Into the Highways and Hedges

by F. F. Montrésor

The two men went into the quiet old church after the meal was over, where George examined all that was to be seen with great patience and minuteness. If he had only guessed! If he had had the faintest inkling of what was happening in the garden not much more than a stone's throw away, neither brasses nor parson would have held him long.

There seems an especially unkind irony about the fate that makes us lose a chance by only a stone's throw.

Mrs. Russelthorpe took no interest in brasses; she had a horror of "relics" of any kind. She left Mr. Bagshotte and Mr. Sauls to their own devices; and, her brother being asleep, planted her chair on the lawn with its back to the churchyard, so that she faced the front gate, which stood hospitably open to the village street.

She had had a hard time of it lately; and hard times often, perhaps in the majority of cases, have a hardening rather than a softening effect. Mrs. Russelthorpe always felt that Providence made an unjustifiable mistake when she was visited with affliction.

Her morning's talk with her brother had left an unpleasant impression on her mind, and she reflected impatiently on the way in which, when one wishes to get rid of a haunting thought, everything combines to recall it. The reflection was called forth by a pale thin woman in a black dress who came along the village street, who held her head like a Deane, like Meg in fact, and walked like her too. Somehow, at the first moment, it did not strike Mrs. Russelthorpe that it was Meg.

The woman turned in at the gate; stood still when she saw Mrs. Russelthorpe, lifted her head, looking straight at her, and: "I have come to see my father," she said. "Is he better or worse?"

Mrs. Russelthorpe rose to her feet, her face a little pale; the antagonism that had never died, and scarcely slept, alert as ever, and a passionate determination bracing her soul. This woman should not see Charles! What! after dragging his name in the dust, and after linking it with that of a preaching vagabond, after setting at defiance all decency and obedience, she would "go to her father"! And he, he would be weak enough to forgive her. Illness had unmanned him; though men were always weaker than women, especially where Meg was concerned.

"My brother is better," she said slowly. "You have lost the right to call him father. You cannot go to him. He will not see you."

Meg shook her head with a faint smile, and walked on up the path to the front door. Her old fear of 'Aunt Russelthorpe' was dead. She recognised with a momentary surprise that she had lived past all that.

Mrs. Russelthorpe made a quick step forward and caught her by the arm. She too knew instinctively that she could not coerce or overawe this sad-eyed woman, as she had often coerced the girl long ago; but she could still win the day, and she would.