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[277] 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[278] 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 beau[279]tiful. 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[280] 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.[281]

“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[282] 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[283] 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 ............