The Story of Meg

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. MY BEST PUPIL A TALE. Crown Svo.. 10s. 6d. " Unquestionably worth reading. Some scenes are described with great power." — Athenæum. " A singularly original and clever story." — Vanity Fair. " There is something impressive about this slight story, which shows a considerable power of drawing character, and a very unusual com mand of pathos." — Pall Mall Gazette. EBMIN-TON & CO., New Bond Street, W. THE STORY OF MEG. BY M. A. CURTOIS. Author of " My Best Pupil" .... Perhaps a young blooming girl, not knowing where to tarn for refuge .... understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath ; yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness. JTtoo Volumes. VOL II. iionoon: K K M 1 N G T 0 N AND CO., New Bond Street, W. 18S*. [A 1 1 Rights Keserved.]

Chapter I

" Miss Harman ! " He spoke rapidly, and in a trembling voice, putting out his hand as if to stop her from escape. Meg let his hand rest without resist ance on her arm, and looked up with a strange trembling glance into his face. " Oh, Mr. Arlathnot." No more — indeed after those first words they had neither of them strength to speak. They stood still — his hand still rested on her arm, and the crowd moved and pushed them as it passed. " Let us come somewhere else," said Arlathnot, " where we can be more quiet than this." And then — as if he feared she might give some meaning he had not intended to his words — " You may trust me. ... I have no wish to compel you — I will not tell your VOL. II. B friends of you unless you like — only I entreat you to give me leave to speak with you." Meg gave no reply in words, but as he dropped his slight touch upon her arm, she took his arm between both her hands.

In that moment of excitement she was scarcely conscious what she did, but he felt at once the nervous energy of her small fingers grasp as a swimmer knows the drowning clutch that seeks its last hope in him. Guiding her as best he could whilst she still held his arm, he forced his way through the crowd till they reached a bench against the wall. On this she dropped as if she had reached the last exhaustion of fatigue, whilst he stood by her side. " This is very cold for you," he said. " Shall we not try to find some warmer place? Or" — as he observed her condition " perhaps you are almost too tired to move." " If you would like to go and see," said Meg, " I will wait till you come back." Another man might have suspected her, or at least have been afraid to take her at her word. Arlathnot had too much chivalry for that.

Yet his heart smote him with sharp misgivings as, with a promise to return in a minute, he turned away. Happily he had not far to go. At that station, as at many others, he had acquaintances, and before long he met with a friendly porter, who promised to guide him to such a place as he required. The first bench he passed as he retraced his steps was entirely empty, and a sudden terror held his breath, but looking on towards the next he saw her there in the same drooping attitude as before. Meg had been scarcely conscious of thought whilst those few moments passed ; all seemed like a dream, and this strange interview that her younger life had sought so much was only part of that. " This man will show us a better place," said Arlathnot cheerfully, as he came once more to her. " But we shall have to cross the bridge, he says."

Then, as she rose wearily and obediently, he added with tenderness — " Take my arm whenever you are tired." He would have insisted on giving it to her at once, but an instinct in him would not allow him to do anything that might make her seem dragged like a captive at his side. The same instinct made him walk on a little in front with the porter, hearing her light footsteps behind him all the way up and down the bridge. To Meg those long, weary steps seemed like the difficult climbing we get through in a dream, but she kept her eyes on the tall figure she followed through the gloom. The lights of the town, spread out far beneath them, were passed after a while, the descend ing steps were passed, and she walked now on the platform by his side. The porter led them some way, then down a passage, and then into a little room where a fire was burning.

There were bare boards, a few wooden chairs, a table, and, opposite the fire, a bench that had a back. She sat down on that. Arlathnot went to the door, to speak to the man, probably to pay him and to ask him to call him in an -hour, as soon as his train came in. Then he came back and sat down on the other end of the bench. The door was shut, and they were alone. " Will you not take off your hat ? It is so wet," he said. She obeyed mechanically, and the firelight shone on the damp curling hair that clung round her forehead, making her look much younger now. So he seemed to think, for he gazed at her with some surprise, and then turned away his head with a heavy sigh. Still, for a while he would not speak : he took off his hat and laid it on the ground, he rested an elbow on the arm of the bench, and laid his face upon his hand.

