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The Great Miss Driver

by Anthony Hope · English · Gutenberg #33293 · 611,160 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Great Miss Driver

Author: Anthony Hope


        
Release date: July 30, 2010 [eBook #33293]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33293

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT MISS DRIVER ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









                          THE GREAT MISS DRIVER

                             BY ANTHONY HOPE

AUTHOR OF TRISTRAM OF BLENT, DOUBLE HARNESS, HELENA'S PATH, LOVE'S LOGIC


NEW YORK
THE McCLURE COMPANY
MCMVIII

Copyright, 1908, by The McClure Company

Copyright, 1908, by Anthony Hope Hawkins


[Illustration: "_By Heaven, the girl on the mantelpiece at Hatcham
Ford!_"]




CONTENTS


I. WHAT IS SHE LIKE?

II. MAKING AMENDS

III. ON THE USE OF SCRAPES

IV. AN UNPOPULAR MAN

V. RAPIER AND CLUB

VI. TAKING TO OPEN SEA

VII. THE FLICK OF A WHIP

VIII. A SECRET TREATY

IX. THE INSTITUTE CLERK

X. A FRIENDLY GLASS

XI. THE SIGNAL AT "DANGER"

XII. SAVING A WEEK

XIII. THE BOY WITH THE RED CAP

XIV. THE EIGHT-FIFTEEN TRAIN

XV. IN THE DOCK

XVI. NOT PROVEN

XVII. ONE OF TWO LEGACIES

XVIII. THE NEW CAMPAIGN

XIX. A CASE OF CONSCIENCE

XX. LIVING PIECES

XXI. NATHAN AND DAVID

XXII. THE ALTERNATIVE

XXIII. ON ALL GROUNDS--RIDICULOUS!

XXIV. A CHANCE FOR THE ROMANTIC

XXV. A FRESH COAT OF PAINT

XXVI. PEDIGREE AND BIOGRAPHY

XXVII. A MAN OF BUSINESS




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


"By Heaven, the girl on the mantelpiece at Hatcham Ford!"

"He might have given me a chance!"

Jenny was crouching on the floor beside Powers

"A fresh coat of paint wanted!"




THE GREAT MISS DRIVER




CHAPTER I

WHAT IS SHE LIKE?


"Perhaps you won't believe me," said I, "but till yesterday I never so
much as heard of her existence."

"I've not the least difficulty in believing you. That was old Nick's
way. It wasn't your business--was it?--so he didn't talk to you about
it. On the other hand, when a thing was your business--that's to say,
when he wanted your services--he told you all about it. But I believe
I'm the only person he did tell. I'm sure he didn't tell a soul down in
Catsford. Finely put about they'll be!"

Mr. Cartmell, of Fisher, Son, & Cartmell (he was the only surviving
representative of the firm), broke off to hide a portion of his round
red face in a silver tankard; Loft, the butler, had brought it to him on
his arrival without express orders given; I had often seen the same
vessel going into Mr. Driver's study on the occasion of the lawyer's
calls.

He set the tankard--much lightened it must have been--on the mantelpiece
and walked to the window, taking a pull at his cigar. We were in my
room--my "office" it was generally called in the household. He stood
looking out, talking to me half over his shoulder.

"A man's mind turns back at times like these. I remember him hard on
forty years ago. I was a lad then, just gone into the business. Mr.
Fisher was alive--not the one you remember--not poor Nat--but the old
gentleman. Nat was the junior, and I was in the last year of my
articles. Well, Nick Driver came to the old gentleman one morning and
asked him to act for him--said he thought he was big enough by now. The
old gentleman didn't want to, but poor Nat had an eye for a man and saw
that Driver meant to get on. So they took him, and we've acted for him
ever since. It wasn't many years before he--" Cartmell paused a moment,
laying the finger-tips of his right hand against the finger-tips of his
left, and straightening his arms from the elbow like a swimmer--"before
he began to drive his wedge into the county."

The good man was fairly launched on his subject; much of it was new to
me, in detail if not in broad outline, and I listened with interest.
Besides, there was nothing else to do until the time came to start. But
the story will bear a little summarizing, like a great many other
stories; Cartmell was too fond of anecdotes. Thus summarized then:

Nicholas Driver began life as a tanner in Catsford. He was thrifty and
saved money. With the money he bought land and built some villas; with
the rent of the villas--more land. He had faith in the development of
Catsford. He got early news of the coming of the railway; he pledged
every house and every inch of land--and bought more land. So the process
went on--detailed by Mr. Cartmell, indicated here. Nicholas Driver
became moderately rich--and, by the way, his Catsford property had never
ceased to rise in value and was rising still. Then, as it seemed (even
Mr. Cartmell spoke conjecturally), an era of speculation followed--first
in England, then in America. "That," Cartmell interjected, "was when he
picked up this girl's mother, not that she was American, but he met her
about that time." He must have speculated largely and successfully, or
he could not have made all that money--so stood the case. The money
made, the process of "driving his wedge into the county" began. "The
county" must, here and henceforward, be carefully distinguished from
"the town." Geographical contiguity does not bridge a social chasm.

First he bought Hatcham Ford, a small but beautiful Jacobean house lying
on the banks of the river, some mile and a half out of Catsford at that
time, now caught in the lengthening fringe of the town. While in
residence there, he spread his territory to the north and west,
acquiring all the outlying farms which the Lord Fillingford of the day
was free to sell; then, too, he made his first audacious bid for
Fillingford Manor itself--the first of many, it appeared. Though the
later no longer seemed audacious, all had been fruitless; Lord
Fillingford could not sell without his son's consent, and that was
withheld. The family struggled on in perpetual financial straits, hating
Nicholas Driver, but envying him his money, never coming to an open
rupture with him for fear of his power or apprehension of its own
necessities; never sparing a sneer or a secret thrust when either was
safe. For his part, baffled in that quarter, he turned to the east and
approached Mr. Dormer of Breysgate Priory. It was a beautiful place.
Down by the lake lay the old Cistercian monastery; the original building
was in ruins, but a small house had been built on in the days of
Elizabeth, and this was still habitable. High on the hill stood the big,
solidly handsome, Georgian mansion, erected by the Dormer of the day
when the estate came into the hands of the family. From the hilltop the
park rolled out and out in undulating curves of rich grass-land and
spreading woods. To Nicholas Driver's joy and surprise--he had
anticipated another struggle and feared another rebuff--Mr. Dormer was
ready to sell--for a price. He was elderly, his wife middle-aged, his
only heir a cousin toward whom he was indifferent and who, though heir
of entail to the property, would be unable to keep it up, unless his
predecessor left him money for the purpose. In these circumstances
matters were soon arranged. The cousin was bought off, his consent
given, and the Dormers retired to a smaller place, properly the dower
house--Hingston Hall, situated fifteen miles from Catsford. Behold
Nicholas Driver a country gentleman on a distinctly large scale!

"And with how much ready money to his name besides you'll get some idea
about when the will is proved," Mr. Cartmell ended impressively.

His impressiveness impressed me; I do not know why I should be ashamed
to confess it. A great deal of anything impresses ordinary people; a
great deal of hill is a mountain, a great deal of water is an ocean, a
great deal of brain is a genius; and so on. Similarly, a great deal of
money has its grandeur--for ordinary people.

"It might be a million and a half--a million and a half sovereigns,
Austin!--and it's growing every night while you sleep! And now--he's
dead!"

"You do die just the same--that's the worst of it."

"And not an old man either!"

"Sixty-three!"

"Tut--I shall be that myself in three years--and you can't tire me yet!"

"Perhaps making millions and driving wedges is--rather exhausting,
Cartmell. You split the tree; don't you blunt the wedge in time, too?"

"The end came easy, did it?"

"Oh, yes, in his sleep. So the nurse tells me. I wasn't there myself."

"I'm glad it was easy. After all, he was a very old friend of mine--and
a very valuable client. Let's see, how long have you been with him?"

"Four years."

"Going to stay?"

I rose and began to brush my hat. "If you come to that," said I, "are
you going to stay either, Cartmell? I gather that she can do as she
pleases about that?"

"Every rod of ground and every farthing of money--bating decent
charities! It's a great position."

"It's a very unexplored one so far as we're concerned," I made bold to
remark.

"Have you seen him since--since the end, Austin?"

"Yes. Would you like to?"

"No, I shouldn't," he answered bluntly. "Perhaps it's brutal. I know
it's cowardly. But I don't like death."

"Nonsense! You make half your income out of it. I say, I suppose we
might as well start?"

"Yes," he assented absently. "I wonder how she's turned out!"

I looked at him with quickened interest. "Turned out? That sounds almost
as if you'd seen her."

"I have seen her. Come along. I'll tell you about it as we drive down."

We traversed the long corridor which leads from my office to the hall.
Loft was waiting for us, with an attendant footman. Loft addressed me in
a muffled voice; his demeanor might always be relied on for
perfection--he would not once unmuffle his voice till his master was
buried.

"The landau is waiting, sir. The omnibus for Miss Driver's maid and the
luggage has gone on." Wonderful man! He spoke of "Miss Driver" as if she
had lived for years in the house.

Cartmell gave him a queer look and emitted a low chuckle as we got into
the landau, behind the big grays. Mr. Driver always drove grays, and he
liked them big, so that he could rattle up the hill to his house.

"Maid! Luggage!" muttered Cartmell. "The bus'll hold 'em, I think, with
a bit to spare! By his orders I sent her twenty pounds on Tuesday;
that's all she's had as yet. I only had time to telegraph about--the
rest."

"Interesting wire to get! But about your seeing her, Cartmell?"

In honor of the occasion Cartmell, like myself, had put on a black frock
coat and a silk hat, properly equipped with a mourning band of
respectful width. But he wore the coat with a jaunty air, and the hat
slightly but effectively cocked on one side, so that the quiet yet
ingrained horsiness of his aspect suffered little from the unwonted
attire. The confidential wink with which he now turned his plump
rubicund face toward me preserved his general harmony. With the mournful
atmosphere of Breysgate Priory, however, I could not help feeling that
my own lank jaws and more precisely poised head-gear consorted better.

"You can hold your tongue, Austin?"

"A very shrewd man has paid me four hundred a year for four years past
on that understanding."

"Then what happened at the Smalls, at Cheltenham?"

"Isn't that beginning the story at the wrong end?" I asked.

"That was where she was"--he searched for a word--"where she was
planted. She lived at three or four different places altogether, you
know."

"And the mother?"

"Mother died--vanished anyhow--early in the proceedings. Well, word came
of trouble at Cheltenham. Small, though of my own profession, was an
ass. He wrote a bleating letter--yes, he was more like a sheep,
really--to old Nick. Nick told me I must go and put it to rights. So I
went."

"Why didn't he go himself?"

"I think," said Cartmell cautiously, "that he had some kind of a feeling
against seeing the girl. Really that's the only thing that accounts for
his behavior all through."

"Did he never see her?"

"Never--since she was quite a child. So he told me. But let me finish
the story--if you want to hear it. Being ordered, I went. They lived in
a beastly villa and were, to speak generally, a disgrace to humanity by
their utter flabbiness. But there was a flashy sort of a gentleman, by
the name of Powers." He stopped and looked at me for a minute. "A
married flashy gentleman named Nelson Powers. She was sixteen--and she
wrote to Powers. A good many letters she'd written to Powers. Small was
such a fool that Powers guessed there was money in it. And she, of
course, had never thought of a Mrs. Powers. How should she? Sixteen
and----"

"Hopelessly innocent?"

"I really think so," he answered with an air, rather odd, of advancing a
paradox. "She let him worm out of her all that she knew about her
father--which was that he paid the bills for her and that Small had told
her that he was rich. She didn't know where he lived, but Powers got
that out of Small without much trouble, and then it was blackmail on Mr.
Driver, of course."

"Did you get at Powers? Had to pay him something, I suppose?"

"I got at Mrs. Powers--and paid her. Much better! We had the letters in
twenty-four hours. Powers really repented that time, I think! But I had
orders to take her away from the Smalls. The same man never failed Nick
Driver twice! I sent her under escort to Dawlish--at least near
there--to a clergyman's family, where she's been ever since. But it
can't be denied that she left Cheltenham rather--well, rather under a
cloud. If you ask me what I think about it----"

I had been growing interested--yet not interested in precisely the point
about which Mr. Cartmell conjectured that I might be about to inquire.

"Did she say anything about it herself?" I interrupted.

He stroked his chin. "She said rather a curious thing--she was only
sixteen, you know. She said that we might have given her credit for
being able to take just a little care of herself."

"That sounds like underrating your diplomacy, Cartmell."

"I thought myself that it reflected on the bill I proposed to send in!
Funny, wasn't it? From a chit like that!"

"What did you say?"

"Asked her if she'd like a foot-warmer for the journey to Dawlish."

"Capital! You were about to tell me what you thought about it?"

"The folly of a young ignorant girl, no doubt. Powers was an insinuating
rascal--and a girl doesn't know at that age the difference between a
gentleman and a cad. He moved too soon, though. We were in lots of time
to prevent real mischief--and Mrs. Powers came up to the scratch!" He
drummed his fingers on the window of the landau, looking thoughtful and,
as it seemed to me, retrospectively puzzled.

"And did all go smoothly with the clergyman's family?"

"She's been there ever since. I've heard of no trouble. The governess's
reports of her were excellent, I remember Mr. Driver telling me once."

"Well then, we can forget all about Powers."

"Yes, yes," said Cartmell, drumming his fingers still.

"And what was she like?"

Cartmell looked at me, a smile slowly breaking across his broad face.
"Here's the station. Suppose you see for yourself," he suggested.

We had ten minutes to wait before Miss Driver's train was due--we had
been careful to run no risk of not being on the spot to receive her.
Cartmell was at no loss to employ the time. I left him plunging into an
animated discussion of the points of a handsome cob which stood outside
the station: on the handsome cob's back was a boy, no less handsome,
fresh of color and yellow-haired. I knew him to be young Lord Lacey,
heir to the Fillingford earldom, but I had at that time no acquaintance
with him, and passed on into the station, where I paced up and down
among a crowd of loiterers and hasteners--for Catsford was by now a
bustling center whence and whither men went and came at all hours of the
day and most hours of the night. Driver had foreseen that this would
come about! It had come about; he had grown rich; he lay dead. It went
on happening still, and thereby adding to the piles of gold which he
could no longer handle.

Instead of indulging in these trite reflections--to be excused only by
the equal triteness of death, which tends to evoke them--I should have
done well to consider my own position. A man bred for a parson but, for
reasons of his own, averse from adopting the sacred calling, is commonly
not too well fitted for other avocations--unless perhaps he would be a
schoolmaster, and my taste did not lie that way. In default of private
means, an easy berth at four hundred pounds a year may well seem a
godsend. It had assumed some such celestial guise to me when, on the
casual introduction of my uncle one day in London, Mr. Driver had
offered it to me. As his private secretary, I drew the aforementioned
very liberal salary, I had my "office" in the big house on the hill, I
dwelt in the Old Priory (that is to say, in the little dwelling house
built on to the ruinous remains of the ancient foundation), I was seldom
asked for more than three hours' work a day, I had a horse to ride, and
plenty of leisure for the books I loved. It would be very unfortunate to
have to give up all that. Verily the question "What is she like?" had a
practical, an economic, importance for me which raised it far above the
sphere of mere curiosity or the nonsense of irrelevant romance. Was she
a sensible young woman who would know a good secretary when she saw one?
Or, on the other hand, was she not? A secretary of some sort she would
certainly require.

Nay, perhaps, she wouldn't. The one utterance of hers which had been, so
far, credibly reported to my ears was to the effect that she could take
care--just a little care--of herself. This at sixteen! This on the top
of circumstances which at first sight indicated that she had taken
particularly bad care of herself! Letters to a man like Powers! My
imagination, forsaking my own position and prospects, constructed a
confident picture of Powers, proceeded to sketch Mrs. Powers--strong
lights here!--and to outline the family of the Smalls of Cheltenham. It
ended by rejoicing that she had been removed from the influence of
Powers and the environment of the Smalls of Cheltenham. Because, look at
the matter how one might or could, there was no denying that it was the
sort of incident which might just as well--or even better--not have
happened at all. At the best, it was not altogether pleasant. Surely
that was the truth--and not merely the abortive parson talking again?
Well, even the abortive parson was sometimes right.

Cartmell clapped me on the shoulder. The handsome boy had, it appeared,
departed, after receiving from an obsequious porter the copy of _Country
Life_, in quest of which he had ridden to the station from Fillingford
Manor.

"Here comes the train! I wonder if I shall know her again!"

Two minutes later, that observation of Cartmell's seemed to me plainly
foolish. A man might like her or dislike her, trust her or not trust
her--oh, away with these fatal alternatives, antitheses, or whatever
they are! They confine judgment, and often falsify it. He might do all
these things at once--and I fancied that she might welcome his
perplexity. He would not be very likely to forget her--nor she to be
pleased if he did.

That was only a first impression of her, as she got out of the train.




CHAPTER II

MAKING AMENDS


Cartmell's talk, as we drove back, was calculated to give her an almost
overwhelming idea of her possessions and (if her temperament set that
way) of her responsibilities. Big commercial buildings, blocks of shops,
whole streets of small houses, drew from the lawyer a point of the
finger and a brief, "That's yours"--or sometimes he would tell how her
father had bought, how built, and how profited by the venture. Every
time she would turn her head to look where his finger pointed, and nod
slightly, gravely, composedly. She seemed to be reserving her opinion of
it all. The only time she spoke was when we were emerging from the town
and he showed her Hatcham Ford, saying, as usual, "That's yours," but
adding that it was let furnished to Mr. Leonard Octon, who was abroad
just now. Then her nod of understanding was accompanied by a low murmur,
"It's very pretty."

She said nothing when we drove into the park of Breysgate Priory itself:
yet I saw her eyes fixed intently on the great house on the hill, which
comes into view directly the drive is entered, and certainly looks
imposing enough. After the first formal greeting she did not speak to
me, nor I to her, until her reception at the house was over and we had
sat down to luncheon. But she had smiled at me once--when we were still
standing by the door, on the terrace at the top of the steps, and
Cartmell was showing her what he called "the lie of the land." The
omnibus with its pair of big horses and its pair of big men came
trotting up the hill, and on its big roof lay one small battered trunk.
Loft was waiting to give orders to his footmen for the disposal of her
luggage: when he saw the solitary and diminutive article, he advanced
and, with pronounced graciousness, received it from the omnibus himself.
She watched, and then gave me the smile that I have mentioned; evidently
Loft--or Loft in conjunction with that humble box--appealed to her sense
of humor.

Cartmell was soon at his ease with her: he called her "My dear" twice
before we got to the sweets. The second time he apologized for taking
the liberty--on the first occasion, I suppose, the words slipped out
unnoticed by himself.

"But I like it," she said. "My father spoke so warmly about you in his
letter."

Cartmell looked at me for a moment; we neither of us knew of a letter.

"He told me never to part with Mr. Cartmell because an honest lawyer was
worth his weight in gold."

"I ride fourteen-seven," said Cartmell with a chuckle.

"And he said something about you, too," she added, looking at me, "but
perhaps I'd better not repeat that."

"Shall I try to guess it?" I asked. "Did he say I was a scholar?"

"Yes."

"And a gentleman?"

"Yes."

"But confoundedly conceited?"

"No--well, not quite. Something like it, Mr. Austin. How did you know?"

"It's what he use to say to me himself three times a week?"

Her face had lit up in merriment during this little talk, but now she
grew thoughtful again. I might well have looked thoughtful, too; so far
as had appeared at present, there was no injunction against parting with
me--no worth-his-weight-in-gold appraisement of the secretary!

"I expect he liked the scholar-and-gentleman part," she reflected. "He
wasn't at all a scholar himself, I suppose?"

"He'd had no time for that," said Cartmell.

"Nor a gentleman?"

It was an embarrassing question--from a daughter about her
father--addressed to Cartmell who owed him much and to me who had eaten
his bread. Besides--he was lying there in his room upstairs. Cartmell
faced the difficulty with simple directness.

"He wasn't polished in manner; when he was opposed or got angry, he was
rough. But he was honest and straight, upright and just, kind and----"

"Kind?" she interrupted, a note of indignation plain to hear in her
voice. "Not to me!"

That was awkward again!

"My dear Miss Driver, for what may have been amiss he's made you the
best amends he could." He waved his arm as though to take in all the
great house in which we sat. "Handsome amends!"

"Yes," she assented--but her assent did not sound very hearty.

A long silence followed--an uncomfortable silence. She was looking
toward the window, and I could watch her face unperceived. From our
first meeting I had been haunted by a sense of having seen her before,
but I soon convinced myself that this was a delusion. I had not seen
her, nor anyone like her (she was not at all like her father), in the
flesh, but I had seen pictures that were like her. Not modern pictures,
but sixteenth- or seventeenth-century portraits. Her hair was brown with
ruddy tips, her brows not arched but very straight, her nose fine-cut
and high, her mouth not large but her lips very red. Her chin was rather
long, and her face wore the smooth, almost waxy, pallor which the
pictures I was reminded of are apt to exhibit. Her eyes were so
pronounced and bright a hazel that, seeing them on a canvas, one might
have suspected the painter of taking a liberty with fact for the sake of
his composition.

