It was all very well to tell me that I must feel Fillingford's mind, but that possession of his had always seemed to me to achieve a high degree of intangibility. His words were not in the habit of disclosing more of it than was necessary for his purpose—without any regard for his interlocutor's—while his face reduced expression to a minimum. For all you got from looking at him, you might pretty nearly as well have talked with your eyes shut. That sudden stroke of surprise and relief at Alison's stood out in my memory as unique—the only real revelation of his feelings which I had seen reflected on his countenance. High demands were being made on me as an amateur diplomatist!
My arrival at the Manor was early—untimely probably, and certainly unexpected. The very butler showed surprise, and left me standing in the hall while he went to discover whether Fillingford could see me. Before this he had suggested that it was Lacey whom I really wanted and that, since Lacey had gone out riding directly after breakfast, my errand was vain. When I insisted that I knew whom I wanted, he gave way, still reluctantly; several minutes passed before he returned with the message that his lordship would receive me. He led me along a corridor, toward a door at the far end of it. To my consternation, as we approached that door, Lady Sarah came out of it—and came out with a good deal of meaning. She flounced out; and she passed me with angry eyes and her head erect. I felt quite sure that Lady Sarah had been against my being received at all that morning.
During previous visits to the Manor, I had not enjoyed the privilege of being shown Fillingford's study, in which I now found myself (not without qualms). It was a large room which mere neglect would have left beautiful; but, unlike the rest of the house, it appeared to have been methodically rendered depressing. His dour personality had—in his own sanctum—overpowered the native beauty of his house. Even the charming view of the old park was more than half hidden by blinds of an indescribably gloomy brown, which challenged to a match the melancholy of a drab carpet. Two or three good portraits were killed by their surroundings—but Fillingford himself seemed in a deadly harmony with his room. His thin gray face and whitening hair, his dull weary eyes, and his rounded shoulders, made him and his room rather suggestive of a funeral card—broad-edged in black, with a photograph of the late lamented in the middle—looking as dead as the intimation told one that unfortunately he was.
He rose for a moment to shake hands, indicating a chair for me close by the table at which he sat. The table was covered with papers and bundles, very neatly arranged; everything in the room was in its place to an inch.
"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Austin," he said in reply to my apology for so early a visit, "and if you come on business, as you say, the hour isn't at all too early for me." He was perfectly courteous—but dry as dust.
"I come on Miss Driver's behalf. As you are probably aware, your son Lord Lacey has done Miss Margaret Octon the honor of making her a proposal of marriage. Miss Octon is in the position of being under Miss Driver's care—I may perhaps call her her ward—and Miss Driver is anxious to know whether Lord Lacey's proposal has your approval."
"Has it Miss Driver's approval?" he asked.
"Most cordially—provided it has yours. Further than that she wouldn't wish to go without knowing your views."
He spoke slowly and deliberately. "You and I have approached this subject before—incidentally, Mr. Austin. I have little doubt that you gathered from that conversation that I had had another idea in my mind?"
"Yes, I rather understood that—from what you let fall."
"That idea was entirely erroneous, I suppose? Or, at all events, if ever entertained, is abandoned now?"
We had already got on to delicate ground. "The situation seems to speak for itself, Lord Fillingford. And I'm sure that the arrangement now proposed has always been desired by Miss Driver."
"Miss Driver has a very great influence over my son, I think," he remarked.
"I don't think she would wish to deny that she has favored this arrangement so far as she properly and legitimately could. She was naturally desirous of promoting Miss Octon's happiness. If in other respects the marriage was a very desirable one—well, she was entitled to think of that also."
"You consider that Miss Octon's feelings are deeply engaged in this matter?"
"If you ask me, I think the two young people are as much in love as any young couple could be."
"I know my son's feelings; he has made me aware of them. And Miss Driver thinks this marriage desirable?"
"She charged me to express the great pleasure she would take in it, if it met with your approval."
He sat silent for a moment, his hand up to his mouth as he bit his finger nail. For reasons I have given, to follow the trend of his thoughts was quite beyond my powers of discernment.
"I suppose I seem to her—and perhaps to you—a very ineffectual person?" he went on in his even voice, with his dull eyes (like a gas jet turned low to save the light!)—"I have the bad luck to stand half-way between two schools—two generations—of ideas. When I was born, men of my order still had fortunes; nowadays many of them have to set out to make fortunes—or at least careers—like other people. I've been stranded half-way. The fortunes of my house are gone; I've neither the power nor the taste to try to retrieve them; and I'm too old. Public life used to be the thing, but I've not the manners for that." His chilly smile came again. "So I sit on, watching the ruins falling into more utter ruin still."
It was not for me to say anything to that. But I had a new sympathy for him. His room, again, seemed to add a silent confirmation of all he said.
"Once I did try to retrieve the situation. You know how—and how the attempt ended. It served me right—and I've learned the lesson. Now the same woman asks me for my son."
"Not for herself!"
"No, thank God!"
He said that very deliberately—not carried away, meaning to let me have it for all it was worth. Well, my diplomacy failed—or I fear so. I did not like to hear him thank God for being quit of Jenny.
"She might have," I declared impulsively.
"I think you're right. She's a very clever woman. Young men are wax in hands like that."
"Shall we get back from what isn't in question to what is, Lord Fillingford?"
"I don't think that the digression was due to me—not wholly anyhow. If it were, I must seek excuse in the fact that I have lived a month under that nightmare." I must have given some sign of protest or indignation. "Well, I beg your pardon—under that impression."
"From that, at least, you're relieved—by the present arrangement."
"The proposed arrangement"—I noticed that he corrected my epithet—"has not my approval, Mr. Austin. The other day I called it ridiculous. That was perhaps too strong. But it is profoundly distasteful to me, and not at all to my son's interest. I wish to say plainly that I am doing and shall do my best to dissuade him from it."
"If he won't be dissuaded?"
"I venture to hope that we needn't discuss that eventuality. Time enough, if it should occur."
