Before another week was over the fresh cases of typhoid had ceased.
During the three days immediately following the thunder-storm rain had
fallen again and again, heavily and all night long. By day the same
liquid autumn weather had stretched its length of sunlit creamy hours as
the morning on which Jeannie had watched the sunrise over the cleaned
earth, but every evening at sunset the thick, desired clouds came
trooping out of the south-west, and made night full of the noise of
rain. The wells, swiftly fed by the spongy chalk, had filled, the foul
water of the polluted springs was no longer drawn on, and the gorging
microbe, with its holocaust of victims, Jeannie’s fiend of the
garden-scene, found none to drink from his shrine. The first cases which
had occurred were hardly out of the doctor’s hands before the epidemic
ceased, as suddenly as it had begun, but there was now no lack but
rather a plethora of nurses, for typhoid is the nurses’ favourite
disease, since in it each case depends so entirely on them, and nothing
is dearer to the skilled than responsibility.
This being the case, both Jeannie and Miss Fortescue had, in the fourth
week since the epidemic began, given up their places at the hospital.
Regular trained nurses were there in abundance, and there was no longer
need for them. But to both the sacrifice of giving up their work was far
greater than the original risk of taking it up. For several weeks
certainly their lives had centred on one thing, the victory over the
microbe, and to think only of one thing, even for three weeks of a life,
wears a rut in it, and a jolt is necessitated by passing out of the rut.
Jeannie, after the momentous midnight talk with her aunt, had not been
encouraged to allude to the subject again, nor had she wished it. That
curious flood of confidence had passed by in spate, like the
thunder-storm that had raged simultaneously outside, and, like the
sediment of gravel which the storm had made on the grass, there lingered
in Miss Fortescue’s manner a conscious and expressed reminiscence of
what had passed between them. An added tenderness in little things was
there, hard to define, but impossible not to appreciate. Both of them,
moreover, had something of that quality which is supposed to be confined
to the sterner sex, who, when greatly moved, say, “Good-night, old
chap,” and all is said.
This fortnight of deluged nights had brought about its natural
consequences. The inimitable baby was to return to Wroxton, and, as was
quite natural, Jack Collingwood was going to accompany it and its nurse
in their hazardous forty-mile journey from town. The day had been fixed
for its return, and the arrival, though the train was not certainly
known, might be expected about Monday. So Jeannie, at first contrary to
Miss Fortescue’s expectation, but on second thoughts conformably to
them, went out for a walk about eleven, and said no word about meeting
them at the station.
It was God’s own morning, a forenoon of brilliant autumnal sunshine,
which caressed the yellowing trees, as if to remind the foliage that,
though old, it might still be beautiful. The soap-suds of a light
hoar-frost had been sprinkled in the meadows during the night, but when
Jeannie set out at eleven they had already been melted to living drops,
which hung in the long-leaved grasses, turning them into a pod of
diamond peas. The stream by which she walked with Toby, now outgrown his
puppyhood, and developing into a dog embarrassed with length of limb,
was brimmed with the fallen rains, but the alchemy of the chalk and
gravel beds, in which its lot was cast, was a filter for the turgid
waters, and though brimming it was as translucent as in the summer days.
The tall flowering herbs of the water-side dangled their stalks in the
swollen water, and the reeds, breast-high in summer, were swimming in a
plentiful bath. Only the trees were changed, yet who should say that the
breath of winter had disfigured them? Here and there, it is true, the
heavy-leaved chestnuts were being stripped by invisible hands, and a
mound of their fallen yellow glory lay high around them, but the limes
were pyramids of unminted gold, and the beeches mines of undelved
copper. Sleek speckled trout, secure in their close time, flicked with
a riot of broken bubbles and cut the fast-flowing stream, and their
ripples were already swallowed by the water ere their returning plunge
cut the surface again.
What else was Jeannie’s goal but the mill with the red-walled garden?
The mill was working, and good was the omen, and the thicker growing
weeds below the weir were still as Jack Collingwood had seen them. A
soda-water of bubbles foamed from the prison of the darkness, and the
stream shook off the remembrance of its more utilitarian moments in a
froth of eddying waters. The plank bridge spanned the now sober-going
river, and Toby followed her sedately, yet quivering for his bath.
