He had almost stumbled in his haste and perplexity upon another figure
all cloaked in waterproof and sheltered under an umbrella near the
Rectory gate. By this time it was quite dark, and the rain, small and
soft but persistent, had increased so much as to be almost blinding. A
faint exclamation--‘Oh, Mr. Swinford!’--greeted him as he was passing.
‘Miss Plowden,’ he said, ‘I beg your pardon,’ and then he added,
breathlessly, ‘I am running after a lady--don’t laugh--an old friend of
whom I had a sudden glimpse. I have pursued her all the way from the
lake, and thought I had kept her well in sight, but at last I have lost
the track. Have you met any one? Excuse me for keeping you in the rain.’
‘A lady?’ said Emmy. ‘No, I have seen no one--that is, no one that is
not well known in Watcham. I suppose it was a stranger?’
‘How can I tell?’ said Leo in his perplexity; ‘a slight woman,
exceedingly swift and energetic--witness, I have not been able to make
up with her all this way--in a cloak--impermeable--what do you call
it?--like what you wear.’
‘In a waterproof!’ said Emmy. ‘No one has passed me but the
schoolmistress. It could not be the schoolmistress?’
The idea was so ludicrous to Leo that he burst into a laugh in the midst
of his wretchedness and perplexity.
‘That does not seem likely,’ he said.
‘No one else has passed,’ said Emmy; ‘but there are some lanes, if the
lady had wanted a short cut to the station, for instance.’
‘That is exactly what I should expect.’
‘Then if you will turn down to the right the first opening you come to,
and afterwards to the left, and then---- The quickest way,’ she said
suddenly, with a blush and a laugh, ‘would be to show you; for I fear I
am not clever enough to describe it.’
‘Not in this rain?’
‘Oh, I don’t care for the rain. We are out in all weathers; it will not
take ten minutes.’ She had already turned and was hastening on in the
direction she had indicated with a friendly desire to serve him, at
which Leo admired and wondered. ‘Besides, I don’t call this bad rain,’
said Emmy cheerfully, ‘it is so soft and warm. But for habit I should
prefer to have no umbrella. But you, perhaps, would like a share of
mine?’
‘Thanks, it would do me no good and hamper you. I am as wet as I can
be.’
‘Yes, you are very wet I see. Well, there is one good thing, you cannot
be any worse now, and you must change as soon as you get in. When one is
only a little wet one does not see the need, but when it is as bad as
that you must. This way: I am afraid it is a little dirty, Mr.
Swinford,’ said Emmy, with a tone of apology, as if it were somehow her
fault.
‘It is not very clean,’ he said, with a laugh, ‘but it is worse for you
than for me. I have an object, but you have none, save kindness,’ he
added, with a grateful look that pleased Emmy.
‘If it were kindness,’ she said, ‘that is the best object of all. But I
can’t claim that, for it is a pleasure to help a--friend if one can, in
such a very little thing.’
‘You hesitated, Miss Plowden, before you said a friend.’
‘Yes,’ she said, with the faint little laugh of embarrassment, ‘I was
not sure that I knew you enough to use that name.’
‘I hope,’ cried Leo, ‘you will never doubt that again after all the rain
and mud you have faced to help me.’
‘Oh,’ said Emmy, ‘I would do as much for any one--if I had never seen
them before: I should be a poor creature indeed if I took credit for
this. Is that your lady, Mr. Swinford, running down the lane to the
station? I am afraid she will be late for her train. Run on,
please--never mind me--I’ll follow and see if you find her, though,’ she
called after him cheerfully.
It was the pleasantest little excitement to Emmy, even had it not been
Leo Swinford about whom she had once entertained so many romantic
dreams. These dreams had faded away in the most wonderful manner in the
light of reality--though they still kept a little atmosphere of romance
about him. But it was perfectly true that she would have done this
little service for any one, and would have felt the exhilaration of a
small adventure in doing it, and the same curiosity to see how it ended.