Cartmell broke the silence. "Since he wrote you a letter, may I venture
to ask--?" He stopped and glanced at me. "Perhaps you wouldn't mind
giving us five minutes to ourselves, Austin?"

I thought the request not unnatural, and rose promptly from my chair.
But we had reckoned without our host--our new host.

"Why do you tell him to go?" she demanded of Cartmell with a sudden
sharpness. "I don't ask him to go. I don't want him to go. Sit down,
please, Mr. Austin."

Cartmell had his two elbows on the table; he bit his thumb as he glanced
up at her from under raised brows. He was not often called to book so
sharply as that. I thought that she would make apology, but she made
none. As I obediently--and, I fear, hastily--sat down again, she took a
letter from a little bag which hung at her waist.

"What did you want to ask?" she said to Cartmell in a tone which was
smooth but by no means overconciliatory.

Cartmell's manner said "Have it if you want it!" as he inquired bluntly,
"Does your father say anything about your mother?"

She took the letter from its envelope and unfolded it. "About my mother
he says this: 'It is necessary for me to say a few words about your
mother. Mr. Cartmell is in possession of all proofs necessary to
establish your position as my daughter, and there is no need for you to
trouble your head about that, as not the smallest difficulty can arise.
The personal aspect of the case is that on which I must touch. Three
years after your birth your mother left me under circumstances which
made it impossible for me to have any further communication with her.
She went to Australia, and died five years later in Melbourne from an
attack of typhoid fever. I caused constant inquiry to be made as to her
position and took measures to secure that she should suffer no hardship.
The circumstances to which I have referred made it imperative that I
should remove you from her charge. As she consented to give up all claim
on you, I did not go to the trouble of obtaining a divorce--which she
did not desire either, as matters had been kept quiet. You will ask, and
with reason, why I did not bring you up myself, and why I have delayed
publicly acknowledging you as my daughter till the hour of my death. I
can give no reason good to the world. I can give none good to my own
conscience, unless it is a good one to say that a man is what God made
him and that there are some things impossible to some men. It will seem
a hard saying, but I could not endure to have you with me. I know
myself, and I can only assure you that, if your childhood has not been a
very happy one as it is, it would have been no happier if spent under my
roof. Now we have been only strangers--you would have been worse than a
stranger then.'"

Miss Driver, who had read in a low but level and composed voice, paused
here for a moment--perhaps in doubt whether to read more. Then she went
on: "'With that much excuse--for I have none other--I must now, my
daughter, say good-by, for I am dying. Though of my own choice I have
not seen you since your infancy. I have not been without thought for
you. I hesitated long before throwing on your shoulders all the burden
which I have created for my own and carried on them. But in the end
nature has seemed to say to me--and to speak more strongly as I grow
weaker--that you are the person to whom it should belong and that, if
things go wrong, it will be nature's fault, not mine. Don't spend more
than two-thirds of your income--the other third should go back to work
and bring in more. Give handsomely when you give, but don't be always
dribbling out small sums; they mount up against you without aiding the
recipients. Go to church unless you really dislike it. Be independent,
but not eccentric. You have a great position; make it greater. Be a
power in your world. About love and marriage, remember always that being
sensible in general matters is no guarantee that you will act sensibly
there. So be doubly on your guard. Suspect and fear marriage, even while
you seek the best alliance you can find. Be you man or woman, by
marriage you give another a power over you. Suspect it--suspect your
lover--suspect yourself. You need fear no man except the man to whom you
have given yourself. With earnest wishes for your welfare, I remain your
affectionate father--NICHOLAS DRIVER.'"

During the reading Cartmell's face had been disturbed and sad; once or
twice he fidgeted restively in his chair. I had listened intently,
seeming again to hear the measured full voice, the hard clean-cut
counsels, to which I had listened almost daily for the last four years.
Fine sense! And a heart somewhere? I was inclined to answer yes--but how
deep it lay, and what a lot of digging to get there! He had never given
his daughter one chance of so much as putting her hand to the spade.

She tucked the letter away in her little bag; she was smiling again by
now. I had smiled myself--my memories being so acutely touched; but she
must have smiled for discernment, not for memory.

"Now I think I should like to go and see him."

Cartmell excused himself, as I knew he would.

"I've never seen him, that I can remember, you know," she said.

The meeting of the Catsford Corporation (the town had become a borough
ten years before--largely owing to Mr. Driver's efforts) could not wait.
But Cartmell had one thing to say before he went; it was not on
business, nor arising out of the letter; he was to have a full business
discussion with her on the morrow. He took her hand in both of his and
pressed it--forgetful apparently of her sharp rebuke.

"You can't live in this great house all alone," he said. "I wonder your
father said nothing about that!"

"Oh, that's all right. Chat's coming in a week. She'd have come with me,
but Mrs. Simpson wouldn't let her go till a new governess could be got.
Four girls, you see, and Mrs. Simpson thinks she's an invalid. Besides,
Chat wouldn't come without a new black silk dress. So I had to give her
most of that money--and she'll be here in a week--and I haven't got a
new dress."

I noticed that her black dress was far from new. It was, in fact, rather
rusty. Her black straw hat, however, appeared to be new. It was a large
spreading sort of hat.

"Yes, Mr. Austin, the hat's new," she remarked.

The girl seemed to have a knack of noticing where one's eyes happened to
be.

"I can give you lots of money," Cartmell assured her. "And--er--'Chat'
was governess at the Simpsons', was she?"

"Yes, she's been there for years, but she's very fond of me, and agreed
to come and be my companion. She taught me all I know. I'm sure you'll
like Chat."

"You can only try her," said he, rather doubtfully. I think that he
would have preferred, Miss Driver, to cut loose from the old days
altogether. "But, you know, we can't call her just 'Chat.' It must be
short for something?"

"Short for Chatters--Miss Chatters. And she says Chatters is really--or
was really--Charteris. That's pronounced Charters, isn't it?" She
addressed the last question to me, and I said that I believed she was
right. "I shall get on very well by myself till she comes." She
questioned me again. "Do you live in the house?"

"No, I live down at the Old Priory. But I have my office in the house."

"Oh, yes. Now, if Mr. Cartmell must go, will you take me up?"

She stopped a moment, though, to look at the pictures--old Mr. Driver
had bought some good ones--and so gave me one word with Cartmell.

"Depend upon it," he whispered. "Chat's a fool. People who keep telling
you their names ought to be spelt like better names, when they aren't,
are always fools. Why don't they spell 'em that way, or else let it
alone?"

There seemed to be a good deal in that.

Cartmell gone, we went together up the broad staircase which sprang from
the center of the hall. As we passed a chair, she took off her hat and
flung it down. The rich masses old brown hair, coiled about her head,
caught the sun of a bright spring afternoon; she ran swiftly and lightly
up the stairs. "Nice, soft, thick, carpet!" she remarked. I began to
perceive that she would enjoy the incidental luxuries of her new
position--and that she did enjoy the one great luxury--life. I fancied
that she enjoyed it enormously.

We trod another "nice, soft, thick, carpet" for the length of a long
passage and came to his door. I opened it, let her pass in, and was
about to close it after her. But as we reached his room, a sudden shadow
of trouble or of fear had fallen upon her--grief it could hardly be.

"No," she said. "Come in, too. Remember--he's a stranger."

To be in the room with the dead seems to be itself a partaking of death;
it is at least, for a moment, a suspension of life. Yet the still
welcome is not unfriendly.

She walked toward the bed alone, but in an instant beckoned to me to
follow her. She bent down and moved the covering. His broad strong face
looked resolute and brave as ever. It looked--to speak truth--as hard as
ever also.

Her eyes were set on him; suddenly she caught hold of my hand; "Don't
go." I pressed her hand, for I heard her breathing quickly. I just
caught her next words: "He might have given me a chance!"

[Illustration: "_He might have given me a chance!_"]

"I believe he was sorry about that at the end." She shook her head.
"He's given you a big chance now."

She nodded, but absently. "How strange to--to be his doing--and he
there! And then--all this!" She let go my hand, took a step forward,
bent and kissed his brow quickly. "How cold!" she murmured and grasped
my hand tightly again. To my fancy she seemed surprised--and
relieved--that the sleeper did not stir.

We were--as I say--out of the world; we were just two creatures, living
for a little while, by the side of a third who lived no more.

"You shouldn't kiss him unless you forgive," I said.

She kissed him again and drew the sheet over his face.

"He must have been a fine man. I forgive. Come, let's go."

Outside, the world was with us--and I wondering whether that was what I
had really said.

At least she seemed to bear me no ill-will. "Are you free to come for a
walk?" she asked. "I should like some fresh air."

"Would you like to see the gardens?"

"No--that means pottering. Take me for a good spin."

By a happy thought I remembered Tor Hill and took her there. The hill
lies at the extremity of the Priory park, looking down on the road which
separates our dominions from the Fillingford country; beyond the road
the Manor itself can be seen by glimpses through the woods which
surround it. Catsford lies in the valley to the left; away to the right,
but not in sight, lay Oxley Lodge, and Overington Grange, the seat of
Sir John Aspenick. Here she could take a bird's-eye view of her position
and that of her nearest neighbors.

"I'm glad to see Fillingford," she remarked. "My father mentioned it--in
the earlier part of that letter. He said that he had wanted to buy it,
but Lord Fillingford couldn't or wouldn't sell."

"His son's consent was necessary--that's the present man--and he
wouldn't give it. Indeed the story runs that he hated Mr. Driver for
trying to buy."

She seemed to take as careful a view of Fillingford Manor as the
distance and the trees allowed.

"My father seems to have been sorry he couldn't buy it. He seemed to
think it might still be sold."

"Surely you've got enough! And, for my part, I should much prefer the
Priory. It's muggy down there in the valley--though I believe it's a
very fine house."

"You've not been there?"

"No. We of the Priory have had small dealings with Fillingford lately.
We've kept up the forms of civility--but it's been very distant.
Underneath, there's been a kind of silent feud--well, more or less
silent; but I daresay that'll be all over now."

"My father wrote 'Possibly you in your way may succeed better than I in
mine.'"

"Fillingford wouldn't sell. He's hard up, but he can get along. And
there's always the chance of a rich marriage for his son--or even for
himself."

I really spoke without any thought of a personal reference, but I
perceived, directly afterward, that I might well seem to have made one;
a marriage with Miss Driver would be undoubtedly rich. She gave no sign,
however, of taking my remark in that sense, unless any inference can be
drawn from her saying, "Oh, he's a widower?"

"He's a widower of forty, or a year or two more--and he's got a son of
about seventeen--a very good-looking lad. His sister, Lady Sarah Lacey,
keeps house for him, and according to local gossip is a bit of a shrew."

She began to laugh as she said with a mock sigh, "One's too old for me,
and the other's too young--they must look somewhere else, I'm afraid!
And then--how should I get on with the shrew? I'm rather a shrew
myself--at least I've been told so."

"You'd better let them alone," I counseled her with a smile.

"Oh, no, I shan't do that," she rejoined with a decisiveness which I
began to recognize as an occasional feature of her speech. "It'll be
more amusing to see what they're like--presently. And what of the
Dormers? My father mentioned them."

"A very nice old couple--but I fear he's failing."

A slight grimace dismissed the Dormers as not holding much interest for
her.

"Oh, you won't want for neighbors. There are plenty of them, and they'll
all be tremendously excited about you and will flock to call as soon as
you can receive them."

"It must seem funny to them. I suppose they'd never heard of me?"

"I don't believe any of them had. Your father had no intimates, unless
Mr. Cartmell can be called one. Besides--well, I'd never heard of you
myself!"

"And here we are old friends!" she said graciously.

"That's very kind--but you mustn't think yourself bound to take over the
secretary with the rest of the furniture."

She looked steadily in my face for several seconds, seeming to size me
up--if I may be allowed the expression. Then she smiled--not gayly, yet
again by no means sadly. It was the smile which I came to call later her
mystery smile; and, as a general rule, it meant--in plain
language--mischief. Of course, on this first day I did not attach these
associations to it. It struck me as merely rather curious; as a man
talks to himself, so she seemed to smile to herself, forgetting her
interlocutor.

"Oh, well--stay and see how you like me," she said.




CHAPTER III

ON THE USE OF SCRAPES


We were settling down. It was a week since the funeral. The borough and
the neighborhood had survived their first stupefaction at the apparition
of Miss Driver; the local journals had achieved their articles, organs
of wider circulation and greater dignity their paragraphs; the charities
which received legacies had given thanks, those which did not were
turning resigned but hopeful eyes to the future. The undertaker sent in
his bill, and the Town Council discussed the project of a Driver
Memorial Hall--with a hardly disguised anticipation of the quarter from
which the bulk of the money was to come.

There was really not much more to do till Miss Driver's first days of
mourning were over, and the fascinating speculations as to her personal
gifts and qualities could look to find some satisfaction from her
appearances on public and private occasions. Only Cartmell still
was--and would be for weeks--busy on the labors attendant on the
transfer of a great estate, and the rearrangements necessitated by the
loss of an able and experienced man--a masterly worker--and the
succession of a girl ignorant of business. For the rest we were, as I
say, settling down. Even Cartmell's activity caused us at Breysgate no
sense of bustle, for it took him to London the day after the funeral and
kept him there for above a fortnight.

When I say that "we" were settling down I mean the trio formed by Miss
Driver, myself--and Miss Emily Chatters. It is my duty to introduce Miss
Chatters with proper formality, and I will introduce her presently--but
let us take people in their order. Miss Driver had inspected her
property (except the wine cellar which, to Loft's dismay, she declined
to enter); she had chosen her own set of rooms and given orders for them
to be entirely refurnished; she had announced her intention--and small
blame to her--of extending the refurnishing process to all the
sitting-rooms--at least to the sitting-rooms; she had chosen her own
hack from the stables--and I have no doubt that she had done what was
immediately requisite as regards her wardrobe. At any rate, an air of
achievement dwelt about her. For my part I performed my duties, and
began to find that I had less work to do--and more time occupied in
doing it. In Mr. Driver's day we worked as few men except Mr. Driver
understood work from ten to one; then, as a rule, I was free. Under the
new _regime_ we worked at a gentler pressure--a much gentler
pressure--for the same morning hours; but I stayed to lunch always, I
came back to tea frequently, and I returned to dinner two or three
evenings in the week. My duties as secretary grew lighter, but I seemed
to be assuming the functions of a companion. I may do myself the
incidental justice of saying that I rather resented this tendency to
transform my office; but it was not easy to resist. She was paying for
my whole time as her father had paid for it; it was her right, within
wide limits, to say to what uses it should be put. Or--I could go. The
liberty--perhaps it is rather theoretical--of "chucking my job" remained
to me as to every free-born Englishman--who sees his way to getting
another whereby to live. Not that I wished to surrender mine; I was
interested and--to tell the truth--I grew, within our jurisdiction,
important. She approached the assumption of her power cautiously, and at
first would return almost any answer to almost any letter at my
suggestion. I did not expect this to last, but so it was for the moment.
For instance it was I, in ultimate reality, who offered that ten
thousand pounds toward the Memorial Hall. I had a great difficulty in
fixing the proper figure. If I may judge from the language employed by
the Mayor (Councillor Bindlecombe) in public, I exceeded all possible
anticipations of munificence; in private, I am told, he confessed to
having entertained a hope of fifteen thousand. I imagine that my figure
was not, on a balancing of considerations, far wide of the mark.
Cartmell thought five thousand would have served--but old Cartmell was a
screw with other people's money. I remembered "Give handsomely when you
give." So, I think, did Jenny Driver. All the same, Bindlecombe did, in
my opinion, open his mouth a bit too wide.

Miss Chatters came two days after the funeral--in the new black silk
dress: it rustled powerfully. She was tall, had pale-brown hair with a
broad parting in the middle, a very long inquiring nose, faded blue
eyes, an absolutely flat chin, and--inconceivable gentility. If we
others were settling she settled far quicker. She took the bedroom next
to Jenny Driver's; she annexed a small sitting-room for her own--next
but one to Jenny Driver's; she had a glass of the best port every day at
eleven. ("She came down to the cellar and chose the bin herself, sir,"
Loft informed me with a wry smile of grudge for his dearest
possessions.) Yet all these acts of proprietorship--for they pretty
nearly came to that--were performed with a meekness, a deprecation, a
ladylikeness (I can find no other word) that made opposition seem unkind
and criticism ungenerous. It was only "Poor Chat!" She had a habit of
talking to Jenny in a kind of baby-language, and used to refer to
herself as "Poor Chat." "Poor Chat doesn't know!" "Poor Chat's not
wise!" Also she did keep talking about her name and the respectability
of her descent. In fact she was a woman of a number of silly
affectations and one or two exasperating foibles, and Cartmell never
varied from his impromptu judgment--expressed before he had seen
her--that she was a fool. It is my deliberate opinion that she wished to
be thought more of a fool than she was--partly from an idea that little
sillinesses and affectations were genteel, partly with the notion that
they were disarming. She seemed always bent on showing you that she was
not the sort of person from whom any opposition need be feared, nor any
undue exercise of influence apprehended. It could only be supposed that
she had found this line of conduct useful in her relations toward her
employers; by contrast it flattered both their superior brains and their
superior positions. I allow for her natural taste, for her standards of
gentility. But she was a snob, too, "Poor Chat," and a time-server.

No harder words than those need be used about her--and they are too hard
perhaps; for there is one thing to be said on the other side--and it is
a thing of weight. Chat was fifty; as a governess she was hopelessly out
of date; I do not suppose that she saw her daily bread secure for three
months ahead. For a hundred pounds a year certain--secure from the
caprice of employers or of fate--she would probably have done or been
anything--even, so far as she could, honest.

But honesty alone, as she may well have reflected, does not breed
security of tenure in subordinate positions. I am far from saying that
it ought; on the whole I consider it to be a commoner, and therefore a
cheaper and more easily obtainable--and replaceable--commodity than
either a good brain or an agreeable demeanor. At any rate how easily it
may come near to costing a man his place I was very soon to discover by
my own experience. Well, perhaps, to honesty I ought to add a lack of
diplomacy and a temper naturally hot. But I am not sure: I cannot see
how any man could have done anything very different--given that he was
barely honest.

"There's a person in the drawing-room with the ladies, sir," said Loft
one day when I came up to tea at four o'clock.

Loft's social terminology was exact. When he said a "person" he did not
mean a "gentleman"--who was a gentleman--nor a "man"--who was a member
of the definitely lower orders of the community; he meant somebody in
between, one of the doubtful cases.

"A Mr. Powers, sir. He's been here perhaps half an hour."

It may readily be supposed that I had not forgotten the name of Powers;
the name and the incident were irrevocably--and uncomfortably--fixed in
my mind. This "person" might not be the same Powers, but in overwhelming
probability he was. Even if Jenny had not been in communication with
him--and I did not believe that she had--the paragraphs would easily
have brought about this visit--or visitation. He came scenting prey--he
had read of the heiress! But why had she let him in?

"Did he give you a card, Loft?"

"Yes, sir. I took it in, and Miss Driver told me to ask the person to
come in."

If it were not material, neither was it necessary to ask what Loft
thought about the matter. Plainly Mr. Powers was not up to his standard
for drawing-room visitors.

"Have you got the card?"

He took it from the hall table. "Mr. Nelson Powers." There was no
address.

"All right, Loft. But before I join them, I want to telephone to
London." Of course Mr. Driver had installed a telephone, and many a day
we had kept it very busy.

By luck I got into speedy communication with Cartmell at his hotel. He
heard my news. His answer was to the point: "Kick him out."

"But if I try to do that, it gives you away. You're not supposed to have
told me."

"Then give me away," came back instantly. "Only get him out. He's a
dangerous rascal--and not fit for any decent man or woman to talk to.
How in Heaven's name she can----"

"Perhaps she's frightened," I pleaded. He answered only "Kick him out,"
and cut off communication.

She did not look at all frightened when I went in. She was standing
opposite Powers, smiling gayly and mischievously. Powers was apparently
just taking his leave. So much gained! I determined to go to the hall
with him and give him a hint, on Cartmell's behalf, that he need not
come again. But things were not to be as easy as that.

"Well, then, we shall see you at eight o'clock," said Jenny, giving him
her hand.

"Delighted," said he, bowing low. "Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Miss
Chatters." Chat was sitting by, tatting. She habitually tatted.

"This is my old friend Mr. Nelson Powers," said Jenny. "Mr. Powers--Mr.
Austin." We bowed--neither of us cordially. The man's eyes were wary and
very alert; he looked at me as though I might be a policeman in plain
clothes; possibly my expression gave him some excuse.

Jenny rang the bell. "Mr. Powers is coming back to dinner. You'll come,
of course? We shall have a pleasant little party of four!"

"I'm sorry, but I'm engaged to dinner to-night."

Jenny gave me a quick look, Chat gave me a long one. Loft appeared. "_Au
revoir_, Mr. Powers!" With a pronounced bow over his hat Powers was out
of the room. I made no effort to follow. Jenny's face told me that the
battle was to be fought where we were.

She poured out a cup of tea and gave it to me. Then, as she sat down,
she said, "I'm sorry you can't come to-night. Where are you going?"

