Into the Highways and Hedges Part 47

"Yes," she said; "it shall be the same with me--as if I were yourself."

She spoke solemnly, though little guessing all that that promise would mean.

"And after all," she added more lightly, for, indeed, this idea was too startling to realise, "after all, Mr. Sauls is, probably, perfectly well and comfortable. I cannot remember his address, but my sister may know it. I will ask her for it, and send it down to you. Ah, she is waving her hand to me at the window. Father must be awake."

"I must e'en let ye go, I suppose," said Barnabas; "for, an' I hold ye, your soul 'ull slip through my fingers, an' go an' watch by him all the same. G.o.d be with ye, my dear!"

He released her unwillingly, and Margaret ran back to her father. Mr.

Deane was wide awake and slightly flushed.

"Meg! Meg! I dreamed I had lost you, that you had leaped over a precipice," he cried.

He was excited, and not quite himself. He recognised her on her return to his room; but, as the day wore on, he became more feverish, and in the evening he was delirious.

All through the night he talked eagerly to his dead wife, evidently believing her to be present; but in the small hours the fever left him, and, in the collapse that followed it, he died. He died with Meg's hand clasped in his, with his head on his sister's shoulder; but unconscious of the presence of either of the women, each of whom had, in her way, loved him better than all else in the world.

Laura stood at the foot of the bed during the last terrible hour, with her arm round Kate, who had come just in time. Kate kept turning her beautiful head away,--she could hardly bear to see this death struggle.

Margaret's eyes never moved from her father's face. When Mr. Deane's head fell forward on his breast, the last sobbing breath drawn, the awful involuntary fight for life over, Meg's expression relaxed, as if she, too, were relieved.

"It is over!" she said.

Only when some one tried to unclasp the living hand from his she fell on her knees with a smothered cry--after all, she had not gone with him.

Laura led Kate away, crying bitterly; if Mr. Deane had been the best and most dependable father on earth, instead of merely the most charmingly affectionate when he happened to be at home, they would not have loved him more, possibly they would have loved him less; for a woman's love will fill up the measure wherein a man falls short of what he might have been.

Mrs. Russelthorpe closed his eyes--eyes that had looked their last on a world which had generally treated him very well; then went to her room with lips pressed closely together.

Meg knelt on till the grey dawn crept in, and some one entering disturbed her.

"You can do no more for him now. Come away; indeed, Meg, you _must_ come," said Laura.

Laura looked pale, and even a little nervous. She dreaded Meg's grief, remembering how "hard" the little sister, whom they had rather neglected, had always taken everything.

But this Meg was not the "little sister" of old; or rather, perhaps, her ident.i.ty was hidden under a new garb.

She rose from her knees dry-eyed and composed.

"I am going back to my husband," she said. "Father does not want me now, as you say. Barnabas has been very good. He has waited all these days. I should like to stay till after the funeral, but----"

"Come home with me!" said Laura.

She put her hand on her sister's arm and grasped her tightly.

"Don't disappear, Meg! I don't want to lose you; you--you are so like _him_," she whispered, with a glance at the bed, where that quiet figure lay in the deep peace that neither grief nor love should ever move again.

"I promised Barnabas that I would not stay," said Margaret; but a quiver pa.s.sed over her face. Laura drew her gently out of the room and shut the door.

"I could not tell you in there," she said, with the sentiment that we all have against talking of mundane matters in the chamber of death, "but I have a message for you from your husband. I went down to give him the address you asked me for yesterday, because I wished to speak to him, to see for myself what sort of a man he is. While I was speaking to him he"--Laura hesitated a second--"he was summoned away. He bid me tell you that he may be absent several days, but that you were not to 'fash'

about him, but just bide quiet; if he were not here when the end came, I told him I would take you back with me. He said you would know that he would come for you so soon as ever he could."

"Yes, I know," said Meg simply. "What was the call?"

"He said he was called to a place where he could not have you by him."

Laura coloured, wondering what the next question would be; but Meg was apparently satisfied.

The preacher's movements were apt to be erratic, and his decisions were often arbitrary. The "call" might probably be to some abode of vice and misery into which he shrank from taking her.

"Are you sure you want me, Laura?"

"Quite sure," said Laura emphatically.

She put her arm round her sister while she spoke, and the two left the house together. Barnabas Thorpe had been arrested on Mrs. Russelthorpe's doorstep before Laura's eyes; but there was, she a.s.sured herself, no need to tell Meg that, just now.

If he were innocent he would be set free again, and would come to claim his wife quite soon enough; if he were guilty--but no! oddly enough, Laura found it simply impossible to believe him guilty. The big gaunt man with the deeply furrowed face and the eager eyes, that had the look of the enthusiast and potential martyr in them, had impressed her curiously. Laura had felt no name too bad for the canting rascal who had stolen Margaret; but the reality and intense personality of the preacher had at least momentarily pierced through her prejudice.

Barnabas Thorpe was no hypocrite; her womanly instinct spoke for him, though her pride and reason were against him. The last-named qualities woke up only when the spell of his presence was removed.

"I am glad he has gone; after all, you belong to us, Meg," she said.

CHAPTER III.

While Mr. Deane's life was ebbing slowly away in Bryanston Square, George Sauls was making a good fight for his at the farm.

Tom Thorpe had found him on the afternoon of the preacher's departure, the sun s.h.i.+ning down pitilessly on the upturned face, the arms spread wide.

Lifting him up, Tom found the wound at the back of the head, made with a bill-hook or hatchet. Whoever had done that, had also turned his victim over to rifle the pockets; for a man hit from behind would naturally fall on his face, and, moreover, the pockets were empty.

"Dead as a door nail!" said Tom. He had remarkably good nerve, but this was a ghastly discovery to come on, on a fine summer's day.

Mr. Sauls was wet with dew; he must have lain there all night. A spider had spun a thread across his chest; it glittered with diamond drops, more numerous and less costly than those that had been stolen. Tom, in lifting him, disturbed also a small brown bird, that had been debating whether this gentleman was really dead--so dead that she might venture to pick off that bit of white cotton hanging from the lining of his pocket, and use it for her household purposes. She had been hopping gradually nearer, but had had her suspicion that, for all his stillness, he was not quite harmless yet; her instinct was keener than Tom's.

Mr. Sauls suddenly opened his eyes and looked at Tom.

"Not at all!" he said. "I'm not dead yet." And then he relapsed into unconsciousness; and, for once in his life, Tom was startled.

"I don't say but what it's queer to ha' one's foot knock up agin a murdered man when one's mind's runnin' on naught but crops," he explained afterwards; "but I ain't a maid wi' nerves; I didn't mind that. It wur his eyes openin' and fixin' me, just as I wur thinkin'

there'd ha' to be an inquest, as did gi'e me a bit of a turn. Besides, he'd no business to come to life; he had ought to ha' been killed wi' a mark that deep at the bottom o' his skull."

The doctor, when at last they got one, was of the same opinion; the wound would have killed most men, he said; and why Mr. Sauls didn't die, remained a mystery, except, of course, that he was treated with exceptional skill.

George clung to life with that tenacity which he showed in everything.

He was dangerously ill for a fortnight; then began to recover, to the surprise of every one, except his mother, who had been quite hopeful all along, and had replied cheerfully to an attempt to warn her of the probable end.

"Danger? My dear sir, it will be dangerous for the man who tried to murder George! but, please G.o.d, my son will live to see that villain hang."