"Miss Octon's feelings——"
"What Miss Driver has—properly and legitimately as you maintain—used her efforts to promote, she will probably be able, with a little more trouble, to undo. That seems to me not my affair."
His defense was very quiet, very stubborn. He told me no more than suited him. But I was entitled to lay hold of the two grounds of objection which he had advanced; the arrangement was distasteful to him—and not at all to his son's interest.
"I thank you for your candor in putting me in possession of your views. Miss Driver would wish me to be equally frank with you. She has anticipated your objections."
"She could hardly do otherwise," he remarked, smiling faintly.
"As regards the first, her position is that this girl can't be held responsible for anything in the past. She, at least, is blameless."
"I occupy the position of my parents—and bear their burdens, Mr. Austin. So do you of yours. It's the way of the world, I'm afraid, and Miss Driver can't alter it."
"She regards this sentimental objection——"
"You would apply that term to my objection to allying my family with the late Mr. Octon's?"
I was not quite sure of my epithet myself. "I didn't say your objection wasn't natural."
"Perhaps you might go so far as to admit that it is inevitable? I on my part will admit that the girl herself appears to be unexceptionable. Indeed, I liked her very much, when I met her at our friend Alison's. That, however, doesn't in my view alter the case."
"I understand. Will you permit me to pass to the other point you mentioned—that of your son's interest?"
"If you please," he said, with a slight inclination of his head, as he leaned back in his chair. I could see that I had made no way with him. The best that we had hoped for was not coming to pass. There was to be no triumph of pure romance; even relief from the "nightmare" would not, by itself, serve the turn.
"Having placed Miss Octon in the position which she now occupies, Miss Driver naturally charges herself with Miss Octon's future."
"Miss Driver is well known to be generous. I had anticipated, in my turn, that she would propose to make some provision for Miss Octon who, as I understand, has only a very small income of her own."
"Miss Driver has recently concluded negotiations for the purchase of Oxley Lodge, together with the whole of Mr. Bertram Ware's estate. It is estimated that, freed from encumbrances, that estate will produce a net rental of three thousand pounds a year. Miss Driver will present the house and estate to Miss Octon on her marriage."
He raised his brows slightly, but made no other comment than, "I had heard that she was in treaty for Ware's place. Aspenick told me."
"She will settle on Miss Octon a sum of money sufficient to make up this income to the sum of ten thousand pounds a year. This income she will increase to twenty thousand on Lord Lacey's succession to the title. She will also present Miss Octon, on her marriage, with a lump sum of fifty thousand pounds. She will execute a settlement of funds sufficient to raise the income to thirty thousand on her death—this income to be settled on Miss Octon for life, with remainder among her children as she and her husband shall jointly appoint. I am also to inform you that, without undertaking any further legal obligation, it is Miss Driver's present intention to leave to Miss Octon, or (if Miss Octon predeceases her) to any son of hers who is heir to your title, the estate of Breysgate and the greater part of her Catsford property. I need not tell you that that property is of great and growing value. In short, subject to public claims and certain comparatively small private ones, Miss Octon is to be regarded as her natural heir no less absolutely and completely than if she were her own and her only child."
He heard me all through with an impassive face—even his brows had returned to their natural level. "Miss Driver is a young woman herself. She will probably marry."
"It is possible, and therefore she limits her legal obligation to the amount I have mentioned—approximately one half of her present income. I am, however, to inform you in confidence that it is her fixed intention not to marry, and that it is practically certain that she will not depart from that resolution—in which case the ultimate arrangement which I have indicated will come into effect."
The bribe was out—and fewest possible words spent over it! Now—how would he take it?
His manner showed nothing. He sat silent for a minute or two. Then he said, "It's certainly princely." He smiled slightly again. "I think I must apologize for my word 'provision.' This is a very large fortune, Mr. Austin—or seems like it to poor folks like the Laceys."
"It's a very considerable fortune. As I have said, Miss Driver regards Margaret Octon as in the place of her own daughter. Miss Driver thought it only right that these circumstances should be placed before you as possibly bearing on the decision you felt it your duty to make yourself, or to recommend to your son."
"Why does she do it?" he asked abruptly.
"I've just given you the reason which I was directed to give. I wasn't commissioned to give any other. She regards Miss Octon in the light of an only child—the natural object of her bounty and, in due course of time, her natural successor."
"We met once at Hatcham Ford, Mr. Austin," he said abruptly. "You remember? I think you knew pretty well the state of things then existing between Miss Driver and myself? I've charged you with possessing that knowledge before. That piece of knowledge may enable you to understand how the present proposition affects me. This isn't all love for Margaret Octon."
"No, not all love for Margaret. But now you're asking me for my opinion, not for my message."
"I didn't mean it as a question. But I see that you agree with me. Then you may understand that I can feel no gratitude for this offer. It—and consequently the arrangement of which it is a part—would transform everything here. It would accomplish the task which I haven't even had the courage to try to accomplish. It would blot out my great failure. But, coming whence it does and why it does, I can feel no gratitude for it."
"It would be very far from Miss Driver's thoughts to expect anything of the kind."
Suddenly he pushed back his chair, rose to his feet, and went to the window, impatiently letting one of the ugly brown blinds fly up to the ceiling by a tug at its cord. He stood there two or three minutes. His back was still toward me when he spoke again.
"I've been a steward more than an owner—a caretaker, I should rather say. This would make my son and his son after him owners again. It's the restoration of our house." His voice sank a little. "And it would come through her and Leonard Octon!" Silence came again for a while; then he turned round and faced me. "I've no right to decide this question. She has taken the decision out of my hand by this. I have memories, resentments, what I think to be wrongs and humiliations. Perhaps I have cause for thinking so."
"I wasn't sent here to deny that, Lord Fillingford. If that hadn't been so, not I should have been here, but she who sent me."
