But the living out was difficult.
Meg awoke at the farm. After the strange and wonderful journey by the side of the preacher; after the days of wandering over hill and dale, with exhausted body, but with mind so fixed on the vision beautiful, that she would not have been surprised at any moment had the clouds parted, and the second coming of the Lord blazed forth; after that curious "intoxication" of the soul that such natures as hers seem liable to,—she "came to herself" in the old house among those northern marshes, and tried, a little desperately, to meet the demands of a lot she had not been born to.
The loneliness was all on her side; for to the Thorpes the advent of Barnabas' wife was, perhaps, on the whole a not unwelcome piece of excitement.
In the winter the road across the marshes was all but impassable for months together. Often from November till February the little stronghold which the first Thorpe had wrested, and his successors kept, from the devils of desolation, was left to its own resources.
The family characteristics had probably been fostered by the circumstances of their life; they were sufficient to themselves.
There were Thorpes; there were—but some way behind them—their fellow country, or rather county-men; and then there was the rest of the world. Weak-knee'd outsiders, with bad constitutions and "queer ways" and indifferent morals. The preacher's wife was not even north country; she was, in fact, almost a "foreigner".
Poor little "outsider," thrust down in their midst to take root in a strange soil, if she could; or to shrivel and droop with starvation!—which would she do?
"The best thing for the lass 'ud be to pack her in cotton wool, and send her back to her own kind," Tom Thorpe had declared. But the boats were burnt, and the going back was impossible!
On the whole, of all her new relatives, Tom alarmed Meg most; but "Cousin Tremnell" was the member of the family she liked least.
The prim little woman, with plaintive voice and sharp curiosity, with uneasy pretensions to "gentility" and small affectations, seemed more hopelessly out of touch with her than were her husband's rougher kinsmen. Cousin Tremnell asked questions with the eagerness of a born gossip, who had been starving for dearth of any subject more personal than "crops" and "horses"; and Meg shrank from her inquiries as if they were so many small stabs.