I did not want Chat there--but I remembered what happened to Cartmell
when he did not want me there.

"I'm not going anywhere," I said.

Her pallid face flushed a little, but she smiled. Chat looked at her and
got up; no, Chat was not altogether a fool! "Yes, please, Chat," said
Jenny very quietly. Chat left us. I finished my tea--it was cold, and
easy to gulp down--and waited for the storm.

"You've nothing to add to your polite excuses?" she inquired.

"Does that gentleman come from Cheltenham?"

"Yes, from Cheltenham, Mr. Austin. But how did you come to know that?
Did my father mention him?" She was not embarrassed--only very angry.

"No."

"It was Mr. Cartmell?"

"Yes. He had no right, I daresay, but I'm glad he did--and so will he
be."

"If both my solicitor and my secretary are glad--!" She broke off with a
scornful laugh. "I'm not going to discuss the matter with you, but I
like people who are about me to receive my invitations with politeness."

"This isn't easy for me, Miss Driver, but--that man oughtn't to come to
this house. He oughtn't to be allowed to see you."

She rose from her chair, her eyes set unmovingly on my face. Her voice
was low. "How dare you say that? How dare you? Am I to take orders from
you--my secretary--my servant?"

"You called me your friend the other day."

"I seem to have been hasty. A kind friend indeed to listen to stories
against me!"

"The story is against the man--not against you."

"Are you dining with any other friends to-night?"

"I've told you that I'm not."

"Then I request--I desire--that you will make it convenient to give me
the pleasure of your company--to meet my friend, Mr. Powers."

My temper went suddenly. "I won't sit at meat with the blackguard--above
all, not in your company."

I saw her fist clench itself by her side. "I repeat my request," she
said.

"I repeat my refusal, but I can do no less than offer you my
resignation."

"You won't accept my offer--but I accept yours very gladly."

"It will be kind of you to relieve me from my duties as soon as
possible."

"To-morrow." She turned her back on me and walked off to the window. I
stood there a minute, and then went to the door. She turned round, and
our eyes met. I waited for a moment, but she faced round to the window
again, and I went out.

I walked quickly down the hill. I was very unhappy, but I was not
remorseful. I knew that another man could have done the thing much
better, but it had been the right thing to do and I had done it as well
as I could. She had made no attempt to defend Powers, nor to deny what
she must have known that Cartmell had said about him. Yet, while tacitly
admitting that he was a most obnoxious description of blackguard, she
asked him to dinner--and ordered me to sit by and see them together. If
her service entailed that sort of thing, then indeed there must be an
end to service with her. But grieved as I was that this must be so--and
the blow to me was heavy on all grounds, whether of interest or of
feeling--I grieved more that she should sit with him herself than that
she bade me witness what seemed in my eyes her degradation. What was the
meaning of it? I was at that time nowhere near understanding her.

My home was no more than a cottage, built against the south wall of the
Old Priory. The front door opened straight into my parlor, without hall
or vestibule; a steep little stair ran up from the corner of the room
itself and led to my bedroom on the floor above. Behind my parlor lay
the kitchen and two other rooms, occupied by my housekeeper, Mrs. Field,
and her husband, who was one of the gardeners. It was all very small,
but it was warm, snug, and homely. The walls were covered almost
completely with my books, which overflowed on to chairs and tables, too.
When fire and lamp were going in the evening, the little room seemed to
glow with a studious cheerfulness, and my old leather arm-chair wooed me
with affectionate welcome. In four years I had taken good root in my
little home. I had to uproot myself--to-morrow.

With this pang, there came suddenly one deeper. I was about to
lose--perforce--what was now revealed to me as a great, though a very
new, interest in my life. From the first both Cartmell and I had been
keenly interested in the heiress--the lonely girl who came to reign over
Breysgate and to dispose of those millions of money. We had both, I
think, been touched with a certain romantic, or pathetic, element in the
situation. We had not talked about it, much less had we talked about
what we felt ourselves or about what we meant to do; but it had grown
into a tacit understanding between us that more than our mere paid
services were due from us to Jenny Driver. No man had been very near her
father, but we had been nearest; we did not mean that his daughter
should be without friends if she would accept friendship. Nay, I think
we meant a little more than that. She was young and ignorant; Nick
Driver's daughter might well be willful and imperious. We meant that she
should not easily escape our service and our friendship; they should be
more than offered; they should be pressed; if need be, they should be
secretly given. It had been an honest idea of ours--but it seemed hard
to work in practice. Such service as I could give was ended well-nigh
before it had begun. I thought it only too likely that Cartmell's also
would soon end, save, at least, for strictly professional purposes. And
I could not see how this end was to be avoided in his case any more than
it had been found possible to avoid it in mine. With the best will in
the world, there were limits. "Some things are impossible to some men,"
old Mr. Driver had said in that letter; it had been impossible to me--as
it would, I think, have been to most men--to see Powers welcomed by her
as a gentleman and a friend.

Yet I began almost to be sorry--almost to ask why I had not swallowed
Powers and accepted the invitation to dinner. Might I, in that way, have
had a better chance of getting rid of Powers in the end? It would have
been a wrong thing to do--I was still quite clear about that--wrong in
every way, and very disgusting, to boot; quite fatal to my self-respect,
and an acquiescence in a horrible want of self-respect in Jenny. But I
might have been useful to her. Now I could be of no use. That evening I
first set my feet on what I may perhaps call a moral slope. It looked a
very gentle slope; there did not appear to be any danger in it; it did
not look as though you could slip on it or as if it would be difficult
to recover yourself if slip you did. But, in fact, at the bottom of that
moral slope--which grew steeper as it descended--lay a moral precipice.
Nothing less can I call the conclusion that anything which might be
useful to Jenny Driver became, by the mere force of that possible
utility, morally right--conduct, so to speak, becoming to an officer and
a gentleman. I was not, of course, at all aware that my insidious
doubt--or, rather, my puzzling discontent with myself--could lead to any
such chasm as that.

I ate my chop and tried to settle down to my books. First I tried
theology, the study of which I had by no means abandoned. But I was not
theologically inclined that night. Then I took up a magazine; politics
emphatically would not do! I fell back on anthropology, and got on there
considerably better. Yet presently my attention wandered even from that.
I sat with the book open before me, at a page where three members of the
Warramunga tribe were represented in adornments that, on an ordinary
evening, would have filled me with admiration. No, I was languid about
it. The last thing I remembered was hearing the back door locked--which
meant that the Fields were going to bed. After that I fail to trace
events, but I imagine that I speedily fell sound asleep--with the book
open before me and my pipe lying by it on the table.

I awoke with a little shiver, pretended to myself that I had never
stopped reading, gave up the pretence, pushed back my chair from the
table, rose, and turned to the fire behind me.

In my old leather arm-chair sat Jenny Driver.

She wore a black evening dress, with a cloak of brown fur thrown open in
front--both, no doubt, new acquisitions. The fire had died down to a
small heap of bright red embers. When first I saw her, she was crouching
close over it--the night was chilly--and her face was red with its glow.

"Miss Driver! I--I'm afraid I've been asleep," I stammered. "Have you
been here long?"

She glanced at the clock; it was half-past ten. "About twenty minutes.
I've had a good look round--at your room, and your books, and that queer
picture which seems to have sent you to sleep. Your room's very
comfortable."

"Yes, it's a jolly little room," I agreed. "But what----?"

"And I've had a good look at you, too," she continued. "Do you know, Mr.
Austin, you're really rather handsome?"

"I daresay I look my best by lamplight," I suggested, smiling.

"No, really I think you are--in the thin ascetic style. I like
that--anyhow for a change. Well, I wanted a word with you, so I waited
till Chat went to bed, and then slipped down."

It was on the tip of my tongue to observe that it was rather late; but a
smile on Jenny's lips somehow informed me that she expected just such an
objection. So I said nothing.

"Chat and I are going to London to-morrow--to shop. Perhaps we may go on
to Paris. I thought you might like to say good-by."

"That's very kind of you. I'm glad we're not to part in--well, as we
parted this afternoon."

"If you regretted that, you might have done something to prevent it.
Light your pipe again; you'll be able to think better--and I want you to
think a little."

I obeyed her direction, she sitting for the moment silent. I came and
stood opposite to her, leaning my elbow on the mantelpiece.

"When I first knew Mr. Powers, I was sixteen, and I'd been with the
Smalls since I was eleven. You didn't get very discriminating, living
with the Smalls. I met him at a subscription dance: I didn't know
anything about his wife. He was clerk to an architect, or surveyor, or
something of that sort. I met him a good many times afterwards--for
walks. He was good-looking in his way, and he said he was in love with
me. I fell in love with him and, when I couldn't get away to meet him, I
wrote letters. Then I heard about the wife--and I wrote more letters.
You know the sort--very miserable, and, I suppose, very silly--that I
didn't know what to do, only the world was over for me--and so on. You
can imagine the sort of letter. And I saw him--once or twice. He told me
that he was in great trouble; he'd been racing and playing cards and
couldn't pay; he'd be shown up, and lose his place--and what would
become of his wife and child? I flared up and said that I was the last
person who was likely to care about his wife and child. Then he
suggested that I should get money from my father--he knew all about my
father--by saying that I was in some trouble. I told him I couldn't
possibly; I was never allowed to write and should only get an answer
from a lawyer if I did--and certainly no money. He persisted--and I
persisted. He threatened vaguely what he could do. I told him to do as
he liked--that I'd done with him for good. I never wrote again--and I
never saw him till to-day."

"When you asked him to dinner!"

She smiled, but took no more heed. "Well, I was in a scrape, wasn't I? I
saw that clearly--rather a bad scrape. I didn't see what to do, though I
did a lot of thinking. Being in a scrape does teach one to think,
doesn't it? Then suddenly--when I was at my wits' end--it flashed across
me that possibly it might all have happened for the best. My great
object all through my girlhood was, somehow or other, to get into touch
with my father. I believed that, if I could get a fair chance, I could
win him over and persuade him to let me pay him a visit--even live with
him perhaps. That was my great dream--and I was prepared to go through a
lot for the hope of it. Well, it didn't come off. I don't know what Mr.
Powers did--but it was not my father who came, it was Mr. Cartmell. I
was taken away from the Smalls, but not allowed to come here. I was sent
to the Simpsons. My father never wrote one word, good or bad, to me. Mr.
Cartmell gave me a lecture. I didn't mind that. I was so furious with
him for coming that I didn't care a straw what he said."

"His coming upset your brilliant idea?"

"Yes--that time. One can't always succeed. Still it's wonderful how
often a scrape can be turned to account, if you think how to use it.
You're in a corner: that sharpens your brains; you hit on something."

"Perhaps it does. You seem to speak from experience."

"Well, nobody means to get into them, of course, but you get drawn on.
It's fun to see how far you can go--and what other people will do, and
so on."

"Rather dangerous!"

"Well, perhaps that's part of the fun. By the by, I suppose I might get
into a little scrape if I stayed here much longer. Chat would be very
shocked--Loft, too, I expect!"

"It is getting on for eleven o'clock."

"Yes." She rose and drew her cloak round her. "Mr. Powers didn't come to
dinner," she said. "On reflection, I wrote to him and told him that it
was better not to renew our acquaintance, and that he must accept that
as my final decision."

"That's something gained, anyhow," said I, with a sigh of relief.

"Something gained for you?" she asked quickly and suspiciously.

"I don't believe I was thinking of myself at the moment."

She looked at me closely. "No, I don't think you were--and there's no
real reason why it should make any difference to you. Well, that depends
on yourself! Mr. Powers is of no consequence one way or the other. The
question is--are we two to try and get on together."

"I got on with your father," said I.

"You didn't tell my father what he was to do and not to do."

"Yes, sometimes--in social matters. It may surprise you to hear it, but
your father was always ready to learn things that other people could
tell him."

"Well, here are my concessions. Never mind what I said this afternoon--I
was in a rage. I won't call you a servant again; I won't make you come
to dinner when you don't want to; I won't demand that you meet my
friends if you don't want to."

"That's very kind and handsome of you."

"Wait a minute. Now for my side. Mr. Austin, if you're not a servant
here, neither are you a master. Oh, I know, you disclaim any such idea,
but still--think over this afternoon! You can't stay here as a master. I
daresay you think I want a master. I don't think so. If I do, I suppose
I can marry!"

"For my own part I venture to hope you will marry--soon and very
happily."

"But my father? 'Suspect and fear marriage.' 'You need fear no man
except the man to whom you have given yourself.'"

"Your father's experience was, you know, unhappily not fortunate."

Her face clouded to melancholy. "I don't believe mine would be," she
murmured. Then she raised her voice again and smiled. "Neither servant
nor master--but friend, Mr. Austin?" And she held out her hand to me.

"I accept most heartily, and I'll try to keep the bargain." I put out my
hand to take hers, but, as if on a sudden thought, she drew hers back.

"Wait a moment still. What do you mean by a friend? One who likes me,
has my happiness at heart?"

"Yes."

"Gives me the best advice he can, speaking his mind honestly, without
fear and in friendship?"

"Yes."

A touch of mockery in her eyes warned me neither to take the questions
too seriously nor to make my answers too grave. The mockery crept into
her tone with the next interrogation.

"When I don't take his advice and get into a scrape, says, 'I told you
so. I'm all right--you get out of your scrape in the best way you can?'"

"Call me no friend when I say that," I answered.

"Ah!" she whispered and gave me the hand which she before had withdrawn.
"Now really!" she cried gayly, with a glance at the clock. "You go back
to sleep--I have to get ready for a journey. No, don't come with me.
I'll run up to the house by myself. Good night, my--friend!"

I opened the door for her, answering, "Good night." But she had one more
word for me before she went, turning her face to me, merry with a smile
and twinkling eyes--

"I suppose you haven't got a wife anywhere, have you, Mr. Austin?" She
ran off, not waiting for an answer.

The appearance of Mr. Powers had not cost me my place: but it had
defined my position--to Jenny's complete satisfaction! It had also
elicited from her some interesting observations on the value of
scrapes--the place they hold in life, and how a man--or woman--may turn
them to account. I felt that I knew Jenny better for our quarrel and our
talk.




CHAPTER IV

AN UNPOPULAR MAN


Miss Driver stayed away longer than her words had led me to expect.
London and Paris--the names are in themselves explanation enough. The
big world was entirely new to Jenny; though she could not yet
take--shall I say storm?--her place in society, much instruction, and
more amusement, lay open to her grasp even in the days of her obligatory
mourning. On the other hand that same period could not but be very
tedious to her if passed at Breysgate. In regard to her father's memory
she felt a great curiosity and displayed a profound interest; for the
man himself she could have had little affection and could entertain no
real grief; in fact, though she professed and tried to forgive, she
never shook herself quite clear of resentment, even though she, if
anybody, ought to have come nearest to understanding his stern resolve.
That nobody should ever again come so near to him, or become so much to
him, as to be able sorely to wound him--that was how I read his
determination. Jenny ought to have been able to arrive at some
appreciation of that. I think she did--but she protested in her heart
that his daughter should have been the one exception. No good lay in
going back to the merits of that question. In the result they had
been--strangers: her mourning, then, was a matter of propriety, not the
true demand of her feelings. Viewed in this light, London and Paris,
surveyed from the decent obscurity of a tourist, offered a happy
compromise--and bridged a yawning gulf--between duty and the endurable.

Meanwhile the Great Seal was in Commission; Cartmell, Loft, and I
administered the Kingdom--Cartmell Foreign Affairs, Loft the Interior, I
the Royal Cabinet. Cartmell's sphere was the largest by far--all the
business both of the estate and of the various commercial interests;
Loft's territory was merely the house, but his sense of importance
magnified the weight of his functions; to me fell such of Miss Driver's
work as she did not choose to transact herself. In fact I was kept
pretty busy and was in constant communication with her. In reply to my
letters I received a few notes--very brief ones--and many
telegrams--very decisive ones. As I expected, it was not long before she
took the reins into her own hands. In matters of business she always
knew her mind--even if she did not always tell it; indecision was
reserved for another department. But neither in notes, nor in telegrams
did she disclose anything of her doings, except that she was well and
enjoying herself.

So time rolled on; we came to the month of June--and to the Flower Show.
The great annual festivity of the Catsford Horticultural and
Arboricultural Association had always, of recent years, been held in the
grounds of Breysgate Priory, and at the Mayor's request (Councillor
Bindlecombe was also President of the Association) I had obtained Miss
Driver's consent to the continuance of this good custom. In Jenny's
absence the Show was to be opened by Lady Sarah Lacey. I have mentioned
that no open rupture had taken place between Fillingford and
Breysgate--there was only a very chilly feeling. Lady Sarah came, with
her brother Lord Fillingford and his son. Sir John and Lady Aspenick
from Overington Grange, the Dormers from Hingston, Bertram Ware--our
M.P.--from Oxley Lodge, and many others--in fact all one side of the
county--graced the occasion, mingled affably with the elect of Catsford,
and made themselves distantly agreeable to the non-elect. (This
statement does not, for obvious reasons, apply in all its exactitude to
the M.P. If the bulk of the male guests were not elect, they were
electors.) Everybody was hospitably entertained, but there was a Special
Table, where, in years gone by, Mr. Driver himself had welcomed the most
distinguished guests. His death and his daughter's absence--I fear I
must add, Cartmell's also (he would have taken place of me, I
think)--elevated me to this august position. In fact I had to play host,
and so came for the first time into social relations with our august
neighbors. I was not without alarm.

Lady Sarah questioned me about Jenny with polite but hostile curiosity.
Her inquiries contrived to suggest that, with such a father and such a
childhood, it would be wonderful if Miss Driver had really turned out as
well as Lady Sarah hoped. I was not surprised, and set the attitude down
to a natural touch of jealousy: between the two ladies titular
precedence and solid power would very likely not coincide. Lord
Fillingford talked to the Mayor--who sat between him and me--with a
defensively dignified reserve. He was slightly built, and walked rather
stiffly; he wore small whiskers, and inclined to baldness. Indisputably
a gentleman, he seemed to be afflicted with an unreasonable idea that
other people would not remember what he was; a good man, no doubt, and
probably a sensible one, but with no gift for popularity. His handsome
son easily eclipsed him there. At this time young Lacey was bordering on
eighteen; he out-topped his father in stature as in grace. He was a
singularly attractive boy with a hearty gayety, a flow of talk, and an
engaging conviction that everybody wanted to listen. Childless old Mrs.
Dormer was delighted to listen, to feast her eyes on his comeliness, and
to pet him to any extent he desired.

As a whole the company was a little stiff, and the joints of
conversation rather in want of oiling, until they struck on that most
fruitful and sympathetic subject--a common dislike. The victim was our
neighbor and tenant at Hatcham Ford, Leonard Octon. I knew him, for he
had been something of a friend of old Mr. Driver's, and had been
accorded free leave to walk as he pleased in the park; I had
understood--and could well understand--that he was not generally liked,
but never before had I realized the sum of his enormities. He had, it
seemed, offended everybody. Charitable young Lacey did indeed qualify
the assertion that he was a "bounder" by the admission that he was
afraid of nobody and could shoot. All the other voices spoke utter
condemnation. He had got at odds with town, county, and church. His
opinions were considered detestable, his manners aggressive. On various
occasions of controversy he had pointed out to the Rector of Catsford
that the pulpit was not of necessity a well of truth, to the Mayor that
a gilt chain round his neck had no effect on the stuff inside a man's
head, to Sir John Aspenick that one might understand horses and fail to
understand anything else, to a large political meeting that of all laws
mob-law was the worst, to Lord Fillingford that the rule of intelligence
(to which Octon wished to revert) was no more the rule of country
gentlemen than of their gardeners--perhaps not so much--and so on. These
outrages were not narrated by the victims of them: they were recalled by
sympathetic questions and reminders, each man tickling the other's
wound. It could not be denied that they made up a sad catalogue of
social crimes.

"The fellow may think what he likes, but he needn't tread on all our
toes," Sir John complained.

"A vulgar man!" observed Lady Sarah with an acid finality.

Here, somewhat to my surprise, Fillingford opposed. He was a dry man,
but a just one, and not even against an enemy should more than truth be
said.

"No, I don't think he's that. His incivility is aggressive, even rough
sometimes, but I shouldn't call it vulgar. I don't know what you think,
Mr. Mayor, but it seems to me that vulgarity can hardly exist without
either affectation in the man himself or cringing to others. Now Octon
isn't affected and he never cringes."

Bindlecombe was a sensible man, and himself--if Fillingford's definition
stood--not vulgar.

"You know better than I do, Lord Fillingford," he said. "But I should
call him a gentleman spoiled--and perhaps that's a bit different."

"Meant for a gentleman, perhaps?" suggested Lady Aspenick, a pretty thin
woman of five-and-thirty, who looked studious and wore double glasses,
yet was a mighty horsewoman and whip withal.

I liked her suggestion. "Really, I believe that's about it," I made bold
to remark. "He is meant for a gentleman, but he's rather perverse about
it."

Lady Sarah looked at me with just an involuntary touch of surprise. I do
not think that, in the bottom of her heart, she expected me to
speak--unless, of course, spoken to.

