Into the Highways and Hedges Part 42

George experienced none of the terrible remorse that the preacher would have felt in like circ.u.mstances; but, nevertheless, while he stood by Lydia's grave, he made some resolutions which he kept.

Probably, in any case, the stronger qualities of the man, the intense ambition, and keen pleasure in work, the sweetening affection for the mother and sister he pulled up with him, would have a.s.serted themselves, and kept his coa.r.s.er qualities in subjection as he grew older; but the episode of Lydia and the hours spent beside her bedside ripened him fast. He made an end of the sowing of wild oats. They didn't pay!

He had lived a clean life since; but Meg would not know that--and it was fifteen years ago!

George felt it unfair that so old a sin should rise up now to blacken his image in the mind of the woman he had the misfortune to love.

He had been surprised when he had first heard the name of Tremnell again; but Lydia's mother had never so much as seen him, and _his_ name bore no a.s.sociation for her. He had changed it, on coming into money, and was Cohen-Sauls, instead of Cohen, now; and his cool a.s.surance had carried him safely through the unexpected encounter. The difference between thirty-six and twenty-one was so wide that he hardly even felt self-conscious.

It was odd that the preacher should have recognised him. "The pious humbug!" said George between his teeth; "at least, my hands are cleaner than his! I never took advantage of her faith, though certainly I never had the chance. He'll draw a sweet picture of the wicked man for her; I shall point a moral to several sermons. If I might meet him this once, with no woman standing by, perhaps I might deliver a message too. Hallo, what's this?"

He had been walking quickly, not looking much at the flat landscape around him; but his eye was caught by a newly made fence round the "Pixies' Pool" which lay a little off the regular track.

Moved by curiosity, he turned towards it, and leaning his arms on the rail, stared down into the salt depths that had had such fascination for Meg.

Mr. Sauls was not in the least imaginative, but while thus engaged he had rather an odd sensation,--a sensation as if some one behind him were watching him; and he turned round sharply.

No one was by his side; it must have been fancy; but, the next minute, he did descry a man walking along the track he had just left, walking at full speed, with a long swinging step; and, with the man's approach, Mr.

Sauls recognised the preacher.

Barnabas came deliberately towards him.

"Have the pixies granted me my wish?" thought George with a sneer. "Now, my holy friend, we'll have it out! I wouldn't have gone out of my way to quarrel with you, for her sake; but if you choose to follow me, why, the meekest of men could not stand that."

He lighted a cigar leisurely, and, with his back against the rail, awaited the preacher's approach; with a satisfaction which, perhaps, the "meekest of men" would hardly have experienced.

"I wanted to catch ye up," said Barnabas; and so the two stood face to face at last, with no one between them.

"At your service," said George. His tone was lazily insolent, though, as a rule, he carefully abstained from patronising his inferiors in rank.

He scanned Barnabas between half-shut eyelids. It was not the least of this fellow's offences that he looked so honest.

"I followed to give ye back this. It's not fitting my wife should tak'

aught fro' ye; I'd liefer ye had it again. She's no need o' diamonds, an' if she had, they shouldna be bought wi' your money. She's obliged to 'ee, sir," with an evident after-thought; "an' here they be."

"I am sorry to disoblige," said George, lifting his shoulders. "I will not press a gift on Mrs. Thorpe against her will. When she gives it back to me herself, I'll take it; till then _I_ had 'liefer' she kept it."

The preacher put the locket down on the rail that fenced the pond.

"She'll not do that," he said quietly. "Take it or leave it, as you like; it's yours." And he turned to go.

"Stop!" said George, standing upright. "You were loud enough in your denunciations when a lady,"--somehow he hated saying "your wife"--"when a lady was present. Let's hear the whole matter now. When did you meet me before, and where? And why, pray, don't you take this opportunity for a word in season? Do you only preach under shelter of petticoats?"

"There's been matter enough atwixt you and me," said Barnabas. Good G.o.d!

there had been matter enough, indeed!

He would have answered Mr. Sauls differently in his hot youth; now, after many seasons of constant labour for a Master who claimed his fighting powers, his reply came slowly, with no loss of self-command; but none the less forcibly for that.

"I've seen ye twice afore. If it were twice fifteen years ago I'd know ye again. I saw ye once fooling with a maid, teachin' her the devil's game, that meant play to ye, and death to her. I saw ye a second time standin' by her grave."

The veil of those fifteen years seemed lifted for a moment; both men felt themselves back in that London churchyard thick with fog, with Lydia's grave between.

"She paid the price, and you got off scot free," said the preacher. "It seemed to me then as if it would ha' evened things to ha' laid ye dead too; but they held me back, and now----" He broke off short, and there was silence for a moment.

