Into the Highways and Hedges Part 24

"Her mother's took bad an' her brother's dead," said Barnabas; "but"--with a moment's hesitation--"will ye no gi'e yourself an hour, sir? I'll manage."

The old parson straightened himself, and took up his hat and stick.

"Not now," he said. "When the bullets have stopped flying, we'll count our dead." So the two went into the village street together.

Barnabas Thorpe, with his weather-beaten face and long swinging stride; Mr. Bagshotte, trotting along by his side in clerical hat and gaitered legs--these two were the most familiar of sights now; brave men both, who, whatever their differences, would never duck their heads under fire, whether visible or invisible.

A starved dog, whose owner lay in the churchyard, crept after them whining, and thrust his nose under the preacher's hand. Dogs always followed Barnabas, who, from his childhood, had been bound by a specially strong tie to the brute creation. Already he had been adopted as master by four cats and two mongrel dogs, as he remembered with rather rueful amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Go home!--I've no room for ye," he said; but, on the dog's explaining that he had no home, that n.o.body had any room for him, and that he was sick of being stoned, his legs having got so shaky that he hadn't energy to get out of the way, Barnabas relented and picked him up. It was absolutely impossible to the man to pa.s.s on on the other side in any case, whether advisable or not, as his fellow-worker remarked. Mr.

Bagshotte's liking for Barnabas was, sometimes, touched by something that would have been pity if the preacher had not been too strong a man to feel sorry for.

"A bit of a fatalist (though he doesn't know it), a bit of a fanatic, and a bit of a saint, with an inconveniently big heart," thought the parson. "The man gives the saint some trouble, I fancy. I wonder what his wife is like!"

Three weeks later the "bullets" began to slacken.

There was a paragraph in a London paper describing the terrible scourge that had devastated the little northern village--reducing the population to less than one half of its original number, and sweeping away whole families at once. Mr. Bagshotte, the vicar, had lost his wife and three children, the report said; and several of his contemporaries, who remembered Bagshotte at the university, wondered whether this was the same man they used to know, and, if so, why he had buried himself in the country.

Mr. Bagshotte himself read the meagre account with rather a sad smile.

It would mean so remarkably little to the people who did not live in the village; and the village had been his world for so long.

He had been essentially a domestic man, loving the routine of everyday life, absolutely happy with his wife and children, whom he had surrounded with little old-fas.h.i.+oned tender observances. He had lost touch with the friends of his youth; though, his friends.h.i.+ps being of st.u.r.dy growth, he had prided himself on not forgetting them. He was alone now, so far as companions.h.i.+p went; and, healthy-minded as he was, he got to dread the emptiness of the rooms, and would cheat the loneliness that awaited him by hurrying up the back way, avoiding the drawing-room door, which used always to open at the sound of his footstep.

Possibly he came to feel his losses more when the pressure of excitement was over.

It would have been unworthy to pray for death. A man has no business to whine for a speedy release because his duty has become irksome; but he was conscious of some disappointment. He had believed, when he had buried his son, that his own turn would come when the shots began to "thin". He was willing to wait till then, indeed it would never have done for his wife to have been left alone; but now, when the shops were opening again, when the world was regaining its balance, and men, meeting in the street, talked of weather and trade, and discovered that the "Last Day" was, after all, not so very imminent, the old man was conscious of a slightly surprised disappointment. "The king can do no wrong," but he had hoped things might have been otherwise ordered.

He was just turning in at his own gate one Sunday morning; the usual Sunday services had begun again, and he was considering how to fill up the gaps in the church band, when some one called him by his Christian name.

He turned, frowning slightly, and a good deal surprised; then his face changed.

He knew the stranger at once; the twelve years that lay between this and their last meeting seemed to come like a haze before his eyes. He rubbed them vigorously, but he had no doubt as to who it was.

"Deane! Charles Deane!" he cried.

"I saw it in the paper, and I came at once. My dear old friend!" cried the new-comer; and the two men grasped each other silently by the hand.

It is one of the advantages of riches that good impulses can be carried out with comparative ease, while they are still hot.