"I intensely dislike both his manners and his opinions--and what I hear
of his character," she observed.

"I mean," Lady Aspenick pursued, "that he's been to so many queer
places, and must have seen such queer things----"

"And done 'em, if you ask my opinion," interposed her husband.

"That he may have got--what? Rusty? Well, something like that. I
mean--forgotten how to treat people. He seems to put everybody down as
an enemy at first sight! Well, I'm irritable myself!"

Bertram Ware joined in for the first time. "At the clubs they say he's
really a slave-driver in Central Africa, and comes over here when the
scent gets too hot after him."

"Really," said Lady Sarah, "it sounds exceedingly likely. But if he
teaches his slaves to copy his manners, they'll get some good
floggings."

"That's what the fellow wants himself," growled unappeasable Sir John.

"You take it on, Johnny," counseled young Lacey. "He's only a foot
taller and four stone heavier than you are. You take it on! It'd be a
very sporting event."

This extract--it is no more--from our conversation will show that it was
going on swimmingly. In the pursuit of a common prey we were developing
a sense of comradeship which leveled barriers and put us at our ease
with one another. No doubt our nascent cordiality would have sprung to
fuller life--but it suffered a sudden check.

"Well, how have you all got on without me?" said a voice behind my
chair.

I turned round with a start. The man himself stood there, his great
height and breadth overshadowing me. His face was bronzed under his
thick black hair; his mouth wore a wicked smile as his keen eyes ranged
round the embarrassed table. He had heard the last part of Lacey's
joking challenge to Aspenick.

"What's Sir John Aspenick got to take on? What's the event?"

The general embarrassment grew no less--but then it had never existed in
young Lacey. He raised his fearless fresh blue eyes to the big man.

"To give you a thrashing," he said.

"Ah," said Octon, "I'm too old. I'm not like you." Lacey flushed
suddenly. "And perhaps I'm a bit too big--and you're hardly that yet,
are you?"

Perhaps he was too big! I noticed again his wonderful hands. They were
large beyond reasonable limits of size, but full of muscle--no fat. They
were restless too--always moving as if they wanted to be at work; if the
work were to strangle a bull, I could imagine their being well pleased.
He might need a thrashing--but, sturdy as the sons of Catsford were,
there was none in the park that day who could have given him one.

Young Lacey was very red. I was a little uneasy as to what he would say
or do; Fillingford saved the situation. He stood up and offered his hand
to Octon, saying, "We're always glad to welcome a neighbor safely back.
I hope your trip was prosperous?"

It was the right thing wrongly said--at least, inadequately said. It was
civil, not cordial. They made a contrast, these men. Fillingford was too
negative, Octon too positive. One defended where none attacked, the
other attacked where no offense had been given. Unnecessary reserve
against uncalled-for aggression! Fillingford was not popular--Octon was
hated. Octon did not mind the hatred--did Fillingford feel the lack of
liking? His reserve baffled me: I could not tell. With all Octon's
faults, friendship with him seemed easier--and more attractive. The path
might be rough--but the gate was not locked.

"Sure, Mr. Austin, it's time for the prizes?" said Lady Sarah.

It was not time, but I hastily said that it was, and with some relief
escorted her to the platform. The rest followed, after, I suppose, a
formal greeting to the unwelcome Prodigal; he himself did not come with
us.

When Lady Sarah had distributed the prizes, I made a little speech on my
chief's behalf--a speech of welcome to county and to town. Fillingford
replied first, his speech was like himself--proper, cold, composed. Then
Bindlecombe got up, mopping his forehead--the Mayor was apt to get
hot--but making no mean appearance with his British solidity of figure,
his shrewd face, and his sturdy respect for the office he exercised by
the will of his fellow-citizens.

"My lords, ladies, and gentlemen--as Mayor of Catsford I have just one
word to say on behalf of the borough. We thank the generous lady who has
welcomed us here to-day. We look forward to welcoming her when she's
ready for us. All Catsford men are proud of Nicholas Driver. He did a
great deal for us--maybe we did something for him. He wasn't a man of
words, but he was proud of the borough as the borough was proud of him.
From what I hear, I think we shall be proud of Miss Driver, too--and I
hope she'll be proud of the borough as her father was before her. We
wish her long life and prosperity."

Bravo, Bindlecombe! But Lady Sarah looked astonishingly sour. There was
something almost feudal in the relationship which the Mayor's words
suggested. Jenny as Overlord of Catsford would not be to Lady Sarah's
liking.

I got rid of them; I beg pardon--they civilly dismissed me. Only young
Lacey had for me a word of more than formality. He did me the honor to
ask my opinion--as from one gentleman to another.

"I say, do you think Octon had a right to say that?"

"The retort was justifiable--strictly."

"He need hardly----"

"No, he needn't."

"Well, good-by, Mr. Austin. I say--I'd like to come and see you. Are you
ever at home in the evenings?"

"Always just now. I should be delighted to see you."

"Evenings at the Manor aren't very lively," he remarked ingenuously.
"And I've left school for good, you know."

The last words seemed to refer--distantly--to Leonard Octon. Without
returning to that disturbing subject I repeated my invitation and then,
comparatively free from my responsibilities, repaired alone to the
terrace.

Octon was still there--extended on three chairs, smoking and drinking a
whisky and soda. I asked him about his travels--he was just back from
the recesses of Africa (if there are, truly, any recesses left)--but
gained small satisfaction. His predominant intellectual interest
was--insects! He would hunt a beetle from latitude to latitude, and by
no means despised the pursuit of a flea. My interest in the study of
religion assorted ill with this: when I questioned on my subject, he
replied on his. All other incidents of his journeys he passed over, both
in talk and in writing (he had written two books eminent in their own
line), with a brevity thoroughly Caesarean. "Having taken the city and
killed the citizens"--Caesar invaded another tribe!--That was the style.
Only Octon's tribes were insects, Caesar's patriots. It was, however,
rumored--as Bertram Ware had hinted in a jocose form--that Octon's
summaries were, sometimes and in their degree, as eloquent as Caesar's
own.

"Hang my journeys!" he said, as I put one more of my futile questions.
"I got six bugs--one indisputably new. But I didn't hurry up here--I
only got home this morning--to talk about that. I hurried up here,
Austin----"

"To annoy your neighbors--knowing they were assembled here?"

"That was a side-show," he assured me. "Though it was entertaining
enough. And, after all, young Lacey began on me! No--I came to bring you
news of your liege lady. I've been in Paris, too, Austin."

"And you met her?"

"I met her often--with her cat."

"Miss Chatters?"

"Precisely. And sometimes without her cat. How do you like the change
from old Driver?"

"I hold no such position, either in county or borough, as need tempt
you--to say nothing of entitling you--to ask impertinent questions,
Octon."

He chuckled out a deep rumbling laugh of amusement. "Good!" he said.
"Well-turned--almost witty! Austin, I've my own pursuits--but I'm
inclined to wish I had your position."

"You're very flattering--but my position is that of an employe--at a
salary which would hardly command your services."

"You can be eyes and ears and hands to her. If I had your position,
I'd"--one of his great hands rose suddenly into the air--"crunch up this
neighborhood. With her resources she could get all the power." His hand
fell again, and he removed his body from two of the three chairs,
shifting himself with easy indolent strength. "Then you'd have it all in
your own control."

"She'd have it in her own control, you must mean," said I.

"Come, you're a man!" he mocked me. But he was looking at me closely,
too--and rather inquisitively, I thought.

"Since you've met her often, I thought you might understand better than
that." To answer him in his own coin, I infused into my tone a contempt
which I hoped would annoy him.

He was not annoyed; he was amused. In the insolence of his strength he
mocked at me--at Jenny through me--at me through Jenny. Yet, pervading
it all, there was revealed an interest--a curiosity--about her that
agreed ill with his assumed contemptuousness.

"She's given you her idea of herself--and you've absorbed it. She thinks
she's another Nick Driver--and you're sure of it! It's all flim-flam,
Austin."

"Have it your own way," said I meekly. "It's no affair of mine what you
choose to think."

"Well, that's a more liberal sentiment than one generally hears in this
neighborhood."

He rose and stretched himself, clenching his big fists in the air over
his head. "At any rate she's told me I may take my walks about here as
usual. I'll drop in and have a pipe with you some day."

Another guest proposed himself! I hoped that the company might always
prove harmonious.

"As for Chat," he went on, "I don't want to boast of my conquests--but
she's mine."

"My congratulations are untouched by envy."

"You may live to change your mind about that. Anyhow I hold her in my
hand."

The truth about him was that, as he loved his strength, so, and no less,
he loved the display of it. A common, doubtless not the highest,
characteristic of the strong! Display is apt to pass into boast. He was
not at all loath to hint to me--to force me to guess--that his
encounters in Paris had set him thinking. (If they had set him feeling,
he said nothing about that.) Hence--as I reasoned it--he went on, with a
trifle more than his usual impudence, "Your goose will be cooked when
she marries, though!"

After all, his impudence was good-humored. I retorted in kind. "Perhaps
the husband won't let you walk in the park either!"

"If Fillingford were half a man--Lord, what a chance!"

"You gossip as badly as the women themselves. Why not say young Lacey at
once?"

"The boy? I'd lay him over my knee--at the first word of it."

"He'd stab you under the fifth rib as you did it."

The big man laughed. "Then my one would be worse than his sound dozen!
And what you say isn't at all impossible. He's a fine boy, that! After
all, though, he's inherited his courage. The father's no coward,
either."

We had become engrossed in our interchange of shots--hostile, friendly,
or random. One speaks sometimes just for the repartee, especially when
no more than feeling after the interpretation of a man.

Moreover Loft's approach was always noiseless. On Octon's last words, he
was by my side.

"I beg pardon, sir, but Miss Driver has telephoned from London to say
that she'll be down to-morrow and glad to see you at lunch. And I was to
say, sir, would you be so kind as to send word to Mr. Octon that she
would be very pleased if he would come, too, if his engagements
permitted."

"Oh--yes--very good, Loft. This is Mr. Octon."

"Yes, sir," said Loft. The tone was noncommittal. He knew Octon--but
declared no opinion.

I was taken aback, for I had received no word of her coming; I had been
led not to expect her for four or five weeks. Octon's eye caught mine.

"Changed her mind and come back sooner? Well, I did just the same
myself."

By themselves the words were nothing. In connection with our little
duel--backed by the man's broad smile and the forceful assertion of his
personality--they amounted to a yet plainer boast--"I've come--and I
thought she would." That is too plain for speech--even for Octon's
ill-restrained tongue--but not too plain for his bearing. But then I
doubted whether his bearing were toward facts or merely toward me--were
proof of force or effort after effect.

"Clearly Miss Chatters can't keep away from you!" I said.

"Clearly we're going to have a more amusing time than we'd been hoping,"
he answered and, with a casual and abrupt "Good-by," turned on his heel,
taking out another great cigar as he went.

Perhaps we were--if amusing should prove to be the right word about it.
So ran my instinct--with no express reason to be given for it. Why
should not Jenny come home? Why should Octon's coming have anything to
do with it? In truth I was affected, I was half dominated for the
moment, by his confidence and his force. I had taken the impression he
wanted to give--just as he accused me of taking the impression that
Jenny sought to give. So I told myself consolingly. But I could not help
remembering that in those countries which he frequented, where he got
his insects and very probably his ideas, men were said as often to win
or lose--to live or die--by the impression they imparted to friends,
foes, and rivals as by the actual deeds they did. I could not judge how
far that was true--but that or something like it was surely what they
called prestige? If a man created prestige, you did not even try to
oppose him. Nay, you hastened to range yourself on his side--and your
real little power went to swell his asserted big power--his power big in
assertion but in fact, as against the present foe, still unproved. Had
the prestige been brought to bear on Chat--so that she was wholly his?
Was it being brandished before my eyes, to gain me also--for what I was
worth?

After all, it was flattering of him to think that I mattered. I mattered
so very little. If he were minded to impress, if he were ready to fight,
his display and his battle must be against another foe--or--if the
evidence of that talk at the Flower Show went for anything--against
several. If an attack on Breysgate Priory were really in his mind, he
would find no ally--outside its walls.




CHAPTER V

RAPIER AND CLUB


Any account of Jenny Driver's doings is in danger of seeming to progress
by jumps and jerks, and thereby of contradicting the truth about its
subject. Cartmell, her principal man of business, scoffed at the idea
that Jenny was impulsive at all; after six months' experience of her he
said that he had never met a cooler, saner, more cautious judgment. That
this was true of her in business matters I have no reason to doubt, but
(I have noted this distinction already) if the remark is to be extended
to her personal affairs it needs qualification--yet without admitting of
contradiction. There she was undoubtedly impetuous and impulsive on
occasion; a certain course would appeal to her fancy, and she made for
it headlong, regardless, or seeming regardless, of its risks. But even
here, though the impulses prevailed on her suddenly in the end, they
were long in coming to a head, long in achieving mastery, and preceded
by protracted periods either of inaction or of action so wary and
tentative as not to commit her in any serious degree. She would advance
toward the object, then retreat from it, then stand still and look at
it, then walk round and regard it from another point of view. Next she
was apt to turn her back on it and become, for a time, engrossingly
interested in something else; it seemed essential to her ease of mind
that there should be an alternative possible and a line of retreat open.
All this circumspection and deliberation--or, if you like, this dawdling
and shilly-shallying (for opinions of Jenny have differed very widely on
this and on other matters)--had to happen before the rapid and imperious
impulse came to set a limit to them; even then it is doubtful whether
the impulse left her quite unmindful of the line of retreat.

These characteristics of hers were exhibited in her treatment of the
question of the Institute. Although this was a public matter, it was (or
she made it) closely connected with certain private affairs which
inevitably had a profound interest for all of us who surrounded her. My
own belief is that a lift of Lady Sarah Lacey's brows started the
Institute. When she called--this necessary courtesy was punctually
forthcoming from the Manor to the Priory--she heard from Jenny about the
proposed Driver Memorial Hall, how it was to look, where it was to be,
and so forth. She put a question as to funds; Jenny owned to the ten
thousand pounds. All Lady Sarah said was, "Do you feel called upon to do
as much as that?" But she also lifted her brows--conveying thereby (as
Jenny confidently declared) that Miss Driver was taking an exaggerated
view of her father's importance and of her own, and was assuming a
position toward the borough of Catsford which properly belonged to her
betters (perhaps Lady Sarah was recollecting the Mayor's feudal speech!)
At any rate from that day forward Jenny began to hint at bigger things.
The Memorial Hall by itself no longer sufficed. She made a great friend
of Mr. Bindlecombe, and he often came up to Breysgate. Where his beloved
borough was concerned, Bindlecombe was openly and avowedly unscrupulous;
he meant to get all he could out of Miss Driver, and made no concealment
about it. Jenny delighted in this attitude; it gave her endless
opportunities of encouraging and discouraging, of setting up and putting
down, the hopes of Bindlecombe. Between them they elaborated the
idea--Jenny was great at elaborating it, but careful to insist that it
was no more than an idea--of extending the Memorial Hall into a great
Institute, which was to include a memorial hall but to comprise much
besides. It was to be a Driver Literary, Scientific, and Technical
Institute on the handsomest scale. Bindlecombes' patriotic and sanguine
mind hardly hesitated to see in it the nucleus of a future University
for the City of Catsford. (Catsford was in the future to be promoted to
be a "city," though I did not see how Jenny could have anything to do
with that!) The notion of this great Driver Institute pleased Jenny
immensely. How high it would lift Lady Sarah's eyebrows! It made
Cartmell apprehensive about the expense--and she liked to tease him by
suggested extravagance. Finally, it would, she declared, provide me with
a splendid post--as librarian, or principal, or something--which would
give me a worthier scope for my abilities and yet (Jenny looked at me
almost tenderly) let me stay in my dear little home--near
Breysgate--"and near me, Mr. Austin." She played with the idea--as she
played with us. Some gossip about it began to trickle through Catsford.
There was much interest, and Jenny became quite a heroine. Meanwhile
plans for the poor old Memorial Hall were suspended.

According to Bindlecombe the only possible site for the visible
realization of this splendid idea--the only site which the congested
condition of the center of the borough allowed, and also the only one
worthy of the great Institute--was the garden and grounds of Hatcham
Ford. The beautiful old house itself was to be preserved as the center
of an imposing group of handsome buildings; the old gardens need not be
materially spoiled--so Bindlecombe unplausibly maintained. The flavor of
antiquity and aristocracy thus imparted to the Institute would,
Bindlecombe declared, give it a charm and a dignity beyond those
possessed by any other Institute the world over. I was there when he
first made this suggestion to Jenny. She looked at him in silence,
smiled, and glanced quickly at me. The look, though quick, was
audacious--under the circumstances.

"But what will Mr. Octon say to that?"

Bindlecombe deferentially hinted that he understood that Mr. Octon's
lease of Hatcham Ford expired, or could be broken, in two or three
years. He understood--perhaps he was wrong--that Mr. Driver usually
reserved a power to break leases at the end of seven years? Mr. Cartmell
would, of course, know all about that.

"Oh, if that's so," said Jenny, "of course it would be quite simple.
Wouldn't it, Mr. Austin?"

"As simple as drawing a badger," I replied--and Bindlecombe looked
surprised to hear such a sporting simile pass my lips. It was by no
means a bad one, though, and Jenny rewarded it with a merry little nod.

At this point, then, her public project touched her private
relations--and her relations with Octon had been close ever since her
return from Paris. He had been a constant visitor at Breysgate, and my
belief was that within a very few weeks of her arrival he had made a
direct attack--had confronted her with a downright proposal--demand is a
word which suits his method better--for her hand. I did not think that
she had refused, I was sure that she had not accepted. She was fond of
referring, in his presence, to the recent date of her father's death, to
her own immersion in business, to the "strangeness" of her new life and
the necessity of "finding her feet" before doing much. These
references--rather pathetic and almost apologetic--Octon would receive
with a frown of impatience--sometimes even of incredulity; but he did
not make them an occasion of quarrel. He continued to come constantly to
the Priory--certainly three or four times a week. There is no doubt that
he was, in his way, very much in love with Jenny. It was an overbearing
sort of way--but it had two great merits: it was resolute and it was
disinterested. He was quite clear that he wanted her; it was quite clear
that he did not care about her money, though he might envy her power.
And if he tried to dominate her, he had to submit to constant proofs of
her domination also. She could, and did, make him furiously angry; he
was often undisguisedly impatient of her coynesses and her hesitations:
but he could not leave her nor the hopes he had of her. And she, on her
side, could not--at least did not--send him away. For that matter she
never liked sending anybody away--not even Powers; it seemed to make her
kingdom less by one--a change in quite the wrong direction. Octon would
have been a great loss, for he had, without doubt, a strong, and an
increasingly strong, attraction for her. She liked at least to play at
being subjugated by his masculine force; she did, in fact, to a great
extent approve and admire his semi-barbaric way (for her often mitigated
by a humor which he kept for the people he liked) of speaking of and
dealing with women. Down in her heart she thought that attitude rather
the right thing in a man, and liked to think of it as a power before
which she might yield. At the theater she was always delighted when the
rebellious maiden or the charming spitfire of a wife, at last, in the
third act, hailed the hero as her "master." So far she was primitive
amidst all her subtlety. But to Jenny's mind it was by no means the
third act yet; even the plot of the play was not laid out so far ahead
as that. If this masterful, quick, assertive way of wooing were proper
to man, woman had her weapons; she had her natural weapons, she had the
weapons a civilized state of society gave her, and she had those which
casual chance might add to her arsenal. Under the last of these three
categories fell the project of the Driver Institute, to be established
at Mr. Octon's present residence, Hatcham Ford.

It was a great chance for Jenny. Institutes as such, and all similar
works, Octon hated--why educate people who ought to be driven? The
insolence not of rank but of intellect spoke in him with a strong voice.
Bindlecombe he hated, and it was mainly Bindlecombe's idea. Catsford he
hated, because it was gradually but surely spreading to the gates of his
beautiful old house. Deeper than this, he hated being under anybody's
power; it was bitter to him that, when his mind was to stay,
anybody--whether Jenny or another--should be able to tell him to go.
Finally, his special position toward Jenny made the mere raising of the
question of his future residence a rare chance for her--a chance of
teasing and vexing, of coaxing and soothing, or of artful pretense that
there was no underlying question at all.

She told him about the project--it was nothing more, she was careful to
remark--after dinner one evening, in her most artless manner.

"It's a perfect idea--only I hope you wouldn't mind turning out?"

He had listened sullenly, pulling hard at his cigar. Chat was watching
him with alarmed eyes; he had cast his spell on Chat, that was certain;
there his boast did not go beyond truth.

"Being turned out, you mean, I imagine! I'd never willingly turn out to
make room for any such nonsense. Of all the humbugs----"

"It's my duty to do something for the town," she urged--very grave.

"Let them do their work by day and drink their beer by night. Fancy
those fellows in my house!"

"I'm sorry you feel like that. I thought you'd be interested--and--and
I'd try to find you a house somewhere else. There must be some other
houses, Mr. Austin?"

"One or two round about, I fancy," said I.

"Nice little ones--to suit a single man?" she asked, her bright eyes now
seeking, now eluding, a meeting with his.