Indeed, this day no one had disappointment in store. Again and again he
rescued his drowning stick from the eddies, and the halo of his shaking
made the meadow damp. And when, with a yard of pink tongue hanging out,
he had rolled himself into an apology for a dry dog, Jeannie sat down on
her cloak, and let the abundance of the autumn speak to her.
“Here, it was here,” said the river, “here he passed, and we did not
know it was he. Did we not know? Ah, we only did not tell you.”
And the grass of the meadow-land chimed in like distant bells.
“Here, it was here,” it said, “and we knew. And you knew, Jeannie, but
you did not know you knew.”
And the grass laughed, like a child who laughs for no reason, except
that it laughs, as a whiff of west wind passed over it.
“And Toby shook himself,” the grass continued, “and you were afraid of
your dress. Your dress! As if a man looks at a maid’s dress!”
A more sonorous breath passed through the clump of elms near by.
“And he came,” they said, “and we knew him. He had looked at the water,
he had looked at the meadows, he had looked at us, but none of us were
what he looked for. He looked for one, for one, for the one,” and their
branches clashed together.
Jeannie, in her seat where her hat had lain as Miss Fortescue made tea,
gave a great sigh, and this filled her lungs with the living air.
“I did not know,” she answered. “How should I have known?”
“The way of a man with a maid,” said the grass. “Oh, I have seen often
in summer evenings----”
“Yes, and we have seen,” said a hundred leaves of the brambles. “You
have no idea of their folly. They sail little boats of straw or leaves,
and wonder which will win. But for me, I always let the maid’s boat win.
I do not care so much for the young men.”
“But I care, I care,” said the river. “The young men bathe in me, and
with strong arms, and laughing, they deride my waves, or from the top of
high ladders they throw themselves headlong to meet me. But I love them,
and loving them I do not suffer them to touch the ooze of the bed, but
bear them gently up, and they know not it was I, but say to each other,
‘That was a good header!’”
But the elms answered softly:
“Both I love, the man and the maid, for both sit by me, and tell their
love. And the spell of the woodland and the country is in their blood,
though they know it not--for who can make love in towns?--and it is I
who bring them together. Even now he comes, he comes, he comes--” and a
louder blast swept through them.
Jeannie heard and understood.
“He comes,” she said softly to herself. “I knew he would come.”
And round the corner of the garden of the mill he came.
Toby gave a tentative growl to the intruder, in case he should prove
unwelcome; but the growl had not ceased vibrating in his throat, and
Jeannie had not time to correct him, when he recognised, and ran to meet
Jack, muzzling a wet nose into his hand. He spoke to the dog in his low,
soft voice, but he had no word seemingly for Jeannie, nor she for him,
and in silence he sat down on the grass beside her. But on neither side
was there embarrassment in that pause, but each drank deep of the
other’s presence. Jeannie looked at him with wide-open eyes, and he at
her. At length he gave a long sigh.
“You, it is you,” he said simply.
Jeannie smiled at him. The great good pause was over.
“How did you know I should be here?” she asked.
“How could it have been otherwise? It was part of the whole plan.”
“What plan?” asked she, and her heart told her.
“The plan of you and me. The great plan,” he said; “God’s plan for us.”
She leaned forward toward him.
“Oh, Jack,” she said, “it is so? Is it indeed so?”
And he bent his face to hers, and the plan was sealed, and the stream
and the trees and meadows were the witnesses thereof.
They sat there, it may have been for a few hundred years, or half an
hour or so, and then by a common consent rose. Whether they walked back
to Wroxton or not they scarcely knew; it may have been that the surface
of the earth was fitted for them on a circular tape, which slid away
beneath their feet, and stopped revolving only when they reached the
garden door at Bolton Street. There certainly it stopped, for Jack
said:
“We will tell them, will we not, Jeannie?”
“Aunt Em knows,” she said. “She guessed, or I told her, I don’t know
which, the evening after we sat in the garden. But we will tell Arthur.”
“And baby?” suggested Jack.
Jeannie’s face suddenly grew grave.
“Oh, what a little pig I am!” she said. “How is baby? I had forgotten.”
“As fat as--as a baby,” said Jack, at loss for a simile.