"And so," he went on slowly, "I'm no judge. I should sin against my conscience if I were to judge. The question is not for me—let her go to Amyas himself."
I was glad at heart—we had escaped bullying; only in one moment of temper had I hinted at it, and that moment seemed now far away. It was easy to see the defects of this man, and easier still to feel them as a vaguely chilling influence. His virtues were harder to see and to appreciate—his justice, his candor of mind, his rectitude, the humility beneath his pride.
"Lord Lacey attaches enormous importance to your opinion. I know that as well as you do. Can't you go a little further?"
"I thought I had gone about as far as could be expected."
"Not quite. Won't you tell your son what you would do if you were in his place?"
"I think you'd better not ask me to do that. I'm less sure of what I should do than I am of what he will do. What he'll do will, I think, content you—I might think too much of who his father is, and of who her father was, and from whose hand these splendid benefits come. I think I'd better not advise Amyas."
"But you'll accept his decision? You'll not dissuade him?"
"I daren't dissuade him," he answered briefly and turned his back on me again. He added in a tone that at least strove to be lighter, "My grandchildren might rise up and call me cursed! But if she looks for thanks—not from this generation!"
For the first time—though I sacrifice finally my character for morality by that confession—I was genuinely, in my heart and not in my pretenses or professions, inclined to regret the night at Hatcham Ford—the discovery and the flight. All said, he was a man. After much conflict they might have come together. If she had known then that it was man against man—not man against name, title, position, respectability—why, the case might have seemed changed, the issue have been different. But he was so seldom able to show what he was. He had no spontaneous power of expressing himself; the revelation had to be wrung out by force—peine forte et dure; he had to be pressed almost to death before he would plead for himself, for his case, for what he felt deep down within him. All that was too late to think about—unless some day, in the future, it might avail to make them decently friendly—avail against the deep wound to pride on one side, against the obstinate championship of the dead on the other.
But to-day he had opened himself frankly enough to absolve me from formalities.
"Gratitude isn't asked. I imagine that the proper forms would be."
He turned to me very quickly. "I'm on terms of acquaintance with a lady, or I'm not. If I am, I hope that I omit no courtesy."
"Nor give it grudgingly?"
"She told you to say that?"
"No—nor some other things I've said. But I know how she'd take any paring down of what is requisite." I ventured a smile at him. "You would have to call, I think, to-morrow." I let that sink in. "And Lady Sarah a few days afterwards."
He gave a short laugh. "You're speaking of matters of course, if this thing is decided as it looks like being."
I got up from my chair. "I go back with the promise of your neutrality?" I asked.
"Neutrality is surrender," he said.
"Yes, I think so. Young blood is in the question. Besides—as you see yourself—the prospect may to a young man seem—rather dazzling."
"Let me alone, Mr. Austin, let me alone, for God's sake!"
"I go the moment you wish me to, Lord Fillingford. I carry my answer with me—isn't it so?"
Wonderfully recovering himself—with the most rapid transition to an orderly self-composure—he came and sat down at his table again.
"I shall see my son on this matter directly after lunch. It will be proper to convey immediate news of our decision to Breysgate Priory. I shouldn't like—in the event we both contemplate—to appear tardy in paying my respects to Miss Driver. At what hour to-morrow afternoon do you suppose that it would be convenient to her to receive me?"
"I should think that about four o'clock would be quite convenient," I answered.
With that, I rose to my feet—my mission was ended. Neither quite as we had hoped, nor quite as we had feared. We had not bullied—we had hardly threatened. If we had bribed, we had not bribed the man himself. He—he himself—would have had none of us; for him—himself—the betrayal at Hatcham Ford governed the situation and his feelings about it. But he saw himself as a trustee—a trustee for unborn generations of men, born to inherit—yet, as things stood, born more than half disinherited! There was no telling what Jenny thought of. Very likely she had thought of that, when she made her bribe no mere provision—nor even merely that "handsome thing"—but the new bestowal of a lost ancestral heritage. Amid profound incompatibilities, they both had broad views, long outlooks—a large conception of the bearings of what men do. Jenny had not been so wrong in thinking of him—nor he in thinking that he could take her with what she brought. Powerfully had Octon, in his rude irresistible natural force, and its natural appeal, broken the current, real if subtle, between them.
I went up to him, holding out my hand. We had won the victory; I did not feel very triumphant.
"Mr. Austin," he said, as he shook hands, "we make a mistake if we expect not to have done to us as we do to others, I learn that as I grow older. Do you understand what I'm at, when I say this?"
"Not very well, I confess, Lord Fillingford."
"Once I went to Miss Driver, holding what I have—my old name, my old place, my position, my title—I can't think of anything they've given me except care and a hopeless sense of my own inadequacy—holding those in my hand and asking for her money. I see now the opposite thing—she comes holding the money, and asks for what I have. I didn't have my way. She'll have hers."
"There are the young people." It was all I had to say.
"Ask her to leave me a little of my son. Because there's no doubt. You've taken away all my weapons, Mr. Austin."
"I wish you'd had this conversation with her—you two together."
He relapsed into his formal propriety of demeanor. "I shall, I trust, give Miss Driver no reason to complain of any want of courtesy—if Amyas persists."
"You've accepted it that he will."
"Yes—that's truth," he said. "I may be expected at Breysgate to-morrow at four."
"Then try to make it happy!"
He gave me a slow pondering look. "There is much between me and her—not all against her nor for me. I've come to see that. I'll do my best, Mr. Austin."
He escorted me to the door, and walked in silence with me down a broad walk, bordered on either side by stately trees, till we came to his gates. He looked up at the venerable trees, then pointed to the tarnished coronets that crowned the ironwork, itself rather rusty.
"A fresh coat of paint wanted!" he observed with his chilly smile—and I really did not know whether his remark involved a reference to our previous conversation or not.
The forms were observed most punctiliously; but before the forms began came Lacey, hot from his talk with Fillingford, amazed, almost bewildered, protesting against Jenny's excessive munificence, passionately anxious that she should be sure that he had not foreseen it.