"I suppose I can choose the size of my house for myself," Octon growled.
"I don't want Austin's advice about it."

"Oh, it wasn't poor Mr. Austin who--who spoke about the size of the
house." A sudden thought seemed to strike her. "You might stay on and be
something in the Institute!"

"I'd burn the house over my head sooner."

"Burn my pretty house! Oh, Mr. Octon! I should be so hurt--and you'd be
sent to prison! What a lot of police it would need to take you there!"

The last sentence mollified him--and it was clever of her to know that
it would. He had his primitive side, too. He was primitive enough to
love a compliment to his muscles.

"I'd be out of the country before they came--with you under my arm," he
said, with a laugh.

"That would be very forgiving--but hardly proper, would it, Chat? Unless
we were--Oh, but what nonsense! Why don't you like my poor Institute?"

He relapsed into ill-humor, and it developed into downright rudeness.

"It's nothing to me how people make fools of themselves," he said.

Jenny did not always resent his rudeness. But she never compromised her
right to resent it. She exercised the right now, rising with
instantaneous dignity. "It's time for us to go, Chat. Mr. Austin, will
you kindly look after Mr. Octon's comfort for the rest of the evening?"
She swept out, Chat pattering after her in a hen-like flutter. Octon
drank off his glass of wine with a muttered oath. Excellent as the port
was, it seemed to do him no good. He leaned over to me--perfectly sober,
be it understood (I never saw him affected by liquor), but desperately
savage. "I won't stand that," he said. "If she sticks to that, I'll
never come back to this house when I've walked out of it to-night."

I was learning how to deal with his tempests. "I shall hope to have the
pleasure of encountering you elsewhere," I observed politely. "Meanwhile
I have my orders. Pray help yourself to port."

He did that, but at the same moment hurled at me the order--"Take her
that message."

"There's pen and ink behind you, Octon."

Temper is a terrible master--and needs looking after even as a servant.
He jumped up, wrote something--what I could only guess--and rang the
bell violently. I could imagine Jenny's smile--I did not ring like that.

"Take that to your mistress," he commanded. "It's the address she
wanted." But he had carefully closed the envelope, and probably Loft had
his private opinion.

We sat in silence till the answer came. "Miss Driver says she is much
obliged, sir, for the address," said Loft as, with a wave of his hand,
he introduced a footman with coffee, "and she needn't trouble you any
more in the matter--as you have another engagement to-night."

Under Loft's eyes he had pulled himself together; he received the
message with an appearance of indifference which quite supported the
idea that it related to some trifle and that he really had to go away
early; I had not given him credit for such a power of suddenly regaining
self-control. He nodded, and said lightly to me, "Well, since Miss
Driver is so kind, I'll be off in another ten minutes." The presence of
servants must, in the long run, create a great deal of good manners.

When Loft was out of the room Octon dropped his disguise. He brought his
big hand down on the table with a slap, saying, "There's an end of it!"

"Why shouldn't she build an Institute? If you take a lease for only
seven years, how are you aggrieved by getting notice to quit at the end
of the term?"

"Don't argue round the fringe of things. Don't be a humbug," he
admonished me, scornfully enough, yet for once, as I fancied, with a
touch of gentleness and liking. "You've damned sharp eyes, and I've
something else to do than take the trouble to blind them."

"No extraordinary acuteness of vision is necessary," I ventured to
remark.

He rose from his chair with a heavy sigh, leaving his coffee and brandy
untouched. I felt inclined to tell him that in all likelihood he was
taking the matter too seriously: he was assuming finality--a difficult
thing to assume when Jenny was in the case. He came to me and laid his
hand on my shoulder. "They manage 'em better in Africa," he said with a
sardonic grin. "Of course I'd no business to say that to her--but hadn't
she been trying to draw me all the time? She does it--then she makes a
shindy!"

"I'll see you a bit on your way," I said. He accepted my offer by
slipping his hand under my arm. I opened the door for us to pass out.
There stood Chat on the threshold. Octon regarded her with an
ill-subdued impatience. Chat was fluttering still.

"Oh, Mr. Octon, she's--she's so angry! Might I--oh, might I take a
message to her room? She's gone upstairs and forbidden me to follow."

"Thank you, but there's no message to take."

"If you would just say something----!"

"There's no message to take." Again his tone was not rough--it was
moody, almost absent: but, as he left Chat behind in her useless
agitation, he leaned on my arm very heavily. Though I counted his whole
great body as for me less than her little finger, yet a subtle male
freemasonry stirred in me. He had behaved very badly--for a man should
bear a pretty woman's pin-pricks--yet he was hard hit; all against him
as I was, I knew that he was hard hit. Moreover, he had summed up
Jenny's procedure pretty accurately.

We put on our coats--it was now September--undid the big door, and went
out, down the steps, into a clear frosty night. We had walked many yards
along the drive before he spoke. At last he said, very quietly--

"You're a good chap, Austin, and I'm sorry I've made a row to-night.
Yes, I'm sorry for that. But whether I'm sorry I've been kicked out or
not--well, that's a difficult question. My temper--well, sometimes I'm a
bit afraid of it."

"Oh, that's nothing. You've both got tempers. You'll make it up."

He spoke with a calm deliberation unusual with him. "I don't think I'd
better," he said. "I don't quite trust myself: I might do
something--queer."

In my opinion that possibility about him attracted Jenny; but it needed
no artificial fostering, and I held my peace.

There were electric lights at intervals down the drive: at this moment I
could see his face plainly. I thoroughly agreed with what he said and
understood his judgment of himself. But it was hard to see him look like
that about it. Suddenly--as I still looked--his expression changed. A
look of apprehension came over him--but he smiled also, and gripped my
arm tightly. A figure walked out of the darkness into the light of the
lamp.

I recalled how I had found her sitting by my hearth one night--in time
to make me recall my resignation. Was she here to make Octon unsay his
determination?

She came up to us smiling--with no air of surprise, real or affected,
and with no explanation of her own presence.

"Both of you! What luck! I didn't think you'd come away from the house
yet."

"I've come away from the house, Miss Driver," said Octon--rather grimly.

"In fact you've--'walked out of the house'--?" asked Jenny, smiling. The
dullest ears could not miss the fact that she was quoting.

"Yes," answered Octon briefly, leaving the next move with her. She had
no hesitation over it.

"Let not the sun go down upon your wrath!" she cried gayly. "The sun is
down, but the moon will be up soon, and if you won't quarrel any more
I'll keep you company for a little bit of the way." She turned to me,
"Do you mind waiting at the house a quarter of an hour? I've had a
letter from Mr. Cartmell that I want to consult you about."

Octon had not replied to her invitation and did not now. As I said, "All
right--I'll smoke a pipe outside and wait for you," she beckoned lightly
and merrily to him. After an almost imperceptible pause he moved slowly
after her. Gradually their figures receded from the area of lamplight
and grew dim in the darkness. The moon peeped over the hill but gave no
light yet by which they could be seen.

I had never believed in the permanence of that quarrel. Though it was a
strong instance, yet it was hardly more than a typical instance of their
quarrels--of the constant clashing of his way against hers--of the play
between her rapier and his club. If their intimacy went on, they might
have worse quarrels that. For me the significance of the evening lay not
in another proof that Jenny, while saving her pride and scoring her
formal victory, would still not let him go--and perhaps would go far to
keep him; that was an old story, or, at least, a bit of discernment of
her now months old; rather it lay in Octon's account of his own
disposition toward her proceedings--in his puzzle whether he were glad
or sorry to be "kicked out"--in that fear of himself and of his
self-restraint which made him relieved to go, even while his face was
wrung with the pain of going. In view of that, I felt that I also should
have been relieved if he had really gone--gone not to return--not to
submit himself again to the variety of Jenny's ways--to the quick
flashing alternation of her weapons, natural, conventional, casual, or
whatsoever they might be. He was right about himself--he was not the man
for that treatment. He could not appreciate the artistic excellence of
it; he felt, even if he deserved, its cruelty. Moreover, it might prove
dangerous. What if he beat down the natural weapons--and ignored the
rest? One thing at least was clear; he would not again tell me--or even
pretend to me--that her power was "all flim-flam."

She came back in half an hour, at a leisurely pace, looking much pleased
with herself.

I was smoking on the steps by the hall door.

"That's all right," she assured me with a cheerful smile. "We're quite
friends, and he's not going to be such a bear any more--if he can help
it, which, Mr. Austin, I doubt."

"How did you manage it?" I asked--not that there was much real need of
inquiry.

"Of course I told him that the Institute was nothing but an idea, and
that, even if it were built, its being at Hatcham Ford was the merest
idea, and that, even if it had to be at Hatcham Ford--well, I pointed
out that two years are two years--(You needn't take the trouble to nod
about that--it was quite a sensible remark)--that two years are two
years and that very likely he wouldn't want the house at all by then."

"I see."

"So, of course, he apologized for his rudeness and promised not to be so
foolish again, and we said good night quite friends. What have you been
thinking about?"

"I don't think I could possibly tell you."

I was just opening the door for her. She paused on the threshold,
lifting her brows a little and smiling as she whispered, "Something
uncomplimentary?"

"That depends what you want to be complimented on," I answered.

"Oh, as long as it's on anything!" she cried. "You'll admit my
compliments to-night have been terribly left-handed?"

"I don't know that mine hasn't a touch of that. Well--I think it's very
brave to play games in the crater of an active volcano--exceedingly
brave it is!"

"Brave? But not very----?"

"Let's leave it where it is. What about Cartmell's letter?"

"That'll do to-morrow." (Of course it would--it had been only an
instrument of dismissal.) "I'm tired to-night." Her face grew grave: she
experienced another mood--or touched another note. "My friend, you must
believe that I always listen to what you say. I mayn't see things just
as you seem to, sometimes, but what you say always makes me think. By
the bye, are you very busy, or could you ride to-morrow?"

"Of course!" I cried eagerly. "Seven-thirty, as usual?"

"A quarter to eight sharp. Good night." She gave me a contented friendly
smile, with just a hint of triumph about it, and went upstairs.

It shows what a good thing life is that I, too, in spite of my
questionings and apprehension, repaired home forgetful of them for the
time and full of exultation. I loved riding; and Jenny on horseback was
a companion for a god.

On reflection it might have occurred to me that it was easier for her to
invite me to ride than to listen too exactly to my counsels--quite as
easy and really as well calculated to keep me content. Happily the youth
in me found in her more than the subject of fears or the source of
questionings. She could also delight.




CHAPTER VI

TAKING TO OPEN SEA


On her morning rides Jenny wore a habit of russet brown and a
broad-brimmed hat to match; her beautiful mare was a golden chestnut;
the motive and the crown of all the scheme showed in her brilliant hazel
eyes. On this fine morning--there was a touch of autumn frost, slowly
yielding before the growing strength of the sun, but the ground was
springy under us--Jenny bore a holiday air; no cares and no schemes
beset her. To my poor ability I shared and seconded her mood, though my
black coat and drab breeches were a sad failure in the matter of outward
expression. She made straight for the north gate of the Priory park; we
passed through it, crossed the road, and entered, by a farm-gate, on to
Fillingford territory. "I almost always come here," she told me.
"There's such a splendid gallop. Now and then I meet Lord Lacey, and we
have a race."

Not being an habitual party to these excursions--it was my usual lot to
lie in wait for the early post and reduce the letters to order for our
after-breakfast session--I had seen and heard nothing of her encounters
with young Lacey. I conceived that the two houses were still on the
terms of distant civility to which Lady Sarah's passive resistance had
endeavored to confine them. A formal call from each lady on the other--a
no less formal visit to Jenny from Lord Fillingford (who left his son's
card also)--there it had seemed to stop, the Mayor of Catsford and the
Memorial Hall perhaps in some degree contributing to that result. Fine
mornings a-horseback and youthful blood had, however, sapped Lady
Sarah's defenses. I was glad--and I envied Lacey. He had much to be
thankful for. True, they talked of sad financial troubles at Fillingford
Manor, but you may hear many a fine gentleman rail at the pinch of
poverty, as he pours, in no ungenerous measure, his own champagne down
his throat at half-a-crown a glass. Perhaps at Fillingford that luxury
did not rule every day; but at any rate Lacey had a good horse to
ride--to say nothing of pleasant company.

Well, all he had he deserved, if only because he looked what he was so
splendidly. If Providence, or nature, or society makes a scheme of
things, it is surely a merit in us poor units to fit into it? Let others
attack or defend the country gentleman. Anyhow, if you are one, look it!
And for such an one as does look it I have a heartfelt admiration, from
the crown of his head to the sole of his foot--with a special affection
for his legs in perfect boots and breeches. Young Lacey was such a
consummate type; I did not wonder that Jenny's ever liberal appreciation
smiled beams of approval as he appeared over the crest of a rising
hillock and rode on to meet us. Excellent, too, were the lad's manners;
he appeared really glad to see me--which in the nature of the case he
hardly can have been in his heart.

"I'm going to win this morning!" he cried to Jenny. "I feel like winning
to-day!"

"Why to-day? You don't win very often."

"That's true," he said to me. "Miss Driver's won two to my one, regular.
At sixpence a race I owe her three shillings already."

I had a feeling that Jenny glanced at me, but I did not look at Jenny. I
did not even do the sum, though it was easy arithmetic.

"But to-day--well, in the first place I've got my commission--and in the
second Aunt Sarah's gone to London for a week."

"I congratulate you on the commission."

"And you're loftily indifferent about Aunt Sarah?" he asked, laughing.
"I say, though, come along! Are you a starter, Mr. Austin?"

I declined the invitation, but I managed to keep them well in sight--and
my deliberate opinion is that Jenny pulled. She could have won, I swear
it, if she had liked; as it was, she was beaten by a length. The lad was
ingenuously triumphant. "Science is beginning to tell," he declared.
"You won't hold your lead long!"

"Sometimes it's considered polite to let a lady win," Jenny suggested.

"Oh, come! If she challenges she must take her chance in fair fight."

"Then what chance have we poor women?" asked deceptive Jenny--who could
have won the race.

"You beat us in some things, I admit. Brains, very often, and, of
course, charm and all that sort of thing." He paused a moment, blushed a
little, and added, "And--er--of course--out of sight in moral
qualities."

I liked his "moral qualities." It hinted that reverence was alive in
him. I am not sure it did not indicate that the reverence due to woman
in the abstract was supremely due to the woman by his side.

"Out of sight in moral qualities?" she repeated thoughtfully. "Yes, I
suppose even a woman may hope that that's true. Don't you think so, Mr.
Austin?"

"It has always been conceded in civilized communities," I agreed.

"What I hate about that fellow Octon--Oh, I beg pardon--isn't he a
friend of yours?"

"I know him pretty well. He's rather interesting."

"I hate the fellow's tone about--about that sort of thing. Cheap, I call
it. But I don't suppose he does it to you; you wouldn't stand it."

"I'm very patient with my friends," said Jenny.

"Friends! You and that--! Oh, well, let's have another gallop."

The gallop brought us in full view of Fillingford Manor; it lay over
against us in the valley, broad expanses of meadow and of lawn leading
up to a formal garden, beyond which rose the long low red-brick facade
half covered with ivy, and a multitude of twisting chimneys.

"Jolly old place, isn't it?" cried Lacey. "I say, wouldn't you like to
see over it? I don't expect Aunt Sarah showed you much!"

"I should like to see over it very much, if your father would ask me."

"Oh, he will--he'll be delighted. I say, come this week--while we're by
ourselves?"

"Yes, if he invites me."

"He'll invite you. He likes you very much--only he's not exactly
expansive, you know, the governor!"

"Never mind, you are. Now Mr. Austin and I must go back to breakfast and
to work."

"By Jove, I must be getting back, too, or I shall keep the governor
waiting, and he doesn't like that."

"If you do, tell him it's my fault."

The boy looked at her, then at me, again blushed a little, and laughed.
The slightest flush appeared on Jenny's smiling face. I took the
opportunity to light a cigarette. The morning races had not been talked
about at Fillingford!

"Well no--you mustn't put it on the woman, must you?" said Jenny, as she
waved a laughing farewell.

On our way home she was silent and thoughtful, speaking only now and
then and answering one or two remarks of mine rather absently. One
observation threw some light on her thoughts.

"It's very awkward that Mr. Octon should make himself so unpopular. I
want to be friends with everybody, but--" She broke off. I did no more
than give a nod of assent. But I knew--and thought she must--how Octon
stood. He was considered to have made himself impossible. He was not
asked to Fillingford; Aspenick had bluntly declared that he would not
meet him on account of a rude speech of Octon's, leveled at Lady
Aspenick; Bertram Ware and he were at daggers drawn over some
semipolitical semiprivate squabble in which Octon's language had been of
more than its usual violence. The town loved him no better than the
county. Jenny wanted to be popular everywhere--popular, influential,
acclaimed. She was weighted by this unpopular friendship--which yet had
such attraction for her. The cares of state had fastened on her again as
we jogged homeward.

Well, they were the joy of her life--it would have needed a dull man not
soon to see that. The real joy, I mean--not what at that moment--nay,
nor perhaps at any moment--she would herself have named as her delight.
Her joy in the sense in which we creatures--and the wisest among us long
ago--come nearest to being able to understand and define the innermost
engine or instinct whose working is most truly ourselves--the temptation
to live and life itself which pair nature has so cunningly coupled
together. Effective activity--the reaching out to make of external
things and people (especially, perhaps, things and people that
obstinately resist) part of our own domain--their currency coinage of
ours, with the stamp of our mint, bearing our superscription--causing
the writ of our issuing to run where it did not run before--is not this,
however ill-expressed (and bigger men than I have failed, and will fail,
fully to express it), something like what the human spirit attempts? Or
is there, too, a true gospel of drawing in--of renouncing? In the
essential, mind you!--It is easy in trifles, in indulgences and
luxuries. But to surrender the exercise and expansion of self?

If that be right, if that be true--at any rate it was not Jenny Driver.
She was a strong, natural-born swimmer, cast now for the first time into
open sea--after the duck ponds of her Smalls and her Simpsons. It was
not the smooth waters which tested, tried, or in innermost truth
delighted her most.

All this in a very tiny corner? Of course. Will you find me anywhere
that is not a corner, please? Alexander worked in one, and Caesar. "What
does it matter then what I do?" "No more," I must answer, being no
philosopher and therefore unprepared with a theory, "than it matters
whether or not you are squashed under yonder train. But if you think--on
your own account--that the one matters, why, for all we can say, perhaps
the other does."

That duck pond of the Simpsons'! By apparent chance--it may be, in fact,
by some unusual receptivity in my own bearing--that very day Chat talked
to me about it. I had grown friendlier toward Chat, having perceived
that the cunning in her--(it was there, and refuted Cartmell's charge of
mere foolishness)--ran to no more than a decent selfishness, informed by
years of study of Jenny, deflected by a spinsterish admiration of
Octon's claim to unquestioned male dominion. Her reason said--"We are
very well as we are. I am comfortable. I am 'putting by.' Jenny's
marriage might make things worse." The spinster added, "But this must
end some day. Let it end--when it must--in an irresistible (perhaps to
Chat's imagination a rather lurid) conquest." Paradoxically her instinct
(for if anything be an instinct, selfishness is) squared with what I had
deciphered of Jenny's strategy--in immediate action at least. Chat would
not have Octon shown the door; neither would she set him at the head of
the table--just yet. Being comfortable, she abhorred all chance of
convulsions--as Jenny, being powerful, resented all threat of dominion.
But if the convulsion must come--as it must some day--Chat wanted it
dramatic--matter for gossip and for flutters! To her taste Octon
fulfilled that aesthetic requirement.

Naturally Chat saw Jenny at the Simpsons' from her own point of
view--through herself--and by that avenue approached the topic.

"Of course things are very much changed for the better in most ways, Mr.
Austin--if they'll only last. The comforts!--And, of course, the salary!
Well, it's not the thing to talk about that. Still I daresay you
yourself sometimes think--? Yes, of course, one must consider it. But
there were features of the rectory life which I confess I miss. We had
always a very cheerful tea, and supper, too, was sociable. In fact one
never wanted for a chat. Here I'm thrown very much on my own resources.
Jenny is out or busy, and Mrs. Bennet--the housekeeper, you know--is
reserved and, of course, not at her ease with me. And then there was the
authority!" (Was Chat also among the Caesars?) "Poor Chat had a great
deal of authority at the rectory, Mr. Austin--yes--she had! Mrs. Simpson
an invalid--the rector busy or not caring to meddle--the girls were left
entirely to me. My word was law." She shook her head regretfully over
the change in her position.

"We all like that, Miss Chatters, when we can get it!"

"Jenny, of course, was different--and that made it difficult sometimes.
Besides being the eldest, she was very well paid for and, although not
pampered and, I must say, considering all things as I now know them,
very ill-supplied with pocket money, there were orders that she should
ride every day. Two horses and the hostler from the Bull every
day--except Sundays! It couldn't but make a difference, especially with
a girl of Jenny's disposition--not altogether an easy one, Mr. Austin.
It had to be give-and-take between us. If she obeyed me, there were many
little things I could do--having, as I say, the authority. If she would
do her lessons well--and her example had great influence on the
others--I didn't trouble to see what books she had in her bedroom (with
the other girls I did), nor even ask questions if she stayed out a
little late for supper. Of course we had to be very much on our guard;
it didn't do to make the Simpson girls jealous."

