As for Meg, she never hesitated at all. For the last month she had been beset by doubts and uncertainties; had been wearying herself in trying to discover an end by which she might unwind the very tangled skein of her life, growing a little morbid the while in her endeavours, and more perplexed day by day. Now her doubts were at an end; her heart spoke a decided, undeniable must. If her father was ill, she would go to him. All the preachers in the world should not prevent her.
Meg dipped her face in cold water, and poured out a tumblerful and drank. Her throat ached with the dull ache that means anxiety and unshed tears. She could not cry, and there was no time to, but her eyes felt hot.
"Your father seems to be seriously ill. If I were in your place I should come." The words, in Mr. Sauls' thick upright handwriting, kept swimming before her.
Should she ask Tom to help her? He was angry with her just now; but, somehow, that silly, vulgar misunderstanding seemed to fade into nothing, and she knew instinctively that Tom was to be depended on in an emergency.
Barnabas might listen to reason from him. He was fonder of his brother than of any one in the world, except—(and a sudden hot blush rose to Meg's cheek)—except herself. No! she wouldn't ask Tom. If she chose to disobey Barnabas, that was between him and her, and she would tell him. She owed him that, at least.
The preacher's letter was in her pocket. She tore the envelope open and wrote inside it in pencil: "I am going to Lupcombe to see my father. I shall put Molly in the cart and drive myself to N——town. I know that you told me not to, and that you will all be very angry with me. I will come back to-night, I promise." Meg's pencil stood still for a moment; then she underlined the promise. She had room only to think of her father now, but she knew that she should dread returning. She would bind the coward in her to come back.
"And then you can say anything you like, and be angry all the rest of my life," she wrote. It sounded a little desperate, but there was not time to consider overmuch; besides, she never made excuses.
She folded the scrap of paper, and ran up to the attic her husband slept in, and put her note on a chair.
His knapsack lay on the floor; mechanically she picked it up and hung it on the nail; it brought back to her mind their strange honeymoon—the extraordinary experiences of her first months with him.
Barnabas had been very good to her then, and, indeed, always till to-day; and Meg, at the bottom of her heart, understood a little what to-day's sudden gust of passion meant.