She stood outside again in the snow. The doctor was talking eagerly.
"I am convinced that your husband is keeping something back," he said. "He knows more than he will say. I hope you have preached a sermon to-day to good purpose. He won't listen to mine."
"I told him he was right," said Meg; and the doctor swore.
"Then, let me tell you, you've encouraged him in a most immoral course," he said, "and in one that leads straight to the gallows! It's no time for picking one's words—and—well, here's the truth. You had a chance of saving him, if any one had,—which I doubt, for a more pig-headed saint I've never come across—you had the only chance. You might at least have tried; and you've lost it!"
In his heart he was saying angrily, what did she suppose she had been smuggled in for—to talk sentiment? If Thorpe had married some lusty, rosy-cheeked barmaid, she'd have been of more good. She would have cried heartily and scolded; his high-flown nonsense wouldn't have had a hearing; it might have been swamped in her tears and in his natural instinct. Mrs. Thorpe's eyes were dry. Pshaw! she was only half a woman! He hadn't an exalted opinion of the other sex anyhow; but, at least, he preferred them "womanly". Little fool! if she couldn't cry on occasion, what was she capable of? He couldn't quite say that aloud, though. Meg was no barmaid, and not an easy person to be rude to.
"I am very grateful to you for letting me in," she said. "I think my husband is right, so what else could I say? But, if I had thought him wrong, I could have made no difference, practically—only," said Meg softly, "it would have been rather harder for him."
"Rather harder! he'll find being choked out of life with a rope rather harder; but you know your own affairs best, I suppose," said the doctor. "Good-night, ma'am;" and he turned away, and Meg walked on alone.
"He'll find being choked out of life rather harder!" Meg felt as if Doctor Merrill had roughly shaken her awake. When she had been with Barnabas his unwonted appeal for spiritual sympathy, his faith in the undying quality of their love, his belief in the impossibility of an eternal parting had somehow hidden from her the physical horror of such a death. The doctor had brought it before her, had made her see the rope and the coffin, and the actual death struggle. She saw it so vividly, poor woman, with that over-vivid imagination that had always been her bane, that, as she walked, she held out her hands instinctively.
"Don't, don't!" she cried. "He has been hurt enough. I can't bear him to be hurt any more!" She did not know that she had spoken aloud, till some one passing put a hand on her arm.
"Mrs. Thorpe! may I see you home? You are ill, or very unhappy."