"You had a little secret understanding between yourselves?"

"Never, Mr. Austin! I wouldn't have done such a thing with any of my
pupils. It would be subversive of discipline."

"Of course it would; I beg your pardon." (Here a little "homage to
virtue" on both our parts!)

"She knew how far she could go; she knew when I must say 'Stop!' She
never put me to it--though I must say she went very near the line
sometimes. She came to us very raw, too, with really no idea of what was
ladylike. What those Smalls can have been like! You see what she is now.
I don't think I did so badly."

I saw what she was now--or some of it. And I seemed to see it all
growing up in that country rectory--the raw girl from the Smalls (those
deplorable Smalls!) at Cheltenham, learning her youthful lessons in
diplomacy--how far one can go, where one must stop, how keen a bargain
can be struck with Authority. Chat had been Authority then. There was
another now. Yet where the difference in principle?

"I can't have managed so very badly, because they were all
broken-hearted to lose me--I often think how they can be getting
on!--and here I am with Jenny! Well, poor Chat would have had to go
soon, anyhow. They were all growing up. That time comes. It must be so
in my profession, Mr. Austin. Indispensable to-day, to-morrow you're not
wanted!"

"That sounds sad. You must be glad, in the end, that you didn't stay?"

"It'll be the same here some day. For all you or I know, it might be
to-morrow. The only thing is to suit as long as we can, and to put by a
little."

I vowed--within my breast--that henceforth Chat's little foibles--or
defenses?--her time-serving, her cowardice, her flutters, her judgment
of Jenny's concerns from a point of view not primarily Jenny's, her
encroachments on the port and other stolen (probably transient!)
luxuries--all these should meet with gentle and sympathetic
appraisement. She was only trying to "suit"--and meanwhile to put by a
little. But I was not sure what she had done, or helped to do, to Jenny,
nor that her ex-pupil's best course would not lie in presenting her with
her _conge_ and a substantial annuity.

An invitation came from Fillingford in which Chat and I were courteously
included. Jenny, however, found work for poor Chat at home (alas, for
the days of Authority!) and made me drive her over in the dog-cart. As
we drove in at the gates, she asked suddenly, "How am I to behave?"

"Don't look at anything as if you wanted to buy it," was the best
impromptu advice I could hit on.

"I might do it tactfully! Don't you remember what my father said?--'You
may succeed in your way better than I in mine.'"

"I remember. And you think he referred to tact?"

Jenny took so long to answer that there was no time to answer at all; we
were at the door, and young Lacey was waiting.

The house was beautiful and stately; I think that Jenny was surprised to
find that it was also in decent repair. There was nothing ragged,
nothing poverty-stricken; a grave and moderate handsomeness marked all
the equipment. The fall in fortune was rather to be inferred from what
was absent than rudely shown in the present condition of affairs. Thus
the dining-room was called the Vandyke Room--but there were no Vandykes;
a charming little boudoir was called the Madonna Parlor--but the Madonna
had taken flight, probably a long flight across the Atlantic. In giving
us the names Lord Fillingford made no reference to their being no longer
applicable--he seemed to use them in mechanical habit, forgetful of
their significance--and Jenny, mindful perhaps of the spirit of my
warning, refrained from questions. But for what was to be seen she had a
generous and genuine enthusiasm; the sedate beauty and serenely grand
air of the old place went to her heart.

But one picture did hang in the Madonna Parlor--a half-length of a
beautiful high-bred girl with large dark eyes and a figure slight almost
to emaciation. Lacey and I, who were behind, entered the room just as
the other two came to a stand before it. I saw Jenny's face turn toward
Fillingford in inquiry.

"My wife," he said. "She died thirteen years ago--when Amyas was only
five." His voice was dry, but he looked steadily at the picture with a
noticeable intentness of gaze.

"This was mother's own room, Miss Driver," Lacey interposed.

"Yes. How--how it must have suited her!" said Jenny in a low voice.

Fillingford turned his head sharply round and looked at her; with a
slight smile he nodded his head. "She was very fond of this room. She
had it furnished in blue--instead of yellow." Then he moved quickly to
the door. "There's nothing else you'd care to see here, I think."

After lunch Lacey carried Jenny off to the garden--his father seemed to
think that he had done enough as host and to acquiesce readily in the
devolution of his duties--and I sat awhile with Fillingford, smoking
cigarettes--well, he only smoked one. It seemed to me that the man was
like his house; just as the state of its fortune was not rudely declared
in anything unbecoming or shabby, but had to be gathered from the gaps
where beauties once had figured, so the essence of him, and the road to
understanding him, lay in his reserves, his silences, his defensiveness.
What he refrained from doing, being, or saying, was the most significant
thing about him. His manners were irreproachable, his courtesy cast in a
finer mold than that of an ordinary gentleman, yet he did not achieve
real cordiality and remained at a very long arm's length from intimacy.
His highest degree of approval seemed to consist in an absence of
disapprobation; yet, feeling that this negative reward of merit was hard
to win, the recipient took the unsubstantial guerdon with some
gratification. My own hope was to escape from his presence without
having caused him to think that I had done anything offensive; if he had
nothing against me, I should be content. I wondered whether he were
satisfied to have the like measure meted out to him. His son had said he
was "not expansive": that was like denying silkiness to a porcupine. Yet
there was that about him which commanded respect--at least a respect
appropriately negative; you felt certain that he would do nothing sordid
and touch nothing unclean; he would always be true to the code of his
class and generation.

We heard laughter from Jenny and Lacey echoing down the long passages as
they returned from the garden; from the noise their feet made they
seemed to be racing again. The sounds interrupted a rather perfunctory
conversation about Nicholas Driver and the growth of Catsford. Rather to
my surprise--I must confess--his face lit up with a smile--a smile of
pensive sweetness.

"That sounds cheerful," he said. "More like old days!" Then he looked at
me apprehensively, as though afraid that he had proffered an uninvited
confidence. He went on almost apologetically. "It's very quiet here. My
health doesn't fit me for public life, or even for much work in the
county. We do our duty, I hope, but we tend rather to fall out of the
swim. It wasn't so in my wife's time. Well, Amyas will bring all that
back again some day, I hope."

"I'm glad to hear that he's got his commission," said I.

"Yes, he must go and do some work, while I hold the fort for him at
home. Landed property needs a great deal of attention nowadays, Mr.
Austin." Again he smiled, but now wearily, as though his stewardship
were a heavy burden.

The laughing pair burst into the room. Amyas was flushed, Jenny seemed
out of breath; they had a great joke to tell.

"We've found a picture of Miss Driver in the West Gallery," cried Amyas.
"Really it must be her--it's exactly like!"

"Fancy my picture being in your house all this time, Lord
Fillingford--and you never told me!"

Fillingford was looking intently at Jenny now. He raised his brows a
little and smiled, as the result of his survey.

"Yes--I'm afraid I know which picture Amyas means, though I don't often
go to the West Gallery. The one on the right of the north door, Amyas?"

"Yes--in a wonderful gown all over pearls, you know."

"Who is she--besides me?" asked Jenny. "Because I believe she has a look
of me really."

"She's an ancestress--a collateral ancestress at least--of ours. She was
one of Queen Elizabeth's ladies. But we're not proud of her--and you
mustn't be proud of the likeness--if there is one, Miss Driver."

"But I am proud of it. I think she's very pretty--and some day I'll have
a gown made just like that."

"Why aren't we proud of her, father?" asked young Lacey.

"She got into sad disgrace--and very nearly into the Tower, I believe.
Elizabeth made her kinsman Lord Lacey--one of my predecessors--take her
away from Court and bring her down to the country. Here she was kept--in
fact more or less imprisoned. But it didn't last many years. Smallpox
carried her off, poor thing--it was very bad in these parts about
1590--and, unluckily for her, before the queen died.

"What was her name?"

"Mistress Eleanor Lacey."

"And what had she done?" pursued Jenny, full of interest.

"Ah, well, what was the truth about it--who can tell now? It was never
important enough to get put on record. But the family tradition is that
the Queen was jealous of her place in Leicester's affections." He smiled
at Jenny. "I wish Amyas had found you a more acceptable prototype!"

"Oh, I don't know," said Jenny thoughtfully. "I like her looks. Do you
believe that what they said was true?"

"I'm sorry to say that, again according to the family tradition, it
was."

Our dog-cart had been ready for some minutes. Jenny said good-by, and
both father and son escorted her to the door.

"I hope we shall see you at dinner as soon as my sister comes back,"
said Fillingford, as he helped her to mount into the cart. "We must have
a little festivity for Amyas before he joins."

Jenny was all thanks and cordiality, and drove off smiling and waving
her hand gayly.

"Isn't that really rather interesting about Eleanor Lacey? Mind you go
and see the picture next time you're there! It's really very like."

I promised to see the picture, and asked her how she had got on with
Fillingford.

"Oh, I like him well enough, but--" She paused and smiled reflectively.
"Down at the Simpsons' there was a certain young man--boy he really
was--whom we called Rabbit. That was only because of the shape of his
mouth, and has nothing to do with the story! I used sometimes to walk
home with Rabbit--from evening church, or lawn-tennis parties, and so
on, you know." (Were these the occasions on which she was rather late
for supper--without incurring Chat's rebuke?) "We girls used to laugh at
him because he always began by taking great pains to show you that he
didn't mean to flirt--well, at all events, didn't mean to begin the
flirtation. If you wanted to flirt, you must begin yourself--that was
Rabbit's attitude, and he made it perfectly plain in his behavior.

"Rabbit can't have been a very amusing youth to walk home with in the
gloaming?" I ventured to suggest.

"He wasn't, but then there wasn't much choice down at the Simpsons', you
know. Besides, it could be made rather funny with Rabbit. You see, he
wouldn't begin because he had such a terror of being snubbed." She
laughed in an amused reminiscence. "I think I shall call Lord
Fillingford Rabbit," she ended.

"It'll be very disrespectful."

"Oh, you can't make all the nicknames for yourself!" She paused and
added, apparently with a good deal of satisfaction--"Rabbit--and
Volcano--yes!"




CHAPTER VII

THE FLICK OF A WHIP


Jenny spent a large part of the winter in Italy, Chat being with her,
Cartmell and I left in charge at home. But early in the New Year she
came back and then, her mourning being over, she launched out. Without
forgetting her father's injunction against spending all her income, she
organized the household on a more extensive scale; new carriages and
more horses, a couple of motors, and a little electric launch for the
lake were among the additions she made. The out-of-doors staff grew till
Cartmell had to ask for an estate-steward to take the routine off his
shoulders, while Mrs. Bennet and Loft blazed with pride at the swelling
numbers of their subordinates in the house itself. Jenny's taste for
splendor came out. She even loved a touch of the gorgeous; old Mr.
Driver's dark blue liveries assumed a decidedly brighter tint, and I
heard her express regret that postilions and four horses were in these
days thought ostentatious except for very great national or local
potentates. "If I were a peeress, I would have them," she declared
rather wistfully. If that were the condition and the only one, after all
we might perhaps live to see the four horses and the postilions at
Breysgate before we were many months older. By now, there was matter for
much speculation about her future; the closer you were to her, the more
doubtful any speculation seemed.

This was the time of her greatest glory--when she was fresh to her state
and delighting in it, when all the neighborhood seemed to be at her
feet, town and county vying in doing her honor--and in accepting her
hospitality.

Entertainment followed entertainment; now it was the poor, now it was
the rich, whom she fed and feted. The crown of her popularity came
perhaps when she declared that she would have no London house and wanted
no London season. Catsford and the county were good enough for her. The
_Catsford Herald and Times_ printed an article on this subject which was
almost lyrical in its anticipation of a return of the good old days when
the aristocracy found their own town enough. It was headed "Catsford a
Metropolis--Why not?" And it was Jenny who was to imbue the borough with
this enviable metropolitan character! This was _Redeunt Saturnia regna_
with a vengeance!

To all outward appearance she was behaving admirably--and her
acquaintance with Fillingford had reached to as near intimacy as it was
ever likely to get while it rested on a basis of mere neighborly
friendship. Lady Sarah had been convinced or vanquished--it was
impossible to say which. At any rate she had withdrawn her opposition to
intercourse between the two houses and appeared to contemplate with
resignation, if not with enthusiasm, a prospect of which people had now
begun to talk--not always under their breath. Fillingford Manor and
Breysgate were now united closely enough for folk to ask whether they
were to be united more closely still. For my own part I must admit that,
if Lord Fillingford were wooing, he showed few of the usual signs; but
perhaps Jenny was! I remembered the story of Rabbit--without forgetting
the subject of the other nickname!

Old Cartmell was a great advocate of the Fillingford alliance. House
laid to house and field to field were anathema to the Prophet; for a
family lawyer they have a wonderful attraction. An estate well-rounded
off, spacious, secure from encroachment and, with proper capital outlay,
returning three per cent.--he admires it as the rest of us a
Velasquez--well, some of us--or others, a thoroughbred. Careful man as
he was, he declined to be dismayed at Jenny's growing expenditure. "The
income's growing, too," he said. "It grows and must grow with the
borough. Old Nick Driver had a very long head! She can't help becoming
richer, whatever she does--in reason." He winked at me, adding, "After
all, it isn't as if she had to buy Fillingford, is it?" I did not feel
quite sure that it was not--and at a high price; but to say that would
have been to travel into another sphere of discussion.

"Well, I'm very glad her affairs are so flourishing. But I wish the new
liveries weren't so nearly sky-blue. I hope she won't want to put you
and me in them!"

Cartmell paid no heed to the liveries. He took a puff at his cigar and
said, "Now--if only she'll keep straight!" That would have seemed an odd
thing to say--to anyone not near her.

Yet trouble came--most awkwardly and at a most awkward moment. Octon
himself was the cause of it, and I--unluckily for myself--the only
independent witness of the central incident.

He had--like Jenny--been away most of the winter, but I had no reason to
suppose that they had met or even been in communication; in fact, I
believe that he was in London most of the time, finishing his new book
and superintending the elaborate illustrations with which it was
adorned. He did, however, reappear at Hatcham Ford close on the heels of
Jenny's return to Breysgate, and the two resumed their old--and somewhat
curious--relations. If ever it were true of two people that they could
live neither with nor without one another, it seemed true of that
couple. He was always seeking her, and she ever ready and eager to
welcome him; yet at every other meeting at least they had a tiff--Jenny
being, I must say, seldom the aggressor, at least in the presence of
third persons: perhaps her offenses, such as they were, were given in
private. But there was one difference which I perceived quickly, but
which Octon seemed slower to notice: I hoped that he might never notice
it at all, or, if he did, accept it peaceably. Jenny preferred, if it
were possible, to receive him when the household party alone was
present; when the era of entertaining set in, he was bidden on the
off-nights. No doubt this practice admitted of being put--and perhaps
was put by Jenny--in a flattering way. But it was impossible to be safe
with him--there was no telling how his temper would take him. So long as
he believed that Jenny herself best liked to see him intimately, all
would go well; but if once he struck on the truth--that she was yielding
deference to the wishes of his enemies, her neighbors--there might very
probably be an explosion. "Volcano" would get active if he thought that
"Rabbit" and company--Jenny had concealed neither nickname from
him--were being consulted. Or he might get just a wayward whim; if his
temper were out, he would make trouble for its own sake--or to see with
how much he could make her put up; each was always trying the limits of
his or her power over the other.

The actual occasion of his outburst was, as usual, trivial, and
perhaps--far as that was from being invariably the case--afforded him
some shadow of excuse. Neither did Chat help matters. He had sent up
from Hatcham Ford a bunch of splendid yellow roses, and, when he came to
dinner the same evening, he naturally expected to see them on the table.
"Where are my roses?" he asked abruptly, when we were half-way through
dinner.

"I love them--they're beautiful--but they didn't suit my frock
to-night," said Jenny, smiling. She would have managed the matter all
right if she had been let alone, but Chat must needs put her oar in.

"They'll look splendid on the table to-morrow night," she remarked--as
though she were saying something soothing and tactful.

"Oh, you've got a dinner-party to-morrow?" he asked--still calm, but
growing dangerous.

"Nobody you'd care about," Jenny assured him; she had given Chat a look
which immediately produced symptoms of flutters.

"Who's coming?"

"Oh, only Lord Fillingford and Lady Sarah, the Wares, the Rector, the
Aspenicks, and one or two more."

"H'm. My roses are good enough for that lot, but I'm not, eh?"

Jenny's hand was forced; Chat had undermined her position. Not even for
the sake of policy did she love to do an unhandsome thing--still less to
be found out in doing one. To use the roses and slight the donor would
not be handsome. She knew Aspenick's objection to meeting Octon, but
probably she thought that she could keep Aspenick in order.

"I had no idea you'd care about it. I thought you liked coming quietly
better. I like it so much better when I can have you to myself."

No use now! His prickles were out; he would not be cajoled.

"So I may as a rule--but it's rather marked when you never ask me to
meet anyone."

"I shall be delighted to see you at dinner to-morrow," said Jenny. "Will
you come?"

"Yes, I will come--I hope I know how to behave myself, don't I?"

"Oh, yes, you know well enough," she answered, delicately emphasizing
the difference between knowledge and practice. "All right, I shall
expect you."

"I know the meaning of it. That little Aspenick minx and her fool of a
husband are trying to get me boycotted--that's it."

Jenny, as her wont was, tried to smooth him down, but with little
success. He went off early, still very sulky, and growling about the
Aspenicks. For what it is worth, there was no doubt that they were now
busy leaders in the cabal against him, and he knew it.

"It won't be very pleasant, but we must carry it off with brave faces,"
said Jenny, referring to the next day's dinner. She looked vexed,
though, at this crossing of her arrangements.

Probably the dinner would have passed off tolerably, if not
comfortably--for Aspenick was a gentleman, and even Octon might feel
that he ought to be on his good behavior--when his temper recovered. But
unluckily his temper had not recovered by eleven o'clock the following
morning, and it was then that the lamentable thing happened.

I had finished my after-breakfast work with Jenny and had left the
house, to go down the hill to the Old Priory. The road through the park
crosses the path I had to follow, at about seventy yards from the house.
Approaching this road, I saw Lady Aspenick's tandem coming along on my
right. She was, as I have said before, an accomplished whip, and
tandem-driving was a favorite pastime of hers. To-day she appeared to be
trying a new leader; at any rate the animal was very skittish, now
rearing, now getting out of line, now sidling along--doing anything, in
fact, but his plain duty. She was driving slowly and carefully, while
the two grooms were half-standing, half-kneeling behind, looking over
her shoulders and evidently ready to jump down and run to the leader's
head at any moment. I stood watching their progress; it was pretty to
see her drive. Then I became aware of Octon's massive figure coming from
the opposite direction; he was walking full in the middle of the road,
which at this point is not very broad--just wide enough for two
carriages to pass one another between the banks, which rise sharply on
either side to the height of nearly three feet.

As Lady Aspenick drew nearer to Octon, one of the grooms whistled. Octon
gave way--a little. Apparently the groom--whether Lady Aspenick spoke to
him or not I could not see--thought that there was not yet room enough,
for he whistled again, waving his hand impatiently. Octon edged a little
more to the side of the road and then stood still, apparently waiting
for them to pass. He was by no means at the side of the road--neither
was he now in the middle; perhaps he was a third of the way across; and,
so far as I could judge, there was room for them to pass--and a
sufficient margin, at any rate for a steady team. Now the groom
shouted--a loud "Hi!" or some such word--in a peremptory way. I heard
Octon's reply plainly. "There's plenty of room, I tell you." Lady
Aspenick had her whip in her hand--ready, no doubt, to give her restless
leader a flick to make him mind his manners as they went by. While this
happened, I had begun to walk on again slowly, meaning to speak to Octon
when the lady had passed. I was about fifteen yards away--and the tandem
was just approaching where Octon stood. Just as she came up to him, Lady
Aspenick loosed the long lash of her whip; it flew out and I looked to
see a jump from the leader, who was dancing and capering in a very
restive way. But unless she took great care--or Octon moved a bit----

The next instant, while the idea was still incomplete in my mind, the
end of the lash caught him full on the face. He jumped back with a shout
of rage. The leader gave a wild plunge toward the other side of the
road; the cart swayed and rocked. The grooms leaped down and ran as hard
as they could to the leader's head. Octon sprang forward, caught hold of
the whip, wrenched it from Lady Aspenick's hand, almost pulling her out
of her seat, broke it in the middle across his knee, and flung the
fragments down on the road. I ran up hastily.

"You did that on purpose," he said, his voice shaking with rage. There
was a red streak across his face from the cheek bone to the chin.

She was pale, but she looked at him calmly through her eyeglasses.

"Nonsense," she answered, "but if I had, it would have been only your
deserts. Why didn't you give me room?"

"There was plenty of room if you knew how to drive; and, if you wanted
more, you could have asked for it civilly."