"And how can you believe I never thought of it, when it's just what I ought to have thought of—just the sort of thing you would be sure to want to do?"
"I haven't forgotten your appalling misery, if you have," she retorted, smiling. "I was really afraid you'd kill yourself before Austin had time to get to the Manor. It was quite convincing as to your innocence of my wicked designs, believe me!"
"But I can't possibly accept it," he declared. "It's so overwhelming!"
"You're not asked to accept a farthing, so you needn't be the least overwhelmed. I give it to Margaret. No bride is to go from Breysgate without a dowry, Amyas. Come, you'd put up with ten times as much overwhelming for her sake." She threatened him playfully: "You can't have her with any less—so take your choice!"
"Well, we shall always know who it is that we owe everything to." He took her hand and kissed it. She looked at his handsome bowed head for a moment.
"If you ever do think of anybody in that sort of way, try not to think of me only."
Standing upright again, he looked at her gravely. "I know what you mean." He flushed a little and hesitated. "I hope you know that—that he and I parted—that day—in a—a friendly way?"
"I know it—and I'm very glad," she said. "That's all about the past, Amyas, in words at least. Keep your thoughts as kind as you can—and be very gentle to Margaret when she wants to talk about him. That's a good return to me, if you want to make any. And love my Margaret."
"My love is for her. My homage is for you always—and all the affection you'll take with it," he said soberly. "It's little she'd think of me if that wasn't so," he added with a smile.
Then came the forms, but the first of them—Fillingford's coming—was no mere form to Jenny. She was not afraid or perturbed, as she had been about meeting Alison—she had done with confession—but she was grave, and preoccupied with it. She bade me look out for him and bring him to her in the library. "You must leave us alone, and we'll join you at tea in the garden afterwards. Take care that Margaret is there when we come."
Nothing can be known of what words passed between them, but Jenny gave a general description of their conversation—it was not a long one, lasting perhaps fifteen minutes. "He met me as if he'd never met me before, he talked to me as if he'd never talked to me before. He was a most courteous new acquaintance, hoping that our common interest in the pair would be a bond of friendship between us. I followed the same line—and there we were! But I couldn't have done it of myself. I tried to thank him for that—that sort of message you gave me from him. The first word sent him straight back into the deepest recesses of his shell—and I said, 'Come and see Margaret.'"
"Oh, you'll make better friends than that some day." I had no strong hope of my words coming true.
"You seem to have got nearer to him than I ever could. His shield's up against—Eleanor Lacey! But he was kind to Margaret, wasn't he?"
Yes, he had been kind to Margaret. He took her hand and looked in her eyes, then gravely kissed her on the forehead. "We must be friends, Margaret," he said. "I know how much my boy loves you, and you are going to take his mother's place in my family." There was the same curious quality of careful deliberation as usual—the old absence of any touch of spontaneity—the same weighing out of just the right measure; but he was obviously sincere. He looked on her young beauty with a kindly liking, and answered the appeal in her eyes by taking her hand between both his and pressing it gently. Margaret looked round to Jenny with a smile of glad shy triumph. Amyas came and put his arm through his father's.
"We three are going to be jolly good friends," he said.
Far more stately was the next ceremonial—the one that was, by my stipulation, to follow a few days later; yet I am afraid that we at Breysgate did not take Lady Sarah's coming half so seriously as she took it herself. She had disapproved of us so strongly before there was—to her knowledge at least—any good ground for disapproval that her later censures, however well-grounded, had lost weight. Sinners cannot take much to heart the blame of those who have always expected to see them do wrong and come to grief—and clapped themselves on the back as good prophets over the event!
Here was no private interview. The whole of her adherents surrounded Jenny in the big drawing-room. Lady Sarah was announced by Loft—himself highly conscious of the ceremonial nature of the occasion. With elaborate courtesy Jenny walked to the door to meet her, spoke her greeting, and led her to one of two large arm-chairs placed close to one another; it was really like the meeting of a pair of monarchs, lately at war but bound to appear unconscious of the disagreeable incidents of the strife. Now peace was to be patched up by marriage. Margaret was called from her place in the surrounding circle. She came—and with courage. We had, I fear, deliberately worked her up to the resolution of being, from the very beginning, not afraid of Lady Sarah—pointing out that any signs of fear now would foreshadow and entail slavery for life. "You'll get on much better if you stand up for yourself," Amyas himself assured her.
Margaret stood, awaiting welcome. Lady Sarah put on her eyeglasses, made a careful inspection of her prospective niece, but offered no comment whatever on her appearance. She dropped the glasses from her nose again, and remarked, "I'm glad to become acquainted with you. I'm sure that you intend to make Amyas a good wife and to do your duty in your new station. Kiss me!" She turned her cheek to Margaret, who achieved the salute with grace but, it must be confessed, without enthusiasm. Lady Sarah did not return it.
"There will be a great deal to do and think of at Oxley," she pursued, "but I shall be very glad to assist you in every way."
"But there'll be nothing to do, Lady Sarah. Jenny's doing everything—every single thing."
"I'm going to give them a few sticks to start housekeeping on," said Jenny, with a lurking smile.
"Old houses have a style of their own; one learns it by living in one," Lady Sarah observed. Oxley was old—so was Fillingford Manor. Breysgate was hardly middle-aged in comparison. Lady Sarah cast a glance round its regrettable newness; Jenny's refurnishing had not availed to obliterate all traces of that.
"I'm not following this model," said Jenny. "I'm taking the best advice—though I'm sure Margaret will be very glad of anything you can tell her."
"Of course I shall, Lady Sarah. But the people Jenny's going to are really the best people in the trade—they know all about it."
"When you have seen the Manor—" Lady Sarah began impressively, but Lacey—who had been, the moment before, in lamentable difficulties between a yawn and a smile—cut in:
"Ah, now when shall she come and see the Manor?"
