Into the Highways and Hedges Part 55

"He can do nothing, and it's a shame to make him anxious too," she reflected. "Why should I? I wish Barnabas were here!"

She had missed his constant care and protection before; but to-night she jumped up restlessly, unable to sit still, and walked up and down the room, filled with horrible visions of the scene in the yard when the men the preacher had "riled" had pulled him down among them.

Barnabas had made her promise that she wouldn't think "overmuch" of that; and she tried to put the thought away again.

"Ye must forget it! I'm sorry ye were told," he had said. "I'd not have your thoughts o' me hurt you, my la.s.s. Will 'ee be a bit glad to have me to do for ye again, eh?"

Would she? All at once Meg fell on her knees with the rush of a new longing for him sweeping over her with unbearable strength.

"Barnabas, it's you I want--at last--I do want you!" she cried aloud.

"Not what you do, but you yourself! Oh, it does hurt one to want like this! I want your arms round me, and your voice quite close to me. I want you so!"

She rose, frightened at the strength of the feeling that had, as it were, laid hands on her, and went to bed quickly in the dark.

It had come at last, the love that had been so long in coming! But it was no sweet boy Cupid wreathed in spring flowers, but rather an armed warrior who took at last what most maids give blithely in the natural time for courting. Was Nature, who never forgives nor forgets an insult, indemnifying herself for the very unnatural way in which Meg and the preacher had put their "earthly affections" out of the reckoning when they married? Ah, well, she had her revenge, as she always has. "How it hurts one!" Meg cried again. But Barnabas had known what _that_ ache meant for nigh two years.

Was it too late now? No; G.o.d could not be so cruel. Barnabas would call that blasphemy. He never said, "G.o.d is cruel," whatever happened.

Whatever happened? but why was she so terrified to-night? He would be set free, and nothing would happen. She would go to sleep and forget.

She did sleep, after a time, and dreamed of a stake with Barnabas tied to it, like an early "Christian martyr" in Foxe's Book, which she had studied when a child in Uncle Russelthorpe's library.

George Sauls was in the guise of an executioner, and kept heaping live coals on the preacher's head with one hand, while he held her back with the other, saying: "Apparently you don't think my swearing amounts to much, Mrs. Thorpe; but I hope you believe in _that_".

The horror she felt woke her (one has no sense of humour in a dream).

She had slept only five minutes, though it had seemed hours. She could not bear to shut her eyes, and encounter that nightmare again. She lighted her candle, and, sitting up in bed, went on with her modelling, till daylight, which happily costs nothing, began to lighten the room.

Then she opened her window and looked out. Traffic was already stirring in the street below, she could see dimly the outline of the gaol through the London mist. The air was raw, but the horror that had possessed her fled with the darkness. With the breaking of the day Meg knew that she had entered into a new kingdom.

CHAPTER VII.

"See Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly, "It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: 'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place, Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."

--_Browning._

Barnabas Thorpe had been blessed all his life with a physique that was strong enough to bear the exactions of his spirit. In this respect he had been remarkably fortunate. But, after all, his body was made of flesh and blood; and flesh and blood give way at last.

It was a great source of grief to him that he could no longer heal as he had once healed; that strange power seemed to have, in a large measure, left him.

"May be it's because I am not fit to ha' it," he said sadly. "One who hates his brother whom he has seen deserves no power to bring down healing from the G.o.d he has not seen."

The surgeon, who was watching Barnabas dress a wound that had been inflicted by Bill's poker, laughed impatiently.

"That's nonsense, you know," he remarked; but he no longer said, "That's cant".

The preacher's surgery was gentler than the doctor's, which was certainly rough. The man's eye was badly damaged, and the lightest touch caused agony; he turned over on his face with a groan when Barnabas had finished.

"I used to be able to lighten pain more," said Barnabas. "I've often known that, when I've put my hand on one suffering like that, the torment has been stilled for a bit and he's fallen asleep. But I can't do it now!"

"Of course you can't," said the doctor. "You had a sort of mesmeric faculty that you believed miraculous; but your own nervous energy has been pretty well kicked out of you now, and you are ill and weak; and, naturally, you can't play those tricks which, let me tell you, are best left alone at any time. The failure has nothing whatever to do with your morals, it has to do with your body. If you had been the greatest rogue unhung, so long as your iniquities hadn't touched your health, you'd still have possessed that faculty. There was no need to pray about it; or, if you'd prayed to the devil, it would have come to the same thing; except, of course, that people prefer the other arrangement--it's the pleasanter myth of the two."

Barnabas frowned, looking straight in front of him from under his fair eyebrows.