"You must have seen I had a young horse." She turned to me. "Give me my
whip, please, Mr. Austin. You saw what happened? I'll ask my husband to
come and see you about it." Then she ordered her men to take out the
refractory leader, and lead him home; she would drive back with the
wheeler. She took no more notice of Octon, nor he of her (unless to
watch her grooms' proceedings with a sullen stare), but as she started
off, holding the broken butt of the whip in her hand, she called to me,
"Tell Miss Driver we're looking forward to dinner to-night."

The grooms had looked dangerously at Octon, and were now saying
something to one another; but it needed at least one to hold the horse,
and Octon would be far more than a match for either of them singly. His
angry eyes seemed only to hope that they would give him some excuse for
violence.

"Follow your mistress," I said to them. "It's no affair of yours."

I think that they were glad to get my sanction for their retreat. Off
they went, and I was left alone with Octon.

"If it had been a man, I wouldn't have left a whole bone in his body.
She struck me deliberately--on purpose."

"It wasn't a man. Why didn't you give her more room?"

"There was plenty of room?" he persisted. "The whole road isn't hers, is
it?" With that he turned on his heel and sauntered off toward the south
gate, in the direction of his own house.

There was the incident--and I had the grave misfortune of being the only
independent witness of it. There was the incident--and there was the
dinner-party in the evening, to which both the Aspenicks and Leonard
Octon were bidden. Clearly the matter could not stand where it was; it
was, alas! no less clear that I should have to give my evidence. Of
course the meeting at dinner must not take place; whatever else might or
might not follow from the affair, that much was certain. I went back to
the house and asked to see Jenny.

I told her the story plainly and fully--all that I had seen and all that
had been said; she did not interrupt me once.

"There it is," I ended. "His case is that he gave her plenty of room and
that she purposely lashed him over the face. Hers is that he gave her
too little room, deliberately annoying her, that her leader was restive
and she had to use her whip, and that, if she hit him, it was his own
fault for standing where he did."

"His snatching away the whip and breaking it--isn't that bad?" she
asked. "Or if he thought she meant to hit him?"

"Then it's still bad, I suppose, since she's a woman; but it's perhaps
understandable--above all in him."

"Well, what's your own opinion about it?"

"That's just what I don't want to give," I objected.

"But you must. I have to come to some decision about this."

"Well, then--I think he did leave her room--enough and a little more
than enough; but I also think that he meant to annoy her. I'm sure he
didn't mean to put her in danger of an upset, but I do think that, with
such a horse as she was driving, an upset might have been the result,
and he ought to have thought of that--only he doesn't know much about
horses. On the other hand I don't think she deliberately made up her
mind to hit him--but I do think she meant to go as near to it as she
could without actually doing it; I think she meant to make him jump.
That's about my idea of the truth of the matter."

"Yes, I daresay," she said thoughtfully. "When Sir John comes to you,
bring him straight up here. They mustn't meet to-night, of course, but I
should like to see Sir John first--if he comes this morning or soon
after lunch."

"It's all very tiresome," said I lugubriously.

She suddenly put her hands in mine--in one of her moments of impulse.
"Oh, yes, yes, dear friend!" she murmured with an acute note of distress
in her voice. Tiresome as the affair was, it hardly seemed to call for
that; but I had not yet realized her position in its full difficulty; I
did not know what every new proof of Octon's "impossibility" meant to
her.

Sir John arrived, hot-haste, before lunch. Happily Fillingford was with
him. I say happily, for I gathered that the angry husband's first
intention had been to go straight to Hatcham Ford and undertake the
horse-whipping of Leonard Octon--which enterprise must have ended in
broken bones for Sir John, and probably the police court for both
combatants. Fillingford happened to be with him when Lady Aspenick
arrived at home and told her story; with difficulty he dissuaded
Aspenick from violent measures; above all, nothing must get into the
papers; all the same, it was a case for decisive private action.
According to my orders I took Sir John up to Jenny, and Fillingford came
with us.

There--before her--we had the whole story over again. Sir John told his
wife's version, I put Octon's forward against it--if only for fair
play's sake. Sir John naturally would have none of Octon's, nor would
Fillingford. Then I repeated my own impression of the affair. Any points
in it which made for Octon Sir John violently rejected; Fillingford's
attitude was wiser, the position he took up less open to the charge of
prejudice; he disliked Octon intensely, but he would not rest his case
on the weak foundation of an angry temper.

"I'm quite content to accept Mr. Austin's view of the facts, which he
has given us so clearly and so impartially. Where does his view lead?
Why to this--Not only was Mr. Octon inexcusably violent at the end, but
he was the original aggressor. He did not, Mr. Austin is convinced, mean
to cause danger to Lady Aspenick, but he did mean to cause her
vexation--in fact to offer her an affront. In my opinion anything on her
part that followed is imputable to his own fault, and he had no title to
resent it. I base my decision not on Lady Aspenick's account, but on Mr.
Austin's independent testimony; and I say that Mr. Octon behaved as no
gentleman and as no good neighbor should."

Jenny had listened to all the stories in silence, and in silence also
she heard Fillingford's summing-up. Now she looked at him and asked
briefly, "What follows?"

"It follows that he must be cut," interposed Aspenick in dogged anger.

"We have a right to protect ourselves--above all the ladies of our
families--from the chance of such occurrences. They mustn't be exposed
to them if we can help it; they certainly need not and must not be
exposed to the unpleasantness of meeting the man who causes them. We
have a right to act on that line--and I, for one, feel bound to act on
it, Miss Driver."

"Not a man in the place will do anything else," declared Aspenick.

But I was wondering what Jenny would do. Almost without disguise they
were presenting to her an ultimatum. They were saying, "If you want him,
you can't have us. We can't come where he comes. Is he to go on coming
to Breysgate? Is he to go on using your park?" She did not like
dictation--nor did she like sending her friends away. To send them away
on dictation--would she do that? Or would she fall into one of her
rages, bid them all go hang, and throw in her lot with boycotted Octon?
She turned to me.

"Do you agree with what these gentlemen say?" she asked.

In the end I liked Octon or, at any rate, found him very interesting,
and I was therefore ready, for myself, to put up with his tempers and
his tantrums. People who did not like him nor find him interesting could
not be asked to do that. And he stood condemned on my own evidence.

"They are quite within their rights," I had to answer.

She was not in a rage; she was anxious and distressed. Nor was the
anxiety all hers. Aspenick indeed had at the moment no thought but of
anger on his wife's account, but Fillingford must have had other things
in his mind. To put it at the lowest, he valued his acquaintance with
the mistress of Breysgate Priory; there were good grounds for guessing
that he valued it very much. If he had learned anything at all about
her, he must have known that he was risking it now. But he showed no
hesitation; he awaited her answer with a grave deference which declared
the importance he attached to it but gave no reason to hope that his own
course of action could be affected, whatever the answer might be.

Neither did she give the impression of hesitating--it was not exactly
that. Whether in her heart she hesitated I cannot tell; if she did, she
would not let them see it. Her demeanor betrayed nothing more than a
pained reluctance to condemn utterly, to recognize that one who had been
received as a friend and as a gentleman had by his own fault forfeited
his claim to those titles. Her delay in giving her decision--for the
real question now was whether she would join in Octon's ostracism--did
not impugn their judgment nor seem to weigh their merits against the
culprit's. It did not declare a doubt of their being right; it said only
with what pain she would recognize that they were right.

"Yes--it's the only thing," she said at last.

"I was sure you would agree with us--painful as such a course is,"
Fillingford said.

"It's only cutting a cad," Aspenick grumbled, half under his breath.
Jenny did not or would not hear him.

The bargain was struck, and fully understood without more words. Jenny's
friends must not be exposed to meeting Octon at Breysgate or in
Breysgate park. They would be strangers to Octon; if Jenny would be
their friend, she must be a stranger to him. Dropping Octon was the
condition of holding her place in their society. She understood the
condition and accepted it. There was no more to be said.

They took leave and she did not ask them to stay to lunch. Her farewell
to Aspenick was cold, though she made a civil reference to seeing him
again at dinner--nothing was said about Octon in that connection! But
toward Fillingford she showed a marked, if subdued, graciousness.
Clearly she meant to convey to him that, distressed as she was by the
incident and its necessary consequences, she attached no blame to him
for the part he had taken--nay, was grateful to him for his counsel and
guidance.

"I never had any doubt of your coming to a right decision," he told her,
holding her hand for a moment longer than he need. She looked into his
eyes, but said nothing; she gave the air of being heartily content to
surrender her judgment to his.

I saw them off and came back to her. She was still standing in the same
place, looking very thoughtful and frowning slightly; it was by no means
the trustful expression with which her eyes had dwelt on Fillingford's.

"Directly after lunch I must go down to Hatcham Ford and see Mr. Octon.
I want you to come with me."

"I? Not Miss Chatters?"

"You--not Chat. Don't be stupid," she said.




CHAPTER VIII

A SECRET TREATY


Jenny's first remark as we drove down together to Hatcham Ford seemed to
have very little to do with the matter in hand. Still less to do with
it, as one would think, had the fact that, just before starting, she
had--I learned it afterwards--given Chat a piece of handsome old lace.

"I like your name," she remarked. "'Austin Austin'--quite a good idea of
your parents'! One's only got to drop the 'Mr.' to be friendly at once.
No learning a strange Algernon, or Edward, or things of that kind!"

"Do drop it," said I.

"I have, Austin," said Jenny. She edged ever so little nearer to me, yet
looked steadily out of the window on the other side of the brougham.
"I'm frightened," she added in a low voice.

"Upon my honor," said I, "I don't wonder at it."

Such was the beginning of a remarkable kindness, a gentleness, almost an
appealing attitude, which Jenny displayed during several weeks that
followed. I must not flatter myself--Chat shared the rays of kindly
sunshine. If I were promoted to the Christian name, Chat got the lace.

"What will you call me?" she asked. "'Miss Driver' sounds--Say 'Jenny'!"

"Before the county? Impossible!"

"Well, then, when we're alone?"

"Shall it be Lady Jenny? For ourselves?"

She sighed acquiescence. "You're a great comfort to me," she added.
"You'll come in, won't you, if you hear me scream?"

"Come in?"

"I've got to see him alone, you know." She raised her hands for an
instant, as though in lamentation; "Oh, why is he like that?"

There was no treating this lightly--for one who felt for her what I did.
I was no such fool as not to see that her sudden access of graciousness
had a purpose--I had to be conciliated and stroked the right way for
some reason; so doubtless had Chat. But again I was, so I humbly trust,
no such churl as to resent the purpose--though I did not know precisely
what it was. I was her 'man,' as the old word was--her vassal. If my
liking or my honor refused that situation, well and good--I could end
it. While it lasted, I was hers. Within me the thing went deeper still
than that.

She was frightened. Therefore she was very gracious, seeking allies
however humble. I declare that I have always limited my expectation of
attachments entirely disinterested. Are there any? Who cherishes a
friend from whom there is neither profit nor pleasure to be had? Or, at
any rate, from whom neither has been had? The past obligation is often
acknowledged--and acquitted--with a five-pound note.

The westering sun caught her face through the window as we entered the
outskirts of Catsford; her eyes looked like a couple of new sovereigns.

"Yes, I'm frightened."

"Not you! You've courage enough for a dozen."

"Ah, I like you to say that! But I must make terms with him, you know."
She caught and pressed my hand. "But I don't believe I'm quite a
coward."

All this could mean but one thing--Octon had a great hold on her; yet
against him was a powerful incentive. Between the two--between his
power, which was great, and the power against him whose greatness she
had acknowledged to Fillingford that morning, she must patch up
conditions of peace--a secret treaty. I had no idea what the terms could
or would be. If Octon had the naming of them, they would not be easy.

Hatcham Ford just held its freedom against the encroaching town. No more
than fifty yards from its gates was the last villa--a red-brick house
of eccentric architecture but comfortable dimensions; its side windows
looked toward the gate of the Ford, and on the left its garden ran up to
the road on to which the shrubberies encircling the old house faced. A
tall oak fence surrounded the garden--on the gate was written, in large
gilt letters, "Ivydene." That house, like so many in Catsford, was on
Jenny's land. I wished that Cartmell would keep a tighter hand on his
builders.

Nearly swallowed by the flood of modern erections as it was, the old
house still preserved its sequestered charm. The garden was hidden from
the road by a close screen in front; at the back it ran gently down to
the murmuring river. Within were low ceilings crossed by old beams, and
oak paneling everywhere. Octon's tenancy and personality were marked by
clusters of barbaric spears and knives, hung against the oak, burnished
to a high polish, flashing against their time-blackened background.

Visitors were not expected. Octon's man--a small wizened fellow of full
middle age--seemed rather startled by the sight of Jenny; he hastily
pushed, rather than ushered, us into the dining room, a room on the left
of the doorway. In a moment or two Octon came to us. He stood in the
doorway, his big frame looking immense under the low lintel which his
head all but touched.

"You're not the visitors I expected," he said with a laugh. "I've stayed
in, waiting for Aspenick."

"Sir John won't come," said Jenny. "But I must speak to you--alone." She
turned to me. "You're sure you don't mind, Austin?"

"Of course you must see him alone. Where shall I go?"

"Stay here," he said. "We'll go next door--in the study."

He held the door for her, and she went out. I heard them enter a room
next to the one in which I was; the door was shut after them. Then for a
long while I heard nothing more, except the murmur of the little river,
which seemed loud to my unaccustomed ears, though probably people living
in the house would soon cease to notice it.

Presently I heard their voices; his was so loud that, for fear of
hearing the words, I had deliberately to abstract my mind by looking at
this, that, and the other thing in the room--more spears and knives on
the walls, books about his subject on the shelves, a couple of fine old
silver tankards gleaming on the mantelpiece. The voices died down again
just as I had exhausted the interest of the tankards, and taken in my
hand a miniature which stood on the top of the marble clock.

His voice fell to inaudibility; the welcome silence left me alone with
the little picture. It represented a child perhaps fourteen years old--a
small, delicate face, dark in complexion, touched on the cheeks with a
red flush, with large dark eyes, framed in plentiful black hair which
curled about the forehead. Whoever the young girl was, she was
beautiful; her eyes seemed to gaze at me from some remote kingdom of
childish purity; her lips laughed that I should feel awe at her eyes.
How in the world came she on Octon's mantelpiece?

Picked up somewhere for half a sovereign--as a pretty thing! That was
the suggestion of common sense, in rebellion against a certain sense of
over-strained nerves under which I was conscious of suffering. Yet,
after all, Octon, like other men, must have kith and kin. The style of
the picture was too modern for it to be his mother's. There were such
things as sisters; but this did not look like Octon's stock. An old
picture of a bygone sweetheart--that held the field as the likeliest
explanation; well, except the one profanely offered by common sense.
Octon was, to and for me, so much a part of Jenny's life and
surroundings that it was genuinely difficult to realize him as a man
with other belongings or associations; yet I could not but recognize
that in all probability he had many--perhaps some apart from those which
he might chance to have inherited.

Suddenly, through the wall, I heard a wail--surely I heard a little sob?
The picture was instantly forgotten. I stood intensely awake, alert,
watchful. If that sound came again, I determined that I would break in
on their conference. For minutes I waited, but the sound came no more. I
flung myself into a chair by the fire and began to smoke. I fell into a
meditation. No further sound came to break it; the murmur of the river
already grew familiar.

I heard a door open; the next moment they were in the room with me.

"What a time we've kept you! Have you been very bored?" asked Jenny.

Her words and her tone were light, but her face was as I had never seen
it. It was drawn with the fatigue of deep feeling: she had been
struggling; if I did not err, her eyes bore signs of crying--I had never
known her cry. At that moment I think I knew to the full that Octon was,
for good or evil, a great thing in her life. How could it be for good?
She herself, she alone, must bear the burden of answering that question.

But he, standing behind her, wore an unmistakable air of victory. So
confident was it, and so assured the whole aspect of his dominant
figure, that I prepared myself to hear that the verdict of the morning
was reversed and that the neighborhood--and all that meant--were to go
hang. Yet his first words contradicted both my forecast and his own
appearance. He spoke in a chafing tone.

"Behold in me, Austin, the Banished Duke! Never again may I tread the
halls of Breysgate--at any rate, not for the present! I have offended a
proud baronet--a belted earl demands my expulsion. And my liege lady
banishes me!"

"Don't be so silly," said Jenny--but gently, ever so gently, and with a
smile.

"Serves you right, in my opinion," said I.

"I suppose so," he answered, "and I bear no malice. I'm glad Aspenick
didn't force me to wring his neck. But I shall be very lonely--nobody
comes here--well, not many are invited! Will you drop in on the exile
and smoke a pipe now and then after dinner?"

"Oh, yes, I'll look you up." My tone was impatient, I know: his
burlesque was neither intelligible nor grateful to me.

"After dinner, if that suits you. I'm going to take advantage of my
solitude to work in the daytime. The door will be barred till nine
o'clock."

I nodded--and looked at my watch.

"Yes," said Jenny, "we must be going. Everything's settled, Austin,
and--and Mr. Octon has been very kind."

"I'm glad to hear that anyhow," I said grumpily. If he had been kind,
why had I heard that wail?

In fact I was thoroughly puzzled--and therefore both vexed and uneasy.
He accepted his banishment--and yet was friendly. That result seemed a
great victory for Jenny--yet she did not look victorious. It was Octon
who wore the air of exultation and self-satisfaction; yet he had been
thrown to the wolves, abandoned to the pack of Fillingfords and
Aspenicks. Well, that could not be the whole truth of it, though what
more there might be I could not guess.

He came with us down the gravel path which led from the hall door to the
road, where the brougham was waiting. Jenny pointed across the
road--where Ivydene stood with its strip of garden.

"That's the house I meant, you know," she said, evidently referring to
something that had passed in their private conversation.

He stood smiling at her, with his hands in his pockets. He really was,
for him, ridiculously amiable, though his amiability, like everything
else about him, was rough, almost boisterous.

"If you must go on with your beastly Institute," he said, "and must have
a beastly house for a beastly office, to make your beastly plans and do
your other beastly work in, why, I daresay that beastly house will do as
well as any other beastly house for your beastly purpose. Only do choose
beastly clerks, or whatever they're going to be, who haven't got any
beastly children to play beastly games and make a beastly noise in the
garden."

Quite the first I had heard of this idea! Quite the first time, too,
that Leonard Octon had been so agreeable--he meant to be agreeable,
though the humor was like a schoolboy's--about the Institute!

"I think I'll speak to Mr. Bindlecombe about it," said Jenny, as she
gave him her hand. Her farewell was more than gracious; it was grateful,
it was even appealing. Nor for all my anger and vexation could I deny
the real feeling in his eyes as he looked at her; he was admiring; he
was affectionate; nay more, he seemed to be giving her his thanks.

She was very silent all the way home, answering only by a "yes" or a
"no" the few remarks I ventured to make. On her own account she made
only one--as the result of a long reverie. "It'll all blow over some
day," she said.

If it was her only observation, at least it was a characteristic one.
Jenny had a great belief in things "blowing over"--a belief that
inspired and explained much of her diplomacy. What seemed sometimes in
retrospect to have been far-sighted scheming or elaborate cunning had
been in reality no more than waiting for a thing to "blow over"--holding
the balance, maintaining an artificial equilibrium by a number of clever
manipulations, until things should right themselves and gain, or regain,
a proper and natural basis. The best opinion I could form of her present
proceedings was that they rested on some such idea. For the moment she
banned Octon under the pressure of her other neighbors; but in time the
memory of his offenses would grow dimmer--and in time also her own
position and power would be more firmly established. Then he could come
back. She might have persuaded him into good humor by such a plea as
that. If it were so, I thought that she had misled him and perhaps
deceived herself. People have long memories for social offenses.
And--one could not help asking the question--what of Fillingford? Where
was he to fit in, what part was he to play? Was a millennium to come
when he was to lie down on Jenny's hearthrug side by side with Octon?

There was a lady too many at dinner--a man short! Jenny could have
avoided this blot on her arrangements by eliminating Chat--and poor Chat
was quite accustomed to being eliminated. But she chose not to adopt
this course. I rather think that she liked to feel herself a bit of a
martyr in the matter, but possibly she was also minded to make a little
demonstration of her submission, to let them guess that Octon had been
coming and that she had acted on their orders with merciless
promptitude. In other respects the party was one of her most successful.
Great as was the strain which she had been through in the afternoon, she
herself was gay and sparkling. And how they petted her! Lady Aspenick
might naturally have looked to be the heroine of the occasion--nor had
she any reason to complain of a lack of interest in her story (I had to
complain of a great deal too much interest in mine)--but it was for
Jenny that the highest honors were reserved; the most joy was over the
one sinner that repented.

Fillingford, of course, took her in to dinner. It was not in the man to
pay what are called "marked attentions" before the eyes of others, but
his manner to her was characterized by a pronounced friendliness and
deference; he seemed to be trying to atone for the coercion which he had
been compelled to exert earlier in the day. He did not fall into the
mistake of treating her acquiescence as a trifle or the case as merely
that of "cutting a cad," to use Aspenick's curtly contemptuous phrase.
He raised her action to the rank of an obligation conferred on her
neighbors and especially on himself. He was man of the world enough to
convey this impression without departing too far from the habitual
reserve of his demeanor.

