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.