Lady Sarah was prepared with an invitation for the next day: that was another of the forms, to be carried out precisely, as Fillingford had undertaken. She turned to Jenny. "You've seen it, of course, Miss Driver?"
Jenny nodded serenely. Amyas flushed again—his fair skin betrayed every passing feeling—as he said, "We shall be delighted if we can induce Miss Driver to come, all the same."
"Oh, very delighted, very, I'm sure," agreed Lady Sarah.
"You'll enjoy showing it to Margaret all by yourself much better," said Jenny to Amyas. "I'll come another day soon, and have tea with Lady Sarah, if she'll let me."
"Very delighted, very," Lady Sarah repeated.
She rose to take leave; this time she did herself kiss Margaret on the cheek. I think we were all waiting to see whether, in her opinion, the terms of the treaty demanded a kiss for Jenny also. Lady Sarah decided in the negative; Jenny's particularly erect head, as she held out her hand, may have aided—and certainly welcomed—the conclusion. We escorted her to her carriage with most honorable ceremony. Then we sighed relief—save Chat, who had been, from a modest background, an admiring spectator of the scene. "She's not very effusive," said Chat, "but she has the grand manner, hasn't she, Mr. Austin?"
"I never knew what it really meant till to-day, Miss Chatters."
"She probably never hated anything so much in her whole life," Jenny remarked to me, when we were next alone together, "so it's really hardly fair to criticise her manner. But I rejoice from the bottom of my heart that she didn't think it necessary to kiss me."
"Since you escaped this time, I should think you might escape altogether."
"Well, the wedding day will be a point of danger," she reminded me, "but I'm pretty safe against its becoming habitual. We both hate the idea of it too much for that."
Then—a week later—came the public announcement, made duly and in due form in theTimes and Herald: "Between Lord Lacey, son and heir of the Right Honorable the Earl of Fillingford, and Margaret, daughter of the late Leonard Octon, Esq." The sensation is not to be described. So many things were explained, so many mysteries cleared up! Folks knew now why Lacey had been so much at Breysgate, Sir John Aspenick learned for whom Oxley Lodge was wanted, and Cartmell understood why he had been forced to disburse that much grudged five hundred pounds for early possession. For, with the announcement, came an inspired leading article, revealing the main terms of the proposed settlement; a little discretion was exercised as to the exact figures, but enough was said to show that, besides the gift of the Oxley Grange estate as it stood, there were large sums to pass both now and in the future. Let the parties have been who they might, such a transaction would have commanded the universal attention of the countryside; when it took place between Lord Fillingford's heir and the late Mr. Octon's only daughter, people with memories recalled and retold their stories, and found newcomers ready indeed to listen. Once again Jenny filled all Catsford and all the neighborhood with gossip, speculation, and applause.
"I told you you'd have to undo the purse-strings to some style," I said to Cartmell. "What do you think of this, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer?"
He winked his eye at me solemnly. "It's great," he said. "What a mind she has! There she'll sit at Breysgate—with the town under one foot, and Fillingford and Oxley under the other!"
"Hardly that!" I smiled.
"Look what she's giving now! Aye, and, my boy, think of what she's still got left to give! If human nature goes on being what it's been ever since I remember, Miss Driver's word will be law in both those houses—if not now, in a few years at all events. It's a lot of money—but it's not ill-spent. It makes her the queen of the place, Austin!" He laughed in enjoyment. "I wish old Nick Driver could see this! He'd be proud of his daughter."
"However much or little that may be the result, I'm sure it was not her object."
He looked at me with a good-humored pity; he thought me a fool in practical matters. "Have that as you like," he said, "but she won't object to the result—nor waste it, either—I promise you." He chuckled again. "She's got back at them with a vengeance!"
It was true. Never even in the days before the flight did she make such a figure. The Aspenicks surrendered at discretion, Fillingford Manor was in forced alliance, Oxley Lodge was annexed; Hingston did not hold out long, and Dormer, placated by a big price for his farms, put his pride and his sulks where he had put the money. The town was at Jenny's feet, even if it were an exaggeration to say that it was under them. Timeservers bowed the knee to so much power; the charitable accepted so splendid an atonement. If any still had conscientious doubts, Alison's conduct was invoked as warrant and example. If he were enthusiastically for the mistress of Breysgate now, who had a right to criticise—who could arrogate to himself such merit as would entitle him to refuse to forgive—even though a certain feature in the arrangement made it forever impossible to forget?
The chorus of applause was loud—and almost unanimous; but it was broken by the voice of one sturdy dissenter—one to whom interest could not appeal and, even had she wanted anything of Jenny, would have appealed vainly—one on whom the sentimental side had no effect, since both her sentiment and her charity moved in the strait fetters of unbending rules. Mrs. Jepps was rigid and obstinate. She had not fallen to the temptation of using the park road, as Lady Aspenick had: she would not now bow the knee to Baal, however splendid and imposing a deity Baal might be. Many had a try at shaking her—and Alison among the rest. He told me about his effort, laughing as he confessed his failure.
"I was well snubbed. She told me that Romish practices led to Romish principles, and that where they led it was easy to see; but that she for her part had other principles and didn't palter with them. When it suited Miss Driver to explain, she was ready to listen. Till then—nothing to do with the woman!"
Jenny heard of this—her one signal failure (for she had extorted alliance, if not loyalty, from Lady Sarah) with composure, almost with pleasure, although pleasure of an unusual variety.
"Well, I respect Mrs. Jepps," she said, "and I wish very much that she wouldn't deprive herself of her drives in the park. I'd promise not to bow to her! Mrs. Jepps is good for me, Austin—a fat, benevolent, disapproving old skeleton at the feast—a skeleton with such fat horses!—crying out 'You did it, you did it!' That's rather useful to me, I expect. Still I should like "—she smiled mischievously—"to try her virtue a little higher—with an invitation to the laying of the foundation stone! I'm going to have that in four or five months, and Mr. Bindlecombe is angling for a prince to do it. If Mrs. Jepps holds out against the prince, she has my leave to hold out against me forever!"