Mr. Bagshotte threw open the gate with a jerk.

"Come in, come in. You are more than welcome," he said. "To think that you should have come like this! It's--it's extraordinarily good of you, Deane."

The old man was more touched than he would have cared to show. He had admired his brilliant friend immensely in the olden days; but he had, somehow, hardly expected that Charles Deane would have remembered him.

"I wish she could have welcomed you. We seldom had any visitors, and she would have enjoyed it so," he said simply. "So you saw it in the paper and came! I had fancied I was quite forgotten."

Mr. Deane put his hand for a moment on the parson's shoulder. "But one doesn't forget one's oldest friends," he said; and the sympathy in his musical voice was good to hear.

It certainly _was_ fortunate that he had come on the spur of the moment, before anything had occurred to prevent him.

Mr. Bagshotte led the way into his study, with a brighter look on his face than it had worn for a long time.

On opening the door, he found Barnabas Thorpe awaiting him.

"They told me that ye would be out o' church in a minute, so I just waited for 'ee," the preacher began; then stopped short suddenly.

Who was this? this stranger who was yet not a stranger? Who was this who had _stolen Margaret's eyes_?

Barnabas actually flinched; the likeness hurt him, combined, as it was, with the utter scorn and distrust that those eyes expressed.

"You are my wife's father!" he cried abruptly, his thoughts treading on each other's heels, and tumbling confusedly through his brain while he spoke.

Mr. Deane had turned rather white. Like Meg, his colour went when he was very angry. He flicked the dust off his boots with his riding whip; then looked up with a fine smile.

"It is a little late to remember that she had a father," he said. "She forgot that she was my child when she became your wife. The best that can happen to her now is that she should continue to forget it--for ever, if possible. I sincerely hope it may be possible--for her own sake. No one will disturb your possession."

He turned away when he had spoken. He could not condescend to quarrel with this man.

"G.o.d bless my soul!" cried the parson. "Mr. Deane's daughter your wife; but--but----"

"But she was never born for the likes o' me, eh?" said the preacher. "Is that what you'd say, parson? It's her own flesh an' blood she should ha'

clung to, when they miscalled her, an' cast her out? an' I should ha'

shrugged my shoulders an' walked away?" His heart was hot within him.

Mr. Deane's voice and face and manner, the strong indissoluble tie of blood that made Meg his, even when he denied her, awoke the man's fierce jealousy, and awoke also a certain sore despondency that he himself hardly understood.

"An' so ye'll not disturb me?" he went on slowly. The two men's eyes met for a second, and Barnabas Thorpe laughed rather grimly. "An' that's a true word," he said. "I am no' o' your kind, thank G.o.d; but happen I know one thing. I can take care o' the woman who is mine."

CHAPTER V.

"A small piece of good fortune having fallen to Mrs. Thorpe's share, it's really time that her old acquaintances should ask what has become of her, isn't it?" said Mr. Sauls.

He was standing in Laura Ashford's drawing-room, whither he had come to extract any knowledge she might possess as to her sister's whereabouts.

Unfortunately she knew nothing.

"I am very glad that my poor old uncle has left Meg that money," said Laura; "and that you mean to see that she gets it. Her cause is in good hands."

"Mr. Russelthorpe was uncommonly kind to me, and one has a foolish superst.i.tion about carrying out a man's last wishes," said George. "It's for his sake I am doing it. His widow means to dispute the will on the ground of incompetency; but she won't gain much by that. It is odd what a tendency women have for going to law. Of course it is fortunate for the lawyers; quite a 'special dispensation,' as no doubt Barnabas Thorpe would say."

There was a suppressed elation in his voice that was not lost on Laura.

"I wonder why he hates my aunt. How she must have snubbed him! This clever gentleman would keep a stone in his pocket seven years, and turn it, and keep it seven more, for the chance of hitting his enemy with it at last, I fancy. Well, well! we all rather condescended to Mr. Sauls before I married," she reflected; "but he has the laugh on his side now.

Meg had better have taken him."