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.