She went on accordingly smiling under her umbrella: her hair was
touched here and there by the raindrops, and shone in the light of the
lamps, and her walk and the little excitement had given her a pretty
colour. All the likeness to Lady William, of which Emmy was so proud,
came out in the pleasant commotion in which she stood on the opposite
side of the platform to look if Mr. Swinford had found his friend. But
his friend, as the reader knows, was not bound for the station, and was,
indeed, at that moment secure in the last place in the world where he
was likely to look for her, shaking the rain from her cloak, and
changing her shoes with the sensation of warmth and comfort which dry
garments give after a drenching. Mrs. Brown had on the whole rather
enjoyed the stern-chase, in which she felt herself quite safe: for she
knew that she could elude her pursuer one way or the other--either by
allowing him to overtake her, in which case she was confident that her
own wits were quite equal to any encounter with Leo--or by vanishing
into some side way by which she could gain her schoolhouse--the last
place where he would seek her. Artémise was quite invigorated by the
incident, which kept up, perhaps, an interest which was slightly
flagging in her continued visits to Mrs. Swinford. If she were to be
pursued every time, it would give to these visits a wonderful zest.
Leo came across the railway with a sensation of pleasure, for which he
was quite unprepared, to give his guide the information that he had
failed in his search. Emmy had always been pensive and stony when he had
seen her before, a pale resemblance, like a half-faded photograph, of
her aunt. Now her bright interest and readiness to listen and sympathise
warmed him almost as much as the dry shoes which Artémise was
luxuriously putting on by her little kitchen fire.
‘No,’ he said, ‘she is not there. Perhaps she felt that I was likely to
go to the railway, and so avoided me--to take, perhaps, a later train.’
‘Oh,’ said Emmy, ‘did she want then _not_ to be found?’
There was a slight unconscious tone of suspicion in this which was very
flattering to the young man.
‘She wanted to avoid me--yes,’ said Leo. ‘She knows that I don’t love to
have her in my house. She is an old friend,’ he added, ‘I am not sure
what--but a sort of relation of my mother.’
‘Oh,’ said Emmy.
This very English exclamation, which is so often laughed at, has,
according to the intention--or sometimes contrary to the intention--of
the speaker, a wonderful deal of meaning in it. In the present case it
meant surprise, mingled with a sort of disapproval, and almost reproof.
An old friend, a relation, and yet you don’t like to have her in your
house! This was all expressed in Emmy’s tone. She would not--I need
scarcely say--have put such a sentiment in words for the world, and had
not the least intention of expressing it even in her astonished ‘Oh!’
‘You think that strange?’ said Leo.
‘Oh--no,’ said Emmy, hesitating slightly. ‘I--don’t know any of the
circumstances,’ she added hastily, with a sudden blush. ‘Please, don’t
think for a moment, if I knew them all, that I would set up myself for a
judge.’
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘You are as well qualified to judge as any one I
know; and even your surprise throws a little new light for me on the
situation. It is always good to see a thing through another pair of
eyes. However, what I want to find this lady for, is to prevent a wrong
thing being done--which she could set right, but I fear does not want to
set right. So I must find her.’
‘Certainly in that case----’ said Emmy. She added, ‘I wonder if I could
help you--if there was any place here where you think she might have
gone!’
‘She may, perhaps,’ said Leo, with a laugh, ‘have doubled like a hare,
and got safely into my mother’s room after all, while I have been
hunting her here.’
‘Into--your----!’ Emmy was so bewildered that she could not keep in
these astonished words, which were out of her mouth before she felt that
here was some complicated matter with which she had no right to
interfere. ‘Oh, never mind,’ she cried, ‘never mind! I did not mean to
be so impertinent as to make any remark.’
‘Well,’ said Leo, ‘perhaps I did not mean to say so much: but I must
tell you now, Miss Plowden----’
‘Oh, nothing, nothing, please,’ said Emmy in distress.
‘That my mother and I don’t look on the matter in the same light. She
takes one view, I another. We need not enter into the question, but that
is the fact. It is permitted to a man to differ with his mother in
judgment when he is as old as I am.’
‘One cannot help it sometimes,’ said Emmy, in a low tone, with a slight
bowing of her head. ‘It is very painful, but I suppose God never meant
that we were not to exercise the faculties. He has given us. We may keep
the commandment all the same. It says “honour.” It does not say always
agree. The Bible is always so reasonable, don’t you think?’