Still it was her instinct to conquer opponents, even when her judgment indorsed their opposition and her feelings did not resent it.
"If she were a young woman, you'd get her at last," I said, "but she's very old. She'll go to heaven before you've time; I can only hope, for the sake of this household, that she won't be made a door-keeper, or we may as well give up all hope and take what chances await us elsewhere."
"Let her be," said Jenny. "She only serves me as all the rest would have done, if I hadn't inherited Nick Driver's money. I've beaten them with that."
"That's not the way you beat Alison," I reminded her.
Her face had been hard as she referred to the power of her money; it softened at the mention of Alison's name. "It was more Margaret's victory than mine. I like best to fight with Margaret; that's a clean sword, Austin. When I'm fighting with and for her, then I'm right. But right or wrong, you wouldn't have me beaten?"
"You've no right to impute any such immoral doctrine to me."
"By now, I think I have," she laughed. "I wonder how soon Lady Sarah will tell Margaret all about me!"
"I don't think she will—and, if she did, you'd never know it."
Jenny smiled. "Yes, I should. Some day—for no apparent reason—Margaret would come and kiss me extraordinarily often." She gave a shake of her head. "I'd rather it didn't happen, though."
It is not to be supposed that, during her Fillingford campaign, Jenny had neglected her Institute. No day had passed without talk or correspondence about it, and she had been in constant consultation with Bindlecombe, Chairman of the Committee of the Corporation in whose charge the scheme was. Fruits of the activity had now appeared. The gardens of Hatcham Ford had been laid waste. (O Bindlecombe, what of your deceitful promises to spare them?) Only the shrubberies in front (where Lacey had once hidden) remained of the old pleasure grounds. Everywhere else were excavations, or lines that marked foundations to be laid; already in some spots actual buildings poked their noses out of the earth, their raw red brick shamed by the mellow beauty of the old house which still stood and was to stand as the center of the architectural scheme. Like all things with which Jenny had to do, the plan had grown larger and larger as it progressed, took more ground, embraced more projects, swallowed more money. It spread across the road, absorbed the garden of Ivydene, and happily involved the destruction of that odious villa of unpleasant memories. It made inroads on Cartmell's money-bags till—what with it, and Margaret's great endowment, to say nothing of Dormer's fields—rich Miss Driver was for two or three months positively hard up for ready money! But the result was to be magnificent; with every fresh brick and every additional sovereign, Catsford grew more loyal, and the prospect of catching that prince more promising. "And I'm going to get Mr. Bindlecombe made Mayor again next year, and Amyas must pull all the wires in London town to get him a knighthood. With Margaret and Amyas married, the Institute opened, and Mr. Bindlecombe Sir John, I think I may singNunc Dimittis, Austin!"
"We might perhaps look forward to a short period of peace," I admitted cautiously.
"Come down and look at the old place once more, before it's changed quite out of recognition. Just you and I together!"
We went down together one evening in the dusk. Architects and surveyors, clerks, masons, and laborers had all gone home to their rest. The place was quiet for the night, though the rents in the ground and the rising walls spoke loud of the toils of the day. The old house stood unchanged in the middle of it all; unchanged, too, was the path down which Jenny had passed after she begged the loan of Lord Fillingford's carriage. She took a key from her purse and opened the door of the house. "Let's go in for a minute."
She led me into the room where once I had waited for her—where, another time, I had found her holding Powers's head, where Fillingford had come upon us in the very instant when I had hailed safety as in sight. The room was just as Octon had left it—his heavy dining table, his ugly dining chairs, the two old leather ones on each side of the fireplace, his spears and knives on the wall. And there, too, on the mantelpiece, was the picture of the beautiful child which I had marked as missing when I reached the house that night.
"You've been here before," I said to Jenny, pointing at the picture.
"I found it among his papers after he was at peace," she answered, sitting down in one of the old leather chairs. "I knew this was its place; it has returned to it. And there it will stay, so long as I or Margaret have a voice here. Yes, I have been here before—and I shall be here often. This is to be my room—sacred to me. From here I shall pull the wires!" She smiled at me in a humorous sadness.
"Not the wires of memory too often!" I suggested.
"Two men have made me and my life—made me what I am and my life what it is and is to be. Here—in this place—they meet. This room is Leonard's—all the great thing that's coming into being outside is my father's. They appreciated one another, you've told me—and so has Leonard. They won't mind meeting here, Austin."
"They neither of them did justice to you!" I cried. "Was the Smalls and the Simpsons justice? And was what he—the other—let you do justice either?"
"I don't know—and I don't care," said Jenny. "They were both big men. They had their work, their views, their plans, their occupations. They had their big lives, their big selves, to look after. They couldn't spend all the time thinking whether they were doing justice to a woman!"
"That's a nice bit of special pleading!" I said. "But there, I'm not a great man—as both of your big men have, on occasion, plainly told me."
She smiled at me affectionately. "But one of them gave me—in the end—all he had, and for the other I—in the end—would have given all I had. Oh, yes, it's 'in the end' with us Drivers—because we must try to get everything first—before we are ready to give! But in the end all was given or ready to be given, and here they shall stay together. I have no pedigree, Austin, and I shall have no biography. Here stand both. At Hatcham Ford read my pedigree and my biography."
The room grew dark, but her pale face stood out against the gloom. She rose from her chair and came up to me.
"My big ghosts are very gentle to me now—gentler than one would have been in life, I think—gentler than the other was. You see, they're at rest—their warfare is accomplished. I think mine's accomplished, too, Austin, and I will rest."
"Not you! Rest indeed!"
"I may work, and yet be at peace in my heart. Come, my friend, let's go back home. Amyas dines with us to-night. Let's go back home, to the happiness which God—Allah the All-Merciful—has allowed me, sinner that I am, to make."
Through the soft evening we walked back to where Amyas and Margaret were.