George broke it with the elaborately nonchalant accent that showed he was a little stirred. "Ah well! I was shockingly out of training in those days," said he. "It was lucky that you didn't yield to your desire to even things; for you'd have swung for it, you know. Let's hear all you have to say; for you won't get another chance of converting this reprobate--and _now_!" For all the studied coolness of his tone, his fingers clenched; it was not Lydia he was thinking of now.

"And now," said the preacher steadily, "I will let vengeance alone. No, I've naught to say. I didn't come to preach to ye; I've hated ye too much for that. Ye asked me where we'd met, and why I said ye are no fit company for _her_. Now ye know."

"Thanks!" said George. "Yes--now I know." That stress on the "her," that reverence and something more than reverence in the preacher's voice, stung his desire to quarrel. It became uncontrollable; he must.

"I don't pretend to piety," he said, playing with the chain of the locket he had picked up, after all; for his common-sense could not allow him to leave it hanging on a fence. "I am no saint, as you are very much aware. Perhaps that's why I've an unholy horror of men who make sermons a vehicle for love-making, and catch good women by trading on an instinct for self-sacrifice; women who would never dream of looking at them, if they were approached in any other way. I may have done things to be ashamed of; most men have. But there are forms of hypocrisy that make one sick to contemplate. I don't know that I was ever a hypocrite." He put up his eyegla.s.s, and stared at the preacher slowly from head to foot. "Nevertheless, I own that your plan has paid best. I congratulate you on the success of your preaching."

It was as deliberate an insult as could have been elaborated. Mr. Sauls felt better when he had said that. The pleasure of telling Meg's husband what he thought of him was worth a good deal; and his words. .h.i.t.

Barnabas flushed hotly, and stood crus.h.i.+ng his fingers together.

"I'm sworn not to fight on my own quarrel," he said in a choked voice; and the reply cost him a hard struggle with the "old Adam". Meekness was not the preacher's natural characteristic.

"That was a most convenient oath!" said George. Was the man a coward? he wondered. "Do you go so far as turning the other cheek?"

"I'm not meaning to fight with ye; I told her I'd not do it; but," said the preacher, drawing his breath hard, "it 'ud take more nor a man to do _that_."

"Ah! I am glad you draw the line at _that_," said George. Again it was the p.r.o.noun that was more than he could stand. He raised his cane with a sudden swift movement.

"Come! you draw it at the 'other cheek,' eh?"

Barnabas sprang forward and caught the descending blow on the palm of his hand; his fingers closed on the cane. He jerked it out of his enemy's grasp, broke it across his knee, and flung it into the pool. G.o.d knew how fierce was the longing in him to send Mr. Sauls after it. He had forced his a.s.sailant backwards in the half-minute's struggle, and George himself had wondered for a second whether a plunge into the black water would be the end of it all.

"Ye can think me a coward if ye choose," said Barnabas. "Happen I'd be one if I broke an oath for your thinking. I'll not fight with ye, man."

George, who had felt the preacher's strength, eyed him thoughtfully.

Even he recognised that it was not fear that had flashed into those blue eyes a few moments ago.

"Well, you see," he remarked coolly, "men who won't fight usually _are_ cowards in this wicked world; and poor men who walk off with confiding young ladies, blest with rich papas, usually have an eye to the main chance; but I own I--I half believe you honest after all."

"I'd just as lief ye' didn't," said Barnabas shortly; "I'm not wishful for your good opinion."

And Mr. Sauls turned and went his way, a little breathless; for, if Barnabas hadn't fought, he'd done something rather like it; but George liked him a shade the better for that last unsaintly speech.

"I am afraid the preacher would have got the best of it, though I am not a weakling," he reflected. "He would have liked to put me on my back too. He didn't enjoy having to refuse that fight and play the peaceful _role_, in spite of 'not being wishful for my good opinion'. Is he, after all, more fanatic than hypocrite? Can he be----Hallo! where am I getting to?"

His reflections were cut short by his foot sinking ankle-deep in a bog.

Mr. Sauls turned to the right and walked a few paces further; then, becoming aware that some one was following him, was about to turn round, laughing at the foolish fancy that had attacked him for the second time, when a sudden shock brought bright flashes of light before his eyes; the earth seemed to spin round with him, the ground gave way. He was struck down by a blow from behind, and fell without a cry, lying still and white amongst the rank gra.s.s.

The next morning Barnabas and Margaret started for London.

Meg had packed her few possessions before day-break, and was standing by her window with her bundle beside her, when Mrs. Tremnell called her downstairs.

"There's Granny Dale wanting to see you, Margaret. Tom won't let her in the house; he's that angry with her for something Barnabas told him she'd said to you. But she won't go away. She just rampages outside in a way that is most annoying for a decent person to listen to."