‘Oh! I don’t know that I have very much considered that question, Miss
Plowden.’
‘Never anything excessive that would be a burden,’ said Emmy, with the
grave simplicity of assurance. ‘Perhaps if you could give me any
indication, Mr. Swinford, I might think of a place to look for her,
being on the spot, and knowing all the people.
‘Indeed you must go in at once out of the rain--with my most grateful
thanks for what you have done.’
‘To be sure,’ said Emmy, ‘no lady would be likely to stay out in such a
wet night--but there are two or three people who keep lodgings in
Watcham where I could inquire for you--or I could go to the early train
and see if she goes by that. But you must describe her--what she looks
like, and what I should say----’
‘And you would really take all this trouble for me?’
‘Oh, for any one!’ cried Emmy. Then she laughed, and added: ‘That does
not sound very civil. Of course I should do everything I could--a great
deal more--for you, who are a--friend. But I mean I would do that
much--or any of us would do it--for any one. You know my father is the
Rector. It is in a kind of way our business to be of any use we
can--especially,’ she added, ‘when it is a question of right and wrong.’
‘You are too good,’ said Leo. ‘You are too systematically good. I don’t
want to be helped merely because I am a fellow-creature, which I fear is
what it comes to. I should like--very much--to be helped--because it was
me----’
‘And it would be because it was you,’ said Emmy. These words were far
more pleasant to hear, on both sides, than it is to be feared they were
intended to be--but they were even upon Leo’s part perfectly sincere. He
wanted to be more than merely any one, to be helped and served for his
own sake, and perhaps it did not occur to him that to an unsophisticated
girl like Emmy (of whose romance, to be sure, he was profoundly
ignorant) such words as those meant more than they did to him.
‘You are very wet,’ she said suddenly; ‘will you come into the Rectory
and get dried? Perhaps you could wear some of Jim’s things. You ought
not to be so long in your damp clothes.’
This motherly solicitude amused Leo much, and, to tell the truth, he
began to forget the annoyance of his unsuccessful quest and to feel very
uncomfortable in his wetness, and disposed towards a little light and
warmth. He hesitated for a moment. ‘It would be wise to go home at
once,’ he said, ‘and change my wet things there.’
‘Oh!’ said Emmy, who had indeed expected no favourable answer to her
invitation, ‘I am sure mamma would be very sorry if you went away that
long walk without resting. She would ask you to share our dinner and go
home in the fly--for it means to rain on, I am sure, all night.’
‘Do you think Mrs. Plowden would be so very good?’ Leo said.
I do not deny that dreadful questions ran through Emmy’s mind about the
dinner. She did not know in the first place what it was, for Mrs.
Plowden was severely determined on the point of retaining the
housekeeping in her own hands: nor was she quite sure that she would
escape a lecture for bringing him in upon them like this without notice,
a man accustomed to a French cook. But Leo was town-bred--Paris-bred,
and not accustomed to long expeditions in all weathers, and it was clear
that he was beginning to shiver in the persistent though softly falling
rain.
‘I am quite sure mamma would never forgive me if I let you pass the
door,’ she said, leading him in through the damp garden, where already
the rain began to form little pools.
Emmy felt no cold as she went in by the side door, which was always on
the latch, leading her captive. Her cheeks had never glowed with such a
rosy colour; her eyes had never shown so like two stars. She slid off
her cloak in the passage, and stood dry and trim underneath in her
little gray dress as if she had come straight from her toilette. When
she pushed open the drawing-room door the light flashed about her in a
sudden warm dazzle, shining in her eyes, and in those raindrops that
were like pearls in her hair.
‘Mamma,’ said Emmy, in a voice that had never before sounded so soft, ‘I
have made Mr. Swinford come in with me, he is so wet; and I have told
him you will make him stay to dinner; and that he must put on some of
Jim’s clothes.’
‘Which will be much too long for me,’ said Leo; ‘but if you will really
be so charitable as Miss Plowden says----’
What a sudden sensation it made in the drawing-room! Mrs. Plowden sent
Florence upstairs flying, to put a match to the fire in Jim’s room.