Behold us all engaged in laying the foundation stone of the Memorial Hall, which was to be the most imposing feature, if not the most useful part, of the great Driver Institute. At least—not quite all of us. Lady Sarah had begun, by now, her habit of making long sojourns at Bath, returning to Fillingford Manor from time to time on visits. These were usually arranged to coincide with Jenny's absences—in London or on the Riviera—but one had not been arranged to coincide with the laying of Jenny's foundation stone. And Mrs. Jepps was not there—although she had been invited to have the honor of meeting His Royal Highness. There Jenny had to accept defeat. But all the rest gathered round her from borough and from county—Fillingford stiff but friendly, the Aspenicks as friendly as if they had never been stiff, Dormer forgetful of his injuries, Alison to bless the undertaking, Lord and Lady Lacey, fresh back from their honeymoon, Cartmell—and Sir John Bindlecombe! He was not actually Sir John yet, but His Royal Highness—who did his part excellently, but confided wistfully to Cartmell that it was a splendid hunting morning—was the bearer of a certain gracious intimation which made us give the Mayor and Chairman of the Reception Committee brevet rank at once. Sir John, then, held the mortar, while Jenny herself handed the silver-gilt trowel. His Royal Highness well and truly laid the stone, making thereafter a very pleasant little speech, concerning the interest which his Family took and had always taken in institutes, and the achievements and sterling British qualities of the man we were there to commemorate, the late Mr. Nicholas Driver of Breysgate Priory. It had been my privilege to coach His Royal Highness in the latter subject, and he did full justice to my tuition. That done, he added a few graceful words of his own concerning the munificent lady who stood by his side, and the men of Catsford cheered Jenny till they were hoarse. Amyas Lacey and Bindlecombe jumped forward to lead the cheers, and four or five eminent men of science, whom I had contrived to induce to come down, to add to the glory of the occasion, joined in with a will. After that—luncheon for us, dinner for half the population; and a brass band and a procession to conduct His Royal Highness back to the station. His way lay past Mrs. Jepps's window; so I hope that she saw him after all—without a stain on her principles!
"That's done, anyhow!" said Jenny. "Now the real work can go ahead!"
The next morning after this eventful day she dismissed me—summarily and without warning.
"You must go, Austin," she told me. "I've been very selfish, and I'm very ignorant. Of course I realized that your books are very clever, though I don't understand them, but till I heard what those great pundits you brought down said about you, I didn't know what I was doing. You mustn't waste your time writing notes and doing accounts for a provincial spinster."
"And are you going to write the notes and do the accounts yourself?" I asked. "Or is Chat?"
"I'm going to pension Chat; she's got a horrid cough, poor thing, and will do much better in a snug little villa at the seaside. I've got my eye on one for her. I shall get a smart young woman, who dresses nicely, looks pretty, and knows something about frocks and millinery—which last necessary accomplishment of a lady's private secretary you have never even tried to acquire."
"Dear me, no more I have! It never occurred to me before. I left it to Chat! Do you think I could learn it now?"
"I've the very greatest doubts about it," answered Jenny, deceitfully grave. "Go away, and write more books." She shook her head at me reproachfully. "To think you never told me what I was doing!"
"I suppose you're aware that you pay me four hundred pounds a year?"
"So did my father. I suppose he knew what the proper salary was."
"But you don't know perhaps how much I've made out of these marvelous books in the last four years? It amounts to the sum of twenty-seven pounds, four shillings, and twopence. Your new secretary will tell you in a minute how much that works out at per annum."
"Goodness!" murmured Jenny. "Oh, but, of course, I should——"
"Of course you'd do nothing of the kind! Time has consecrated my claim to be overpaid for inefficient services—but I won't be pensioned off into a villa with Chat! Here I stay—or out I go—to a garret and starvation!"
"And fame!"
"Oh, humbug! As for my work, you know I've more time here than I want."
"You really won't go? I shall have the clever girl, you know—for the notes and the accounts!"
"Have the girl, and be—satisfied with that!"
"You really refuse to leave me, Austin?"
"This is my home," I said. "Here I stay till I'm turned out."
She came to me and put her arm through mine. "If this is your home, nobody shall turn you out—neither before my death nor after it. As long as you live, the Old Priory is there for you. Even you can't refuse that?"
"No, I won't refuse that. Let me stop in the Old Priory and do the odd jobs."
She pressed my arm gently. "It would have been very curious to have nobody to talk to about things—especially about the old things." Her voice shook a little. "Very curious—and very desolate, Austin!"
It is now a good many years since we had that conversation—and we have never had another like it. I must plead guilty to one or two books, but I manage to save a little of Jenny's work from the clutches of the clever girl, and old Cartmell is on the shelf—so I get some of his; and still I dwell in the little Old Priory under the shadow of big Breysgate on the hill above. Changes have come elsewhere. There are children at Oxley Lodge; the succession is prosperously—and indeed amply—secured. Mrs. Jepps has departed this life—stubborn to the last in her protest; a donor, who was, and insisted on remaining, anonymous, has founded a Jepps Scholarship at the Institute "as a mark of respect for her honorable life and consistent high principle"; I am inclined to hope that Mrs. Jepps is not permitted to know who that donor was. Lady Sarah is gone, too, and Alison has been promoted to a suffragan bishopric. But over us at Breysgate no change passes, save the gentle change of the revolving years—unless it be that with every year Jenny's sway increases. Down in Catsford they have nicknamed her "The Empress." The seat of empire is at Breysgate; by her proconsuls she governs the borough, Oxley, even Fillingford Manor; for though its rigid master has never become her friend, has no more passed than he has fallen short of the limits of punctilious courtesy which he accepted, yet in all business matters he leans more and more on her. So her power spreads, and will increase yet more when, in due course, Lacey and Margaret take possession of the Manor. The despotism is veiled; she is only First Citizen, like Augustus himself. She will grow no richer—"There is more than enough for them after I am gone"—and pours back into the town and the countryside all that she receives from them—panem et circenses—and better things than that. The Institute is even such a model to all institutes as Bindlecombe would have it; his dream of its broadening into a university is an openly avowed project now. No wonder that by public subscription they have placed a portrait of her in the Memorial Hall, facing the picture of Nicholas Driver which she herself presented. From where she hangs, she can see the old roof of Hatcham Ford, surrounded and dwarfed by the great buildings that she has erected. The painter of Jenny's portrait never saw the Eleanor Lacey at Fillingford Manor—indeed it has gone from its old place, and is to be found somewhere in a cupboard, as I suspect—but the likeness is indubitably there, all undesigned. You see it in the firm lips and jaw, in the straight brows on the pale face, above all in the hazel eyes, so bright and yet profound. Eleanor Lacey had little luck after her luckless flirtation. Fortune has been kinder to Jenny. She has a full life, a good life, a very useful one. The story has grown old; the name of Octon is merged; time has obliterated well-nigh all the tracks she made in her evening flight from Hatcham Ford.