Meg was only vaguely conscious of the narrow, worn features and thin grey hair on which the firelight shone. She knew that, put it off as he might, the moment of explanation must be close at hand, and in terror of that she dared not brave her companion's glance. Only, at last, some nervous fascination made her turn her face to him, and she saw at once that his eyes were fixed on her. " You wicked child," he said, " where have you been hiding all this while, whilst we have been at so much pains for you ? " Arlathnot had a peculiar power and gentle ness in his glance, as I have said — the varying colours of his eyes united in a dark soft light not easily described. But the tone in which he spoke had no searching reproof to give — it was only playful and tender ; Meg had not known till that moment how hard to bear even tenderness can be.

She hid her face within her hands. "Oh, don't cry, pray don't cry," he said, as he saw her shoulders shaken by her sobs. And in some impatient distress he got up and walked up and down the room. Restrain ing that nervous movement he sat down once more by her. " Do comfort yourself," he said, as gently as he could, " and think only if I can be of any help to you." He spoke so gently that she dared to put down her hands at last. " It is only — only — that you are so kind to me," she said. "And is it so strange," he said smiling," " for anyone to be kind to you ? " Meg gave no answer, only looked with entreating eyes at him. He bent towards her as he spoke. " Meg — if you will let me call you so — will you not tell me some way in which to help you now ?" Still silence. Perhaps it came into his mind that this strange dreamlike interview must soon be drawing to a close, and that he must not waste the time, for his tone was sterner when he spoke.

" Meg," he said, " when I used to see you in old times you were a little child in your father's home, a little curly-haired child whom I used to take upon my knee. Do you think it is pleasant to me to see you now again after all these years have passed, and to see you so alone and unprotected, still almost a child in years, but with that hard, care-worn look of a woman on your face, that sad wasted look that ought never to belong to such years as yours ? There must be something that is not right in this. You are on a wrong path ; you have taken your life into your own hands before you had years or wisdom with which to guide yourself. You have done wrong, and you have too much pride even to own it now." There was silence, and then Meg raised her face and spoke passionately — " I should never have left them if they had only been kind to me.'' " Had you no friends, no relations, no one to advise you or to help, that you must rush out by yourself into the world ?

If you were unhappy, as you say, could you not have waited and asked advice at least ? " " I did mean, to ; indeed, I did," cried Meg. " I had been meaning to through all the years. I should never have gone from home if it had not been " — And here she stopped, and he could only see her drooping eyes and the deep burning flush upon her face. " For you." " For me ? " he echoed in amazement. "I can't tell it all to you," cried Meg. " You couldn't care to hear it all from me. But I had been thinking of you through all the years. I had heard my father say, when he was dying, that he was sure you would be kind to me. And I thought if I could only see . . . you would tell me . . . what I ought to do. . . . And then you came at last, and you said you did not remember, and you did not seem as if you would give any help to me " — Mr. Arlathnot was silent, contracting his brows, and clenching the hand that rested against his cheek, whilst his eyes assumed the vacant look of one who is lost in some thought or surprise.

His brow was still knitted as with pain, and his voice was harsh and even grating when he spoke. " Do you think, then, that there can be no trouble in all the world but yours ? " After a while — " On that day you saw me I had heard that my son was dead." Silence. " Dead ! " faltered Meg. " Oh, I am so sorry ; I never knew of that. What was I thinking of that day? And your son too ! It was I who ought to have thought for you." Arlathnot had turned very pale with the effort his last words had cost, but through that faintness he could hear the tones of her voice, and see the lifted blue eyes and the tears standing upon her cheeks. That roused him, and with an effort he recovered himself enough to speak. " I was half-mad that day, I think," he said in a low voice. " I had been anxious for so long, and I knew then that I ought not to hope again.

