CHAPTER XVBY WATER
Miss Parrettfelt slightly embarrassed and uncomfortable when people remarked how seldom her motor was seen! “Was it not satisfactory?” they inquired. The old lady also recognised that her chauffeur was doing the work of a really capital gardener, and was Susan’s right hand; this annoyed her excessively. She disliked the idea that her employé was slaving to please her sister; and accordingly changed her tactics, gave instructions for the car to go out twice a week with Miss Susan and Miss Morven, or Miss Susan and Mrs. Ramsay.
Susan and her niece had promptly availed themselves of this permission, and seized the opportunity of penetrating into far-away villages and to distant country seats; and the poor old motor, at their request, was racketted along at its best speed, as they were bound to be in Ottinge before dark, in order that the car might be washed. If they, by any chance, were a little late, they were received at the hall door by Miss Parrett, in cold silence, watch in hand.
After the recent heavy rains, the low, marshy country was flooded, and, returning one afternoon from a twenty-mile expedition, at a sharp turn in the road where the ground sloped steeply, the motor ran into a wide sheet of water—a neighbouring river had burst its banks. There was no going back, that was impossible. Miss Susanfor once lost her nerve, and, putting her head out, asked the chauffeur piteously—
“What shall we do?”
“There’s only one thing for it, miss,” he answered promptly. “I don’t think the water is deep, and I’ll keep straight on—as near as I can guess—in the middle of the road; you see, there are ditches at either side, and I can’t turn; but you need not be nervous—as long as the water doesn’t reach the magneto you are all right.”
But, as they crept forward cautiously, the water was gradually rising; it rose and rose, till it stole in under the door, and then the motor came to a full stop.
“Now, what’s going to happen?” demanded Miss Susan excitedly.
“I see the road is not more than fifty yards ahead, and the water is shallower. We have stuck in the worst part.”
“But what is to become of us, my good man? Areweto sit here all night—and the motor may blow up?”
“I’ll go to a farmhouse and borrow a couple of horses, and I dare say after a bit I can start her again.”
“And are we to remain here, Owen, and be half-drowned? You know my sister will becrazyif we are not home by seven.”
“There’s one thing I could do, Miss Susan,” he replied, “that is if you have no objection; I can carry you and Miss Morven through the water, and put you out on the road high and dry. I think I might get a trap in Swingford village; you could drive home, and I’ll bring the car along to-morrow. It seems the only thing to be done.”
After this suggestion there ensued a long and animated consultation between aunt and niece; at last Miss Susan, raising her voice, said—
“Very well, Owen, I see no alternative; you can take me first—I am a light weight.”
Owen now descended from his place and waded to the door, which he opened.
“All right, Miss Susan, you may depend on me. I won’t drop you.”
“How am I to manage?” she asked shame-facedly.
“It’s quite easy! Just put your arms round my neck, miss, and hold tight.”
After a moment’s coy reluctance—it was the first time in her life she had ever put her arms round a man’s neck—Miss Susan timidly embraced him.
“Hold on,” he commanded, and, lifting her bodily out of the car as if she were a child, waded away, striding and splashing up to his middle in water. When he had carefully deposited her on dry land, the chauffeur returned for the young lady, who, it must be confessed, awaited him with a wildly beating heart; it seemed to her that in his air there was actually a look of mastery and triumph. If he had been an ordinary chauffeur, such as the Woolcocks’, she would not have minded; but this man—this Lieutenant Wynyard, who was of her own class—oh, how she shrank from this enforced ordeal; she felt deeply reluctant and ashamed.
However, she asked no questions, made no hysterical protests, but rose as he appeared, put her arms on his shoulders—though she would rather have waded up to her neck—and was borne into the stream, upon which a laggard moon had recently arisen. Little, little did Aurea guess that, as she leant her head upon his leather shoulder, how Owen, the chauffeur, had to fight with a frantic, almost overmastering, desire to kiss her! And what an outcry there would have been, not merely fromthe young lady herself, but the sole witness, her maiden aunt!
Fortunately, with a superhuman effort, he pulled himself together, steadied his racing pulses, and thrust the dreadful idea behind him, as he struggled to the end of his task, and presently placed Miss Morven high and dry on the road beside her relative. Then, leaving the rescued ladies to one another’s company, he set off to a village two miles distant to hunt up some conveyance.