‘It is all laid ready; it is no trouble,’ she explained breathlessly;
‘but Florry will do it so much quicker than ringing the bell. And Emmy,
call Jim--he is in the study with your papa--to get everything
comfortable for Mr. Swinford. You are wet indeed. I will not even keep
you downstairs to give you some tea.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Emmy modestly, ‘a little wine or something, mamma, to
keep him from catching cold----’
‘And what do you take to keep you from catching cold?’ he said. ‘Am I
supposed to be more delicate than you?’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Plowden, sending Emmy off with a look, ‘they are used to
it; they are accustomed to our climate. How glad I am you came! This is
the way, Mr. Swinford; let me show you the way. You must excuse me if I
don’t take you to one of the best rooms, but only to Jim’s, which will
be the most homely; for I think comfort is the thing to think of when
one is wet and cold. Oh, here you are, Jim. I will just go with you to
see that the fire is burning--and you must get out dry things to make
Mr. Swinford comfortable. Have you lighted the candles, Florry? And is
the fire burning up? Oh, well, then I will leave you with Jim.’
Thus the whole family ministered to Leo, who, half-horrified,
half-amused to see the two girls sent flying in different directions for
his comfort, and Jim much puzzled and flurried, extracted from the
dreadful depths of the study--submitted himself to these attentions with
the best grace in the world. If he had fathomed Jim’s dreadful
perplexity as to whether he should offer the brand-new coat which he had
got for the FitzStephens’ ball, or his old one, which he believed in his
heart would be a better fit, he could not have spoken more wisely than
he did on this subject.
‘Give me an old coat,’ he said, ‘one you had before you had grown so
big. You are a head taller than I am.’
The whole house was stirred by this unexpected visitor. Mrs. Plowden
downstairs was eager in her questions to Emmy.
‘Where did you meet him? What made you think of asking him? What a good
thing that we have such a nice dinner--really too nice a dinner to eat
by ourselves to-day. I said so to cook this morning. Those beautiful
chickens Mrs. Barndon sent us, and a piece of salmon, and---- Really, a
dinner for a dinner-party. What a very lucky thing it was to-day!’
Even the Rector came forth from his study to hear what the commotion was
about.
‘Emmy brought in Mr. Swinford to change his wet clothes and dine.’
‘_Emmy_ brought him in? Why, you must be dreaming, Jane!’
‘And why shouldn’t Emmy bring him in?’ cried Mrs. Plowden, triumphant;
‘indeed, what could she do else on such a wet night?’
Thus, instead of dining mournfully alone, with Morris behind his chair,
in the great dark dining-room with the mock marble pillars, Leo sat down
with the cheerful Rectory party around the severe but shabby mahogany,
upon a chair covered with horse-hair, to a dinner cooked by a plain
cook. He was more amused than words could say, and delighted with the
new scene, the kind people, and, above all, the contrast of the family
party with his solitude, and the _bourgeois_ comfort with his own
elegant and fastidious fare. The chickens, carved anxiously by Mrs.
Plowden with ‘Just another little piece of the breast,’ in addition to
the well-developed wing, were so good, and everything was so warm and
bright, so honest and simple, that his amusement soon grew into
pleasure. What a contrast! He told them even his story with judicious
elisions.
‘I cannot think how I lost her,’ he said, ‘even if she did not want me
to find her: and where she disappeared I cannot tell.’
‘I came all through the village,’ Emmy explained, to add to the tale,
‘and no one creature passed me but Mrs. Brown, the schoolmistress,
flying along in a great hurry to get out of the rain.’
Jim looked up at these words with a little start, but took care not to
say anything, as may well be believed.
‘Perhaps,’ said Leo, with a laugh, ‘it might be Mrs. Brown, the
schoolmistress, whom I was pursuing all the time. She might be paying an
innocent visit to some friend in the servants’ hall. In which case she
will think me a dangerous madman, and I owe her an apology.’
‘Oh, she’s not one of that sort!’ cried Jim. He said it under his
breath, and fortunately nobody heard him but Florence, who gave him a
look of inquiry, but no more.
‘So I might have saved myself the trouble--and the wetting,’ Leo said.