Aunt Em was in the garden, with a pair of thick gloves on and a spade in
her hand. She called it gardening, and was alone in this opinion. She
was standing with her back to them as they entered, and seemed to be
employed in spearing the young and tender chrysanthemums. She was so
absorbed in her destructive pursuit that she did not hear their steps
till they were close to her, and she looked up with a snap.
“You, Jeannie,” she said, at length, “and you, Jack.”
Once again, as in her midnight talk with her niece, her face grew young
and her eyes dim.
“Thank God!” she said, and dropping her spade she gave a
gardening-gloved hand to each.
A sound of abundance of broken glass came from the far end of the
garden, and down the path shortly afterward came Arthur.
“If you don’t look where you go,” he explained, “you’ll go into the
cucumber-frames. Aunt Em, I sha’n’t garden any more. How many
chrysanthemums have you killed?”
He looked plaintively at Aunt Em, then curiously at the two others.
Suddenly he burst out laughing, and threw his hat in the air. It stuck
in the mulberry-tree.
“Hurrah!” he cried. “Jack, old chap, how splendid! What lucky people you
both are!”
“And what will Cousin Robert say?” asked Aunt Em. “He will think he was
right all along.”
“He is at liberty to think precisely what he pleases,” said Jeannie,
withdrawing her arm from Jack’s. “Oh, Jack, you don’t know about that;
you can be told now. I must go and see the baby. And it is lunch time.”
Jack followed her with his eyes into the house, and turning to Arthur
gave him a great hit in the chest, after the manner of a happy young
man.
“You blazing fool!” he said, and Arthur understood, and smote him back.
There was no reason for keeping the engagement secret, and Wroxton, like
Athens of old, ever anxious to hear some new thing, was not slow though
prolix in discussing the exciting news. Miss Clara Clifford was among
the first to receive it, for that very afternoon, while Jack had gone to
tell Canon and Mrs. Collingwood about it, she met Jeannie in the street.
Ever since Jeannie had been so friendly to her in the matter of the
picture she had regarded her with a mixture of worship and affection,
and during the weeks of the typhoid she had, so to speak, built a temple
to her. A warm heart beat underneath Miss Clara’s flat bosom, and its
capacity for loving had never yet been put to the stretch. But Jeannie,
with her beauty, her engaging grace, her kindness to herself, and her
unquestioning devotion to the sick, had stormed and taken her. She was
of a different order to the people of Miss Clifford’s world, and
nightly Miss Clifford dreamed of the aristocracy no longer as beings
apart, but as her friends. Jeannie met her as she was walking down the
High Street, turned her round, and insisted on her going her way, and
not much insistence was required.
“Oh, I have something to tell you,” she said, “which I am sure will
interest you. Oh, there’s Jim! Jim, you don’t look any worse for your
typhoid; you see you were sensible and came to hospital at once. The
class will begin again on Saturday. I shall see you? Yes?”
Miss Clifford glowed with appreciation while Jeannie talked to her
policeman, and the two went on together.
“What was I saying?” she continued. “Oh, yes! Do you remember once your
telling me that I was engaged to Jack Collingwood? Well, now it is I who
tell you that.”
Miss Clifford stepped into a puddle, and stood there.
“Oh, Miss Avesham!” she said. “I hope you will be very happy. To think
that--dear me, how things turn out!”
“There is no secret about it,” said Jeannie; “you may tell whom you
please. Only I should be rather glad, just in the way of private
revenge, if you did not tell Colonel Raymond first. But as you please.”
“Miss Avesham,” said Miss Clara, impressively, “I would not tell Colonel
Raymond for five gold mines.”
Jeannie laughed.
“Is he back yet?” she asked. “He went away, I think, a fortnight ago,
when that poor little mite of his got typhoid.”
“He came back yesterday,” said Miss Clara.
They had reached Bolton Street, and here Jeannie had to turn off.
“Good-bye, Miss Clifford,” she said. “I’m so glad I met you, and told
you myself.”
Miss Clifford felt herself a mere mass of congested sentiment which for
the life of her she could not put words to.
“I must go home,” she said, “for Phœbe and I are going calling this
afternoon. And, oh, I can not say things, but God bless you, dear Miss
Avesham!”