I daresay I was selfish then. We all get so blinded with our troubles — when they are hard for us to bear." His eyes, though tearless, looked almost blinded now. " Oh, no, no," whispered Meg, "it was I who was bad, and selfish, and wicked — as I always am. And I used to hear about your son." In a lower whisper that scarcely seemed to stir the air — " Are you alone, then?" " Yes, quite alone." She gave no answer, but took his hand and pressed it. Arlathnot felt the timid touch of her small soft palms, and it almost broke down his composure into tears. But he restrained himself. The moment's agitation was good for him, for it disturbed the dreary blankness of feeling that now after so many months was beginning to steal over him again. He looked earnestly at her. The gleam of the flames was on her face, on the blue eyes, so full of wonder and sadness in their thoughts for him, on the parted lips, and on the bright curling hair, almost dried now, that would not be smooth upon her head.

His own dream for her could not but be present to his mind, but it came less distinctly than before — here by her side he re cognised that, childish as her careworn face still looked, she was a living human being with a will and character of her own, and that no idea of his could dispose of her life for her. And that thought brought back at once to his mind the terror he had felt before. The time was not long that he had in which to talk to her. " Come, I will not speak of myself," he said with a faint smile, " I am so much older that things do not signify for me. And after all you and I are wrong, for we are not alone — never alone — we must always remem ber that. And now there is one thing I have to say to you." He paused here, and touched her shoulder gently with the hand he laid on it.

" Shall I tell you, Meg, what I think you ought to do ? " "Yes," she whispered, as she turned to look at him. " You ought to go back to your uncle's house." There was silence. " You should go back to him, you should tell him you are grateful for all the care he has spent on you, that you are sorry for the trouble you have given him, and for this last greatest trouble most of all. And then, if he will allow you, you should make up your mind that you will live with him again." He waited a little to see what effect on her his words might have. He felt her shoulder tremble a little beneath his touch, but her eyes were downcast now, and he could not see the resisting passion that surged up into them, or hear the wild " I will not," that rose almost to her lips. She raised her face to say those words to him, but, as she met his glance, her courage failed.

Perhaps it would have been well if she had spoken, he had no means of knowing all that passed within her mind, and though he saw trouble and even resistance in her eyes, he felt his influence too. Releasing her shoulder he bent his head to look at her. " You do not like this, Meg," he said. But Meg was silent. " You are a very obstinate child," he said, with a smile that rose into his eyes. " Well, try and think if you can tell me more about yourself, and then I shall have more power to judge for you. It seems impertinent in me, doesn't it? to ask about your affairs, but I should like so much to help you." But Meg was silent, sitting straight up now, with her small hands folded, and her eyes looking before her, and fixed and thoughtful as they looked. Then, with the same strange composure, she turned to him — "Mr. Arlathnot," she said, "before I tell you all that I can about myself, there are two things I should like to say to you."

" Say them." " I want to say first," she said, meeting his earnest glance with eyes as earnest as his own " that though I should not have left my uncle's house, in the way I did, no one will ever know all that could be said for me. I should not have been ungrateful if only one of them had been kind to me." The deep, sad earnestness of her tone sank into Arlathnot's ears and heart ; he often heard the echoes of those words in the after years. " And there is one other thing: I wish to say," she said, still sitting straight, with folded hands, and speaking in the same strange, quiet manner, though her cheeks grew paler as she spoke ; " I have heard — I believe it is true — that they say bad things sometimes of girls who run away from home. I want you to believe that there is nothing bad in me.

I think there never could be in all my life. If it were not so, if I felt there was anything wrong in me to tell you now — I — I — I should not be sitting at your side, I I should be lying at your feet." The choked, strangled passion of the last words made them scarcely to be heard. Arlathnot heard with wonder, aud with pain, and yet with a feeling that his worst dread had found relief now. He applied himself to soothing and consoling her. Then, when he saw that she was quiet again — " Will you tell me something now ? " he said. "I cannot tell you all," she answered, meeting his eyes, and scarcely knowing what she meant by the words as she said them. " Tell me all you can." So, brokenly, as the words came to her, she told her story, whilst the firelight shone upon them both, and he listened and waited as she spoke or was silent, with his eyes always fixed on her, but always without a word.