As Wynyard tramped along in his wet clothes, he had it out with his ego. For all his youth and hot blood, he had always a cool power of judgment—as far as his own acts were concerned—and he was now prepared to discuss the present situation with himself. Since he had held Miss Aurea’s light form in his arms, felt her sweet breath on his cheek, he knew there was no use in playing the ostrich, and that he was hopelessly in love—had been in love since the very first time he had set eyes upon her! Looking back at the matter, calmly and dispassionately, he realised that it was not on account of Leila’s disappointment that he stayed on, and did not throw up his situation—as Miss Parrett’s exasperating behaviour so often tempted him to do. He remained at Ottinge solely to be near Aurea; it was for Aurea that he kept his temper, slaved in the garden, and sang in the choir; yet he could not say a word to Aurea, or endeavour to ingratiate himself like other more fortunate young men; he had his bond to remember, and his hands were tied—yes, and his tongue too. Was ever any fellow in such a fix? And such was the contrariness of life, he had gone about the world when he was free, and had never once met a girl he thought of twice—and here he was always thinking of Aurea, yet dared not disclose his feelings; meanwhile, some luckier fellow would come along andmake up to her and marry her! And at the thought he stopped and ground his heel into the earth with savage force.
There was Bertie Woolcock, rolling in money, heir to that fine place; and he would have one year and ten months’ start, whilsthewas left at the post! Oh, it was enough to drive him mad to think of! Well, Bertie had never held her in his arms, at any rate,—he had; how she had trembled, poor darling! Yes, he was that to the good.
“Mean beast!” apostrophising himself; “when you know that the girl could not help herself, and would have given everything she possessed to get out of such a dilemma!” What would Leila say? Should he tell her? No; she would only laugh (he could hear her laugh) and ask, “What are you going to marry on, even if Uncle Dick lets you off?”
He had two pounds two shillings a week, and if he made love to her niece, Miss Parrett would naturally and properly send him about his business. Oh, it was all an infernal muddle—there was no way out of it—nothing to do but hide his feelings and bide his time; the wild, haunting refrain of an old negro camp hymn came into his head, “And hold the Lion down! and hold the Lion down!” Well, he was holding the lion down, and a thundering hard job he found it!
He had no reason to suspect that Aurea ever thought of him—why should she? She was always polite, gracious—no more. His only little scrap of comfort lay in the fact that he believed Miss Susan liked him—liked him really, in a nice, sentimental, proper, old-maid fashion! She was romantic, so said her niece, who bantered her on her passion for promoting love-affairs and love-matches—he had heard her taunt her playfullywith the fact. Undoubtedly Miss Susan was his good friend, and that was the sole morsel of comfort he could offer himself!
Presently Wynyard reached a sleepy little village, unearthed a carrier’s cart, horse, and man, and returned to the place where the two ladies were awaiting him with the liveliest impatience.
That evening, at nine o’clock, Miss Susan, who had deposited her niece at the Rectory, arrived at home in a carrier’s cart—the sole available mode of conveyance. Her sister, who had been roaming about the hall and passages, accompanied by Mrs. Ramsay, wringing her hands and whimpering that “Susan had been killed,” was considerably relieved. But, as soon as her fears were subdued, she became frightfully excited respecting the fate of her beautiful motor, which, by all accounts, had been left standing in the middle of a river—five miles from home.
“Oh, I assure you it will be all right, Bella; please don’t worry yourself. Owen will manage.”
“Owen, indeed!” she echoed angrily; “it’s my opinion that he managesyou—you think a great deal too much of that young man; there’s something at the back of him—it would never surprise me if some day he went off with that motor, and we never saw him again.”
“My dear sister! You know you are overwrought, or you would never talk such rubbish.”
“If the motor was stuck in the middle of a river, I should like to know how you and Aurea got out of it without being half-drowned?” she demanded judicially.
“Oh, we got out of it very simply, and it was as easy as kiss my hand,” rejoined Miss Susan, with a gay laugh. “The only person that got wet was Owen; he carried us.”
“What!” cried Mrs. Ramsay, with dancing eyes; “carried you and Aurea—how?”
“Why, in his arms—where else? First he took me, then he took her; and we were no more trouble to him than if we had been a couple of babies.”
“Well, upon my word,” snorted Miss Parrett, casting up her hands, “I think the whole thing is scandalous! You and Aurea flying about the country, and spending most of your time in the motor, going here and going there, coming home at night alone in a carrier’s cart, and telling me you left the motor in the middle of a river, and that you were carried out of it in the arms of the chauffeur! and that without a blush on your faces! Upon my word, Susan Parrett, I don’t know what’s coming to you! Either you are going mad, or you are falling into your second childhood.”
Miss Parrett was profoundly relieved to see her valuable car arrive on its own horse-power the following afternoon. It certainly looked rather limp and sorry for itself, and did not recover from its adventures in the river for some time. Water had a fatal effect upon its organisation; indeed, its condition became so serious that it had to be sent to a garage, there to be overhauled—and a bill, which was the result, proved one of Miss Parrett’s favourite grievances for the ensuing six months.