

"Maybe I'm jealous! happen I've made ye miserable in ways I doan't know, though I'd gi'e my blood for ye; but, if I had your word on one hand, an' all the proofs the devil could bring on th' other, I'd believe ye, Margaret; ay, an' without a doubt. So ye thought I'd need proofs afore I'd be sartain ye weren't lying? I thank G.o.d I doan't! It takes less than the eighteen months sin' we were married to find out whether a person speaks truth or no. Why, I'd swear blindfold to yours; Ye may mind that!"

"I thought it was only women who believed like that," said Meg. "But you would be right--and quite safe--and I will mind it."

His confidence did her good; he was never likely to repent it.

"Ye might ha' known wi'out telling," said Barnabas with a sigh; and the sigh brought back her self-reproach.

"Indeed," she cried wistfully, "I do trust and like you, Barnabas. I would try to show it more, only----"

"No!" said the man; "Doan't _try_." Then, seeing her surprised face: "Ye just doan't understan'; but on th' day ye love me, my la.s.s, there'll be no need o' trying, nor yet o' my askin'. I ha' not pressed ye, Margaret, an' I'll never do that; but I'll _know_ it, whether I'm i' this world or the next."

CHAPTER XI.

Two friends will in a needle's eye repose, But the whole world is narrow for two foes.

--_Jacula Prudentum._

After the storm there was a calm.

Margaret lay on the settle in the farm kitchen recovering slowly from a sharp attack of marsh fever, and declaring in apparent jest, that had more than a substratum of truth, that she was in no hurry to get well.

"Some people hate being waited on and made a fuss over," she said; "but I really like it; I like it when Tom brings me books, and Mr. Thorpe flowers, and Cousin Tremnell tats lace caps for me. You are all so nice when I am ill, that I don't see why I should give up being an invalid.

Why should I sit on a bench and spread my own bread and dripping, when some one else will make toast for me and bring it over here? I am not at all sure that I'll even condescend to put it into my own mouth! You must cut it into three-cornered pieces, or I won't look at it!"

And in the general laugh over her pretended airs, only one of her hearers guessed how often the joke, that had become a family joke, about liking to be waited on, hid real weariness and exhaustion.

She could hardly have found a shorter cut to the favour of these strange kinsfolk. They all united in petting her now that she was really ill.

Mrs. Tremnell certainly liked her better for her delicacy. Meg always privately believed that the good woman thought ill-health ladylike and more befitting her birth. Tom and her father-in-law could never do enough for her.

She was, like her father, a charming patient, ready with prettiest thanks for any service, and never complaining. Not one of them but would have been sorry to miss the very feminine element she had brought into that rather rough household.

"A young woman do make it more interestin', if only 'cause you can never count for sartain on what she'll say next," Tom remarked; and the whole household had a habit of bringing any piece of news, from the birth of a calf to the last town gossip, to Meg's settle.

The 'little lady' saw all life, both her own and other people's, more vividly and picturesquely than they did; and her sympathy was genuine and quick.

"If ye live here always, I believe ye'll become a sort o' little wise woman to all the foalk hereabouts," her father-in-law said to her one day. But Meg shook her head. She was doing her best to lie on the bed she had made for herself; but she did not care to look forward.

She was recovering morally as well as physically; but she couldn't go too fast.

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" is a piece of wisdom that we recognise at last, when we are tired out with the treble burden of to-day, yesterday, and to-morrow.

Barnabas worked on the farm through that August and the first half of September, and Tom was glad enough to have him.

The preacher had a wonderful faculty for turning his hands to anything; and this was, perhaps, a counter-balance to his incapacity for and dislike of "book-larning".

He was in request as veterinary surgeon and bone-setter; and Meg used to wonder that his strong clever fingers should have so delicate a touch.

She learned to depend on him herself, insensibly, in a way that she would once hardly have thought possible.

Barnabas was a born nurse, and could lift her into an easier position and slip her pillows into the right angle as no one else could.

Mrs. Tremnell had an aimless manner of fluttering about on tip-toe in a sick-room,--a habit which set Meg's nerves on edge, and which it taxed all her self-command to endure without signs of impatience; but the preacher's heavy tread never jarred on her. He always knew exactly what he meant to do in small as well as in big things; and both his decision and his strength were restful.

Possibly, if she had owed him less, she would have drawn near to loving him.

She had fancied when first taken ill that she was going to die.

The s.h.i.+vering and burning, which left her daily weaker, which wearied and exhausted her, would, she suspected, very effectually solve all the difficulties that surrounded Barnabas and herself. But, after all, her youth a.s.serted itself. A spell of sharp, fresh weather seemed to give her new life; the attacks of fever became shorter; and, very much to her own surprise, she recognised that she was--albeit painfully and with many relapses--getting better!