"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!"
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 fêted. 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. TheCatsford Herald and Timesprinted 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 wasRedeunt Saturnia regnawith 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.
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.
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 want you to come with me—well, as often as you can. Make it the regular thing to come, barring most pressing business."
"I see what I get out of this, Lady Jenny. Now what do you?"
"I knew you'd ask that. Of course I'm never disinterested!"
"I won't ask. I'll take the gift Heaven sends!"
"I daren't leave it like that. You're too conscientious; you'd stay at home and work. I'm afraid I must give you the reason."
Her thoughts had passed away, it seemed, from the difficulty which had made her now irritable, now melancholy, while we talked about reasoning and being "driven." She was gay and chaffed me with enjoyment. If there were any perplexity in the case here, evidently it struck her as a comedy, complicated by no threat of a tragic catastrophe. Her lips twitched with merriment.
"Yes, you must have it—and really plain English this time—no fencing—the downright blunt truth!"
"I wait for it."
"Lord Lacey comes home on leave to-morrow."
The explanation here was certainly plain. In fact it was both plain and pregnant. While it confessed to a flirtation in the past, it also admitted a project for the future.
"I must ride as often as possible," I said gravely. "Does he stay long?"
"I should think that might depend," answered Jenny. She laughed again as she added, "Not even you can ask 'On what?'"