Lady Aspenick looked at the pair through her eyeglasses; we had at last
exhausted the incident of the morning--though we had not settled the
precise degree of accidentality which attached to the collision between
her whip and Octon's face; under a veiled cross-examination she had
become rather vague about it--that may weigh a little in Octon's favor.

"It's a long while since I've seen Lord Fillingford so lively," she
remarked. "He seems to get on so well with Miss Driver. As a rule, you
know, we women despair of him."

"Has he such a bad character among you as that?"

"He seemed to have given himself up to being old long before he need.
He's only forty-three, I think." She laughed. "There, in my heart I
believe I'm matchmaking, like a true woman!"

"Yes, I believe you are. Well, these speculations are always
interesting."

"We're beginning to make them in the neighborhood, I can tell you, Mr.
Austin."

"And--knowing the neighborhood--I can believe you, Lady Aspenick."

"You've no special information?" she asked, laughing. "It would make me
so important!"

"Oh, you're important enough already--after this morning. And I know
nothing--absolutely nothing."

"You mean to say Miss Driver doesn't tell you----?"

"Actually she does not--and I'm not sure I should know if she did."

"Of course I'm only chaffing. But it would be rather--ideal."

"H'm. Forty-three may not be senile, but would you call it ideal? For a
romance?"

"Who's talking of romances? I'm on the question of marriage, Mr.
Austin."

"But if one can afford a romance? What's the use of being rich?"

"No, no, it's the poor people who can go in for romance. They've nothing
to lose! Divide nothing a year between two--or, presently, four--and
still it's no less."

"But the rich have nothing to gain--except romance."

"Oh, yes, sometimes. At the time of the Coronation I had quite a quarrel
with Jack because he wasn't a peer. He said I ought to have thought of
it before, but I said that that would have been quite disloyal." She
lowered her voice to a discreet whisper. "I do hope she's not distressed
about this morning?"

"A little, I'm afraid. Octon had his interesting side for her."

"I'm so sorry! I must be very nice to her after dinner."

Lady Aspenick was very "nice" to Jenny after dinner, and so were all of
them. She seemed to take new rank that evening--to undergo a kind of
informal but very real adoption into the inner circle of families which
made the local society. She was no longer a stranger entertaining them;
she had become one of themselves. This could not all be reward for
ostracizing Octon. Lady Aspenick's conversation, in itself not
remarkable for depth or originality, was a surface sign of another
current of opinion bearing strongly on Jenny's position. But no doubt
acquiescence in the ostracism was a condition precedent both to the
adoption and to that remoter prospect which inspired it.

Jenny's eyes were very clear. After they had all gone, I returned to the
drawing-room to bid her good night. Chat had already scuttled off to
bed--dinner parties kept her up later than was to her liking. Jenny was
leaning her elbow on the mantelpiece.

"Well," she said, "I've been good--and I've had my sugar-plums."

"Yes, and they've got plenty more for you if you go on being good."

"Oh, yes." Her voice sounded tired, and her face looked strained.

"Even some very big ones!"

Up to now she had shown no sign of resenting the pressure put upon her;
she had been sorrowful, but had displayed no anger. She did not even now
challenge the justice of Fillingford's decision; but she broke out into
a rage against the control claimed over herself.

"They force me to things," she said in a low voice, but in a tone full
of feeling. "They tell me I must do this or do that, or else I can't be
one of them, I can't rank with them, I can't, I suppose, marry Lord
Fillingford! Well, I yield where I must, but sometimes I get my own way
all the same. Let them look out for that! Yes, I get my own way in the
end, Austin."

"No doubt--not that I know what is your way in this particular matter."

Her little outbreak of anger passed as quickly as it had come. She
shrugged her shoulders with a woeful smile.

"My own way! So one talks. What is one's way? The way one would choose?
No--it's generally the way one has to tread. It's in that sense that I
shall get my own way."

"You'll try for it in the other sense, though, I fancy."

"Yes, perhaps I shall--and I shan't try less because Lord Fillingford
and the Aspenicks either scold or pet me."

"Well, but it's hardly reasonable to expect to have things both ways, is
it?"

She came to me, laughing, and took hold of my hands: "But if I choose to
have them both ways, sir?" she asked.

"Then, of course," said I, "the case is different."

"I will have them both ways," said Jenny.

"You can't."

"See if I don't!" she cried in merry defiance. "Only, mind you, not a
word of it--to the county!" She pressed my hands and let them go. "Oh,
I'm so tired!"

"Stop thinking--do stop thinking--and go to sleep."

She nodded at me kindly and reassuringly as Loft came in to put out the
lights. I left her standing there in her rich frock, with her jewels
gleaming, yet with her eyes again weary and mournful. She had had a bad
day of it, for all her triumph in the evening. Trying to have it both
ways was hard work.




CHAPTER IX

THE INSTITUTE CLERK


Mr. Bindlecombe was jubilant. Jenny's vacillations were over--the
Institute was really on the way. A Provisional Committee had been
formed; it was composed of Bindlecombe (in the Chair, in virtue of his
office of Mayor, which he still held), Fillingford, Cartmell, Alison the
Rector of the old parish church, and Jenny. I was what I believe they
term in business circles "alternate" with--or to?--Jenny; when she could
not attend, I was to act and, if need be, vote in her place. As a fact,
I generally went even when she did. Since the Institute was to serve for
women as well as for men, a subsidiary and advisory Ladies' Committee
was formed--and Lady Sarah Lacey was induced to accept the chairmanship
of it. Jenny was justifiably proud of this triumph; but the Ladies'
Committee had nothing to do with finance, and finance was, of course,
the question of paramount interest, in the early stages at least. The
original ten thousand pounds which I had allocated to the Memorial Hall
looked a mere trifle now. The talk was of eighty thousand--with a
hundred thousand for a top limit. Over these figures Cartmell looked
important, but not outraged--evidently the Driver estate was shaping
well. But it was, as Jenny remarked, impossible to be precise on the
subject of figures, until we had more definite ideas about what we
wanted to do. Plans were, she declared, the first necessity--provisional
plans, at all events--and she was for having them drawn up at once.
Bindlecombe was in no way reluctant, but opined that plans depended
largely on site; must not the question of site be taken in hand
simultaneously? Jenny replied that Mr. Bindlecombe had so convinced her
of the unique suitability of Hatcham Ford that she was in negotiation
with Mr. Octon. Cartmell looked a trifle surprised--I do not think that
he had heard of these negotiations. Jenny added that in two years' time
she would be free to act of her own will; but in the first place two
years was long to wait, and in the second she was anxious to deal with
Mr. Octon in a friendly spirit. There was a feeling that this was
carrying neighborliness too far, but Fillingford, content with what
Jenny had already done in regard to Octon, came to her help, pronouncing
that the diplomatic way was expedient: No excuse for any opposition
should be given; you could never tell who might or might not, for his
own purposes, get up a party. If Mr. Octon proved unapproachable--he
chose the word with care and gave it with a neutral impassiveness--it
would be time enough to talk of rights.

"We can begin on something at once," Jenny declared. "I'm going to ask
Mr. Cartmell to make arrangements to put a house at our disposal for
offices. We should hold our meetings there, and I should propose to
employ a clerk to keep our records and, as time goes on, to help with
the plans and so on." She turned to Bindlecombe. "You know that house
next to Hatcham Ford--a new red house? It's got very good windows and an
open outlook. Wouldn't that do for us? I forget the name--something
rather absurd."

"Ivydene," said Cartmell. He had every detail of her property at his
finger ends.

"Yes, that's it," said Jenny, with a nod of recollection.

Everybody approved of Ivydene for the suggested purpose, and the
Committee broke up with the usual expressions of gratitude to and
admiration of Miss Driver. "She does things so handsomely--and with such
head, too!" said Bindlecombe.

I walked away with Alison, the Rector, for whom I had a great liking. He
was a fine fellow, physically and mentally--a tall, strong-built man of
forty, with a keen blue eye. He had "done wonders," as they say, in
Catsford and was on the sure road to promotion--if he would take it. He
was sincere, pious, and humble; but his humility was personal. It did
not extend to his office or to the claims of the Church he represented.

He asked me if I would lay before Jenny the merits of a fund he was
raising to build yet another new district church, to meet the ever
growing needs of Catsford. I replied that I had no doubt she would be
glad to give a donation.

"So far, so good," said Alison--but his tone did not sound contented.

"She's sure to give something substantial--she's like her father in
that."

"In the way of money I had nothing to complain of from Mr. Driver.
Anything else I suppose you'll tell me I couldn't expect, as he was a
Unitarian."

"I remember he used to say he'd been brought up a Unitarian."

"That's what we seem to be coming to! When it's a question of a man's
religion, you remember what he used to say he was brought up as!"
Alison's tone became sarcastic. "Well, then, his daughter's a
Church-woman, isn't she--by the same excellent evidence?"

"She lived five years in a clergyman's family," I answered
discreetly--feeling that it was safer to stick to indisputable facts.
"She attends church fairly often, doesn't she?"

"Yes, fairly often." He repeated my words with a contemptuous grimace.
"People who attend church fairly often, Austin, are the people whom, if
the good old days could come back, I should like to burn."

"Of course you would. You all would, if you dared say so."

"Just two or three to start with. I should like it done very
conspicuously--in the market place."

"The worst of it is that you're really quite sincere in all this."

He pressed my arm. "I don't want to burn you. You've thought, though
you've thought wrong. And you've been through tribulation. It's the
people who in their hearts just don't----"

"Care a damn?" I profanely suggested.

"Yes," he agreed with a laugh and a grip on my wrist which distinctly
hurt.

"But I don't think Miss Driver's quite one of those. At any rate she's
intellectually interested--talks about things, and so on."

He nodded. "Yes, I daresay. Well, she's a remarkable girl. Look
here--she's worth having, and I'm going to try to get hold of her."

"You never will, though you try for ever--not in your sense. She never
surrenders."

"Not even to God?"

"Speaking through you?"

"Through my office--yes."

"Aye, there's the rub! Besides--well, I can't discuss her from a moral
point of view; any information I may have seems somehow to have been
acquired confidentially."

"That's quite right, Austin."

"I'll only put before you a general suggestion. Doesn't our disposition
determine our attitude to these things much oftener than our attitude is
shaped by our opinions? Hence individual modifications--variations from
the general trend, whatever that may be. What a man--or woman--is in
worldly relations, isn't he apt to be in regard to religious affairs? If
a man thinks for himself in worldly affairs----"

"I'm not against thought," he broke in. "That's the eternal
misunderstanding!"

"But so often against the results of it?" I suggested. "And one reason
among others for that is because the result of individual thought is
often a decision to suspend generally accepted views in one's own
case--which you fellows don't like. I don't mind going so far as to say
that I think Miss Driver would be capable of suspending a generally
accepted view in her own case--but she wouldn't do it without thought or
indifferently. She would do it as a well-considered exercise of power.
Some people like power--I don't know whether a priest can understand
that?"

We had come to the "Church House" where he dwelt in barracks with his
curates. His eyes twinkled. "I know what you mean--and you can chaff as
much as you like--but I shall have a go at Miss Driver."

After a conversation a man of candid mind will often--and, if the
discussion has partaken in any degree of an argumentative character, I
would say generally--he left reflecting whether what he has said was
even as true as he meant to make it. As I had hinted, I talked to Alison
about Jenny with reserves, but even within their limits I doubted
whether I had given him the impression I had meant to convey. Perhaps he
understood, though he could never acknowledge as legitimate, my view
that she would feel entitled to treat herself as a special case. He
might even act on this view--always without acknowledging it; surely
Churches have been known to do that? He might approach her on that
footing--with the hope of changing it. I had meant to point out an
impossibility; I fancied I had indicated a task and communicated a
stimulus. Had I cast aside the reserves, I should have told him plainly
that in my judgment the emotional basis for his appeal was lacking in
her. Emotions existed, but not in that direction; that was more what I
had wanted to say, but, not feeling at liberty to adduce evidence, I had
lost myself in generalities. My poor modicum of truth stopped at the
dictum that to Jenny Jenny would seem an exceptional person; I had at
least come near to putting it in the hazardous and unorthodox form that
everybody might have a right, on sufficient occasion, so to treat
himself. And he himself judge of the sufficiency of the occasion? That
amounts to anarchy--as Alison, of course, perceived, and, had we pursued
the argument, I must have found myself in a very tight place.

I was shaking my head over my own controversial incompetence--with,
perhaps, a furtive saving plea that it was very hard to tell all one's
thoughts to an ecclesiastic--when I was suddenly brought back to more
tangible matters; perhaps also to my modicum of truth--that Jenny would
seem to Jenny an exceptional person. In short, on turning the next
corner, I all but ran into Mr. Nelson Powers.

He looked as greasily insinuating as ever. He also appeared to be more
prosperous than when I had last seen him. He looked, so to say,
established--as if he had a right to be where he was, not so much as if
he were "trying it on"--with eyes open for kicks or the police. He was
strolling about the streets of Catsford quite with the air of belonging
to it.

He did not recognize me, or would not. He was almost by me when I
stopped him.

"Mr. Powers? Surely it is? What brings you to Catsford?"

"Mr. Austin? Yes! Well, now, how do you do, sir? I'm glad to meet you
again. I was unlucky in missing that dinner--well, never mind! But
you've heard? Miss Driver has mentioned my appointment?"

"I've heard nothing of any appointment."

"Ah, perhaps I'm premature in mentioning it. I'll say good afternoon,
Mr. Austin."

I seemed to have nothing to say to him. I was rather bewildered; I
thought that we had really seen the end of Powers.

He stretched out his hand, and took hold of mine, depriving me of all
initiative in the matter.

"Miss Driver will speak in her own time, sir. I--I should only like to
say, sir, that I--I recognize the change in Miss Driver's position. One
learns wisdom, Mr. Austin. Good afternoon, sir." He pressed my hand--he
was wearing gloves and I was not sorry for it--and was round the corner
while I was still gaping.

I walked up to the Priory, immersed in a rather scandalized, rather
amused, would-be psychological line of reflection. "She can't help it!"
I said to myself. "She can't let anyone go! Not even Powers! At the
first chance (I did not yet guess what the chance was) she calls him to
heel again. Even the meanest hound must keep with the pack. It's very
curious, but that's it!"

In fact that was only part of it--and not the most significant for
present purposes.

Jenny had gone from the Committee to call on Mrs. Jepps, a person of
much consideration in Catsford, wife of its first Mayor (now deceased),
owner of an important business house in the drapery line, _vir_ (save
that she was a woman) _pietate gravis_, and eminently meet to be
enrolled among the active adherents of the Institute.

"And I've got her!" said Jenny complacently, as she gave me my tea.

"Mr. Alison wants to get you--I've been talking to him."

"Oh, well, I like Mr. Alison."

"He wants to get you. Don't misunderstand. He doesn't want you to get
him, you know."

"Friendship is surely mutual?" suggested Jenny, with a lurking smile.

I mentioned the matter of the subscription: Jenny was satisfactorily
liberal.

"Not that you'll be quit of him with that," I warned her.

"I'm not afraid. Going? Will you come back to dinner?"

I stood for a moment looking at her. We might just as well have it out
now.

"You remember your promise? I'm not to be called upon to meet Mr.
Powers? I happened to meet him in the town this afternoon."

Jenny began to laugh--without the smallest sign of embarrassment. "I was
going to break it to you over your glass of port. That's why I asked you
to dinner. Now don't look grave and silly. Can't you really see any
difference between me as I am and the girl who came here a year ago?
Well, then, you're stupider than poor Powers himself! He sees it clearly
enough and accepts the position--he won't expect to come to dinner.
Besides he's very sorry for what happened. Besides why shouldn't I give
a chance to an old acquaintance rather than to a stranger? Besides--how
I'm piling up 'besides' just to keep you quiet!--Mrs. Powers has come,
too, and all the children--three now instead of one! So really it must
be all right."

"But what are you going to do with him?"

"Why, he's a first-class draughtsman--trained in a very good architect's
office. Mr. Bindlecombe has seen specimens of his work and says it's
excellent. I should think that Mr. Bindlecombe knew!" (Meaning thereby,
as the lawyers say, that I did not!)

"Well?"

"Can't you really guess? He's to be the Institute clerk. He'll draw
plans and so on for us--and she'll keep the house, and have it all ready
for our Committees."

"He's to live at Ivydene?"

"Have you any objection?"

Up to now Jenny's tone had been evenly compounded of merriment--over my
absurdities--and plausibility for her own admirable management. Now a
slightly different note crept in. "Have you any objection?" was not said
in a very conciliatory manner.

"I might have anticipated," she went on--"in fact I do anticipate--these
stupid objections from Mr. Cartmell--and I'm prepared to meet them. But
from you I looked for more perception. The man is a clever man; he's out
of employment. Why shouldn't I employ him? Is it to be fatal to him that
he was once unwise--worse than unwise? Against that, put that he's an
old friend, and that even I have my human feelings. I was a fool, but I
was fond of him once."

"It's for you to judge," I said.

"Can't you see--can't you understand?" she exclaimed. "Powers is
nothing--it's all over, gone, done with!" She clasped her hands
excitedly. "Oh, when I've so much on my shoulders, why do you worry me
with trifles?"

"If you've so much on your shoulders, why add even trifles?"

"I add nothing," she said. "On the contrary I--" She broke off suddenly,
and added quickly, "It's done--I'm pledged to him. Oh, don't bother me
about Powers!" She calmed down again. She returned to plausibility. She
went on with a smile, "You've found me out in one way, of course. I do
want my own man there. I want my own way in everything, so I want a man
who'll back me up--a man who'll always be on my side, who won't suddenly
go over to Lord Fillingford, or the Rector--or even Lady Sarah! Poor
Powers will have to agree with me always--he'll have to be a blind
adherent. He can't afford to differ."

"That's frank, at all events," I commented.

Jenny's face lit up. "Yes, it is," she said, with much better temper.
"Quite frank--the whole truth about Jenny Driver! He'll be what I
want--and do you seriously mean to say that you think there's any
danger? Nobody here knows anything about him, except you and Mr.
Cartmell. Are you traitors? Will Powers speak--and lose his livelihood?
It's absurd to talk of danger from Powers."

I had come to agree with her that it was. So far as I could judge, there
was no longer any appreciable danger from the man--neither from his
presence in Catsford nor from Jenny's meetings with him. He could not
afford to threaten; she had grown far out of any peril of being cajoled.
But if not dangerous, neither was the arrangement attractive to one's
taste. It was difficult to suppose that Jenny herself liked it, unless
indeed my highly philosophical speculations covered the whole ground.
Did they? Must she really recall Powers? Couldn't she help it? Was a
present and immediate domination over even such as Powers essential to
her content?

I could not believe it and accused my own speculations, if not of entire
error (they had an element of truth), yet of inadequacy. In fact a doubt
had begun to creep into my mind. Never in my life had I heard so many
sound reasons for doing a thing that was obviously quite uncalled
for--unless there was one other reason still--a reason not plausible,
nor producible, but compelling. Yet what? For I was convinced that the
man had no hold, that she was not in the least afraid of Powers.

"I hate your standing opposite me and thinking about me," remarked Jenny
suddenly. "I'm sure it's not comfortable, and I don't think it's polite.
Besides, after all, it's possible that you might find out something!"

"Surely that 'Besides' is superfluous, anyhow?"

"I don't know--I don't quite trust you. But shall I tell you your
mistake? You're too ready to think that I have a reason for everything I
do. You're wrong. Where reason comes in with me is about the things I
don't do. If you reason about things, most of them look either dull or
dangerous. So you let them alone. But if you don't reason, you chance
it--either the dullness or the danger, as the case may be."

"A juggle with words! You reason all the same."

"Not always. Sometimes you're--driven."

On her face was a look almost as if she were being driven. I fancied
that I might have said too much about deliberate exercises of power in
my conversation with the Rector.

"I suppose you'd explain that, if you wished to," I remarked after a
pause. "You appear to be as free from being driven as most people.
You're pretty independent!"

"I should explain it if I wished--perhaps even if I could. But do you
always find it easy to explain yourself--even to yourself, to say
nothing of other people?"

"It seems to me that you've only got yourself to please."

"And it also seems to you that that would be very easy?"

"Now you're in one of your fencing moods--there's no plain English to be
got out of you."

"Fencing is useful to parry thrusts, Austin."

"Heavens, have I been making thrusts at you? You mean about that
miserable Powers?"

She sat there looking at me, with the mystery smile on her lips; but her
brow was knit. "Yes, about Powers," she said--after a pause, but without
hesitation. The manner of her answer said plainly "Call it about
Powers--it is about something else." So I think she meant me to read it.
She told me that there was some trouble lest, suspecting but not
knowing, I should make wild thrusts and wound her blindly.

"No one but you would put up with such an impertinent retainer," I said.

"You always stop when I want you to. And I rather like--sometimes--to
try over my feelings and ideas in talk. One gets a kind of outside look
at them in that way." She broke into a little laugh. "And I must keep
you in a good temper, because I've a favor to ask. Are we going to be
terribly busy in the immediate future?"

"I should think so--with your Institute!"

"No time for riding?" she suggested insinuatingly.

"Oh, well, one must consider one's health."

"I don't want to give up my morning ride; but I wa

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