Scepticism was utterly impossible to him; the doctor's remarks could not touch the simplicity of his faith; he had rejoiced in his healing power, but if it had been clearly demonstrated to him a thousand times that his belief in it was a fallacy, the demonstrator would have left him practically much where he had been before.

"The same G.o.d as makes souls makes the bodies to 'em, I suppose," he said. "I can't see as it makes the least bit o' difference which the power comes through, sir. It's only 'through' arter all. I fancied it went straight fro' my soul to the sick man's; but you are more larned, and, happen, you know better; happen, as you say, it went fro' my body--it's no matter, is it, so long as it went? It wasn't fro' the devil, I know, because it was good and healed; I never heard as he did that; he destroys both soul and body. I've never prayed to _him_," said the preacher, giving the doctor's words a literal interpretation that half amused, half irritated his companion; "but you're wrong when you say it 'ud ha' come to the same thing."

"Oh, you think that the supernatural supply would have dried up, eh?"

said Dr. Merrill. The preacher's reply took him by surprise.

"No; I'd not say that for sartain," he said, after a moment's reflection. "If ye mean the power--G.o.d doan't stop our breath when we use it to deny and blaspheme Him. If He did, I'd ha' been dead in my boyhood, and ye'd not ha' it now. Happen the power would ha' come just th' same (though I ain't sure about it), like the breath; but it 'ud ha'

made a difference. Ha' ye never seen a man using G.o.d's gifts for th'

devil's service? I have. Ay, an' so have ye, an' ye know too, that he'd _better_ be dead than do it! As for supernatural, I doan't ever understan' what people mean by that. If it means fro' above--why, everything is that; I can't see the thing as isn't--unless it's fro'

below," said the preacher, still frowning. "Happen ye can explain it to me."

The doctor shook his head.

"No," he said, "you're right. There's nothing especially supernatural in your creed, Thorpe; because, as you say, it's _all_ that; nor in mine, because it's none of it; so we'll leave the term to the great majority, who are neither fish, fowl, nor good red herring. Anyhow, you've got a marvellous knack with your fingers, whether it comes from heaven or h.e.l.l, and I suppose you'll swear it must be one or t'other! It's pretty to see how quickly you bandage. It's not every doctor who would let you try your hand like this," said the surgeon, who was rather proud of his liberality. "But I like to see uncommon talent, even in a quack. It's a pity it's mixed with superst.i.tion. Now look here; Hopping Jack's sight is gone, and no amount of praying can possibly bring it back to this eye, as I can prove to you in a moment."

The unfortunate Jack swore under his breath, when the surgeon turned his face to the light again.

"Let him alone, sir," said the preacher quickly. "There's no need to touch him again. Oh, ay, I've no sort o' doubt ye know a deal more nor I do; if ye put your power down to th' same source, happen ye'd be a bit tenderer in your way o' using it; ye say it 'ud come to the same, but some o' your patients 'ud feel a difference."

The doctor shrugged his shoulders; if any one but Barnabas Thorpe had commented on his want of feeling, and infliction of pain not always necessary, he would have snubbed him ruthlessly; but, with the evidence before him of a disregard to personal injury, that had wrung genuine admiration from him, he couldn't accuse the preacher of undue and effeminate softness.

He was not naturally cruel; but a man must be upheld by an uncommonly high aim if he can work constantly among brutal and debased natures without either giving way to despair or hardening his heart.

There was a story current in the prison about his having got a man off hanging on condition of his being allowed to try a new operation on him.

He was no philanthropist, but he was fond of his profession and a great experimenter; there was not a rogue in Newgate but had a wholesome awe of the little red-haired surgeon.

Hopping Jack was actually grateful to Barnabas.

"It's a case of 'when the devil was ill,'" Dr. Merrill said. "He won't listen to you when he can do without your bandaging, Thorpe! He'll be able to mimic you to the life by the time he's up again--drawl and all."

"But that won't drive me to hold my tongue," said Barnabas smiling.

And, as it happened, the doctor was wrong. Hopping Jack refrained from caricaturing the preacher, even when he got better.

"It ain't that I couldn't!" he said regretfully to Barnabas. "I _could_ do you now as you wouldn't know which was yourself! you're easy to take off; and I could twist 'em all round to listen to me--every man Jack of 'em; but I won't."

"Ye'd be playing a scurvy trick," said Barnabas; "an' in Satan's service. He's a bad paymaster."

Jack winked with the one eye left.

"Gammon! It ain't for that that I don't do it," he said. "Your Master lets you go to gaol too, don't He? you ain't a bit better off for Him.