Yet not in her heart; there is no obliteration there, but rather an indelible stamp; it may be covered up—it cannot be sponged or scratched out. For her, Leonard is not forgotten; he triumphs. He lives again in the son of Margaret his daughter; in the person of that son—his grandson—he is to reign where he was spurned. That is the triumph of the scheme she made—and to her it is Leonard's triumph. In her eyes her own triumphs are little beside that.
"My day is done," she said to me once. "Bad it was, I suppose, and God knows that it was short! But it was my day, and it is over." But she did not speak in sorrow. "I am content—and at peace." She broke into a smile. "Don't think of me as a woman any more. Think of me as just a man of business!"
A man of business she is—and a very fine one; tactful and conciliatory, daring and subtle. But not a woman? Never was there more a woman since the world began—never one who leaned more on her woman's power, nor turned the arts of woman more to practical account. She has had many wooers; Dormer returned to the charge three or four times, till at last he fell back—in a mood little above resignation—on Eunice Aspenick; we have had an ambitious young merchant from Catsford, a curate or two, and one splendid aspirant, a former brother-officer of Lacey's, a man of great name and station. All went away with the same answer—but all were sent away friends, praisers of Jenny, convinced, I think, that they had only just failed and that no other man could have come so near success. There lies her instinct, and she cannot help using it—sometimes for her purposes, sometimes for her instinctive pleasure, which is still to lose no adherent, and to make friends even in refusing to be more. She will not marry, but she is marriageable—eminently marriageable—and that is as much an asset now as when she threatened to use it against Lord Fillingford if he would not take her bribe. Not a woman? How little we know of ourselves, Jenny! Is not her great triumph—Leonard's triumph, for which she planned and wrought and risked—is it not a woman's triumph all over, and her satisfaction in it supremely feminine?
A woman—and, to my thinking, a great woman, too; full of what we call faults, full of what we hail as virtues—and quite with a mind of her own as to the value of these qualities—a mind by no means always moving on orthodox lines. Stubborn, self-willed, tortuous, jealous of domination, tenacious of liberty (at what cost and risk she had clung to that till the last moment!), not patient of opposition, suspicious of any claim to influence or to guide her; generous to magnificence, warm in affection, broad in mind, very farseeing, full of public spirit, never daunted, loyal to death, and beyond the grave—that is Jenny—and yet not all Jenny, for it leaves out the gracious puzzling woman in whom all these things are embodied; the woman with her bursts of temper, her fits of petulance, her joyous playfulness, her sudden looks and gestures of love or friendship; her smiles gay or mysterious, her eyes so full of fun or so full of thought, flashing while she scolds, mocking while she cheats, caressing when she cajoles, so straight and honest when suddenly, after all this, she lays her hand on your arm and says "Dear friend!" Such is "The Empress"—the great Miss Driver of Breysgate Priory. Such is my dear friend Jenny, whom I serve in freedom and love in comradeship. I would that she were what they call her! None fitter for the place since Great Elizabeth—whom, by the way, she seems to me to resemble in more than one point of character and temperament.
So we live side by side, and work and play together—with love—but with no love-making. There are obvious reasons on my side for that last proviso. I am her servant; the fourth part of twenty-seven pounds per annum represents, as I have hinted, the most I have earned save the salary she pays me. I should make a very poor Prince Consort—and Jenny would never trust me again as long as she lived—though it is equally certain that she would never tell me so. And there's another reason, accounting not for my not having done it, but for the odder fact—my not having wanted to do it. Humble man that I am, yet I was born free and am entitled not only to the pursuit of happiness, but to the retention of my liberty; the latter offers, in my judgment, the most favorable opportunity for the former. Jenny likes liberty—so do I. As we are, we can both enjoy it. If by any miraculous freak Jenny had made me her husband, she would have made me her slave also. Or would Jenny have been the slave? I fancy not. I know her—and myself—too well to cherish that idea; which is indeed, in the end, little more attractive.
For her decision is right for herself, as once I told her. She has found happiness—more happiness than would have come to her if she had never fled from Hatcham Ford, more happiness, I dare to think (though never to say!), than would in the end have been hers, had Octon never faced the Frenchman's pistol at Tours. She is not made for an equal partnership, no more than for a submission or surrender. How hardly she accepted a partnership at all, even with the man whose love has altered all her life! It is her nature to be alone, and through a sore ordeal she came to that discovery. Once, I think, and in just one sentence she showed me her true heart, what her true and deepest instinct was—even about Leonard Octon.
We were sitting by the fire one evening alone. Talk dragged and she looked listless, tired after a busy day's work, thoughtful and brooding.
"What are you thinking of?" I asked.
"Oh, my thoughts had gone back to the early days here. I was thinking how pleasant it would be if we had Leonard back at Hatcham Ford, dropping in after dinner."
At Hatcham Ford, mind you! Dropping in after dinner! That was the time to