Perhaps it was a greater comfort to speak than she had known ; she soon found herself telling more than she had ever thought to do. Slowly the scenes came back to her, the hot morning on which she had walked by the river with the cathedral on the hill beyond, the old lady, and Dick, and the schoolboy, the little town, with the evening shadows falling across it, and the poplars in the streets. And then, more brokenly, and more vaguely, she told of work, loneliness, cold, wasting money, want of sympathy and strength, and want of hope, the dreary details that made up her living now. She seemed to be speaking in a dream, her lips trembled sometimes so that she could hardly move them, yet she went on speaking still. And it comforted her. Was it strange, then, or was it natural that, telling so much, she should yet leave so much unrevealed ?

Of the young artists she scarcely spoke, of Holbis, and the decision she had promised to make that very night, she said no word at all. It seemed to her that she could not; her lips refused even to utter the words when she tried to form them. Was this strange conceal ment caused by shame, or modesty, or that revulsion against speaking of what touches us most nearly, or the unknown desire lurk ing beneath all these things to have still in her own hands the power of deciding as she would ? She did not know, she knew only that of these things she was silent. Arlathnot, sitting always in his old atti tude, with his face against his hand, and keeping on her the bright vivid glance, that VOL. II. had no veiling blindness to obscure it now, knew at once, by the aid of experience of years, that she was keeping something hid from him.

That experience had made him acquainted with many sad stories that he had tried to help ; he had no difficulty in imagining reasons for reserve. And these reasons made him all the more ready to suppose that she would be ready to be saved by him. It is in this way that ex perience becomes more misleading than igno rance sometimes. After all, in many respects, he heard enough — the sad story of desperate work, and want, and need, wilfully caused, deserved, perhaps, as it was, went to his very heart as he heard — over and over again he longed to end it by opening out all his heart to her, and taking her to that and to his home at once. Only he could not — his promise to his friend was in his ears ; and, besides, he was on his way to an acquaintance, an old and lonely bachelor, who was ill ; he could not put off his visit, or take her with him now.

Nor could he make use of his power over her by threatening to compel her to return ; it was not in his nature to do that. The wish must come from herself, and he could help her then. Undoubtedly the finer weapon can do the nobler work, yet, there are occasions in which rough tools can, perhaps, accomplish more. The gift of persuasion means a great deal, but the strength of force, that stands for something, too. Only such strength of compulsion, whether physical or spiritual, was not in Arlathnot's nature to make use of. And he had no fear at all that he might not prevail at last. When she had ended he spoke long and gently to her, spoke of a woman's duty of patience and submission, of the hard, unprotected life from which she might now return, of the glory of owning a fault and making reparation for it at last.

And some thing he spoke, too, of the higher Love from which we wilfully remove ourselves when we cast human ties away. Meg listened with meek and downcast eyes, and he thought that he had triumphed. The flames, slowly rising now, into which he often looked at intervals between his words, seemed to tell him many things of possible danger and suffering lying in wait for her, but of the danger and suffering that may attend a marriage proposal they said no word at all. And he had no fear that he should fail. He had finished some very earnest words, to which she had listened with clasped hands and drooping head, when the door was half opened, and the porter once more appeared. Then he got up and went to speak to him. Meg sat still with her hands folded in her lap, and her eyes looking before her as if she were slowly turning into stone.

All the while that he had been speaking to her she had been sensible of a feeling of inward conflict that she could scarcely even under stand. Now for this moment she was wil ling to rest ; the sense of exhaustion, pain, and aching limbs upon her, the firelight in front, and his help and kindness near — a drowsy moment like that an opiate gives, she was willing to rest in it for a while. He came back and stood by her. " My train will be up in a minute," he said, " I must soon be going now." " Oh, must you go ? " she cried, starting as one waking from a dream. At that instant he could only see, and she could only feel, her clinging need for him. " I am afraid I must. It is better for you, for I want you to think seriously over all that I have said. You will think of it ? " " Yes, yes, indeed."

She looked up at him with clinging eyes, and with a face that was full of dread, like that of a child who fears that it will be left alone. He stood by her. The last moment had come. Now, if ever, was the time to gain some definite promise from her. " I shall be coming back this way to morrow," he said, " and I will hope to see you then. You will give me your ad dress ? " She took the pocket-book and pencil he held out to her and wrote it down at once. He had opened the book at random, and afterwards there dwelt in her mind the words above upon the page, " Edward Evans — poor lost soul — I must give what help I can." " And now I must go," he said, taking it from her, and he moved towards the door. At the threshold he paused, and held out his. hand. She came hastily up to him, and, taking it, pressed it with a passionate action against her face.

" Oh, you are so good," she cried, with the tears streaming from her eyes ; " I will try never to trouble you again." In his surprise he let her hold it so for a moment, and then released it gently, with the nervous action of a man who dreads a scene, smiled at her, bent his head, and went on into the crowd. There was a great crowd without. She struggled with that for a moment to catch sight of his face again, then, whilst she pressed forwards, heard the whistle of the engine, and the train went on. For one instant she started convulsively, then stood still, with her hands clasped tightly on her breast, not seeing any of the people who looked at her, moaning once low to herself, as if it were her guardian angel who had gone. What happened next she never knew. In some blind, unconscious manner she found her way back to the room where she had been, and threw herself upon her knees.

" Oh, I have been all wrong," she cried, almost aloud. " I must not trouble them >! again. Slowly the time passed, hours passed even, and she waited still upon her knees, her face fixed and set, her breath coming and going as if in some mortal struggle. " If it would do any good to them — any good to them," she kept saying to herself. Then at last words came with a burst of tears. " They do not want me, it will only bring fresh misery to me and them if I go back to them again. A home is offered me at last; I will take that, and then I shall be lost to them, and he will know he need never take any trouble again for me." Slowly she rose from her knees. The fire had sunk to red embers, and there was a great deal of darkness in the room. She stumbled over something — a bit of stick upon the floor.

Going to the fireplace, she let it drop upon the embers, and stood leaning against the mantelpiece and watching it while it burned. Then, when that last little flame had died out, she took up her hat from the chair on which it lay and put it on, and pinned her shawl carefully round her. A quiet, dreary feeling was in her, as if there were no more need for struggling now. She took two steps towards the door, then turned her head and looked back to the red embers of the fire. All at once— as once before in her life — she paused. Something seemed to speak within her, to warn her, to implore her to wait a little longer yet. She fell down upon her knees. For one instant only the struggle lasted. " I cannot — cannot — I must do it," she cried, and rose to her feet again. So for the second time she made her choice.

She went swiftly and quietly back through the gas-lit streets. Darkness was round her, but her excitement forbade the least thought of fear. It seemed only a minute before she was standing at Mrs. Gay's door. Sallie opened it with a candle in her hand, and almost started at the sight of her com panion's white face and dilated eyes. " Just as she'd seen a ghost or summut," she de clared in the kitchen to the rest. Then there was some talk of the lateness of her return, aud Mrs. Gay, toasting cheese before the fire, announced that such ways were not respect able, and she didn't hold with them herself. Meg had gone upstairs, stopping when she saw the light under the door of the unlet parlour. She went in there and found Holbis alone. He was standing very quietly by the table on which the candle was.

The light on his face showed that it was haggard and sunken, with deep black hollows round his eyes, and the strong hand was clenched that rested on the table. Yet, though his breath came fast, his face was quiet as he turned his head to her. She came and stood by him, and spoke at once. " Mr. Holbis, I have come to tell you that I will do what you wish." There was not a change in his silent face, or even a movement of the hand that rested on the table, though he still looked at her. She waited a moment, and then went on, faster, and in more trembling tones. " I met this evening — a gentleman — who wanted me to go back to my friends. He is good and kind, but he does not know, as I know, how little they care for me. I would rather separate myself from them altogether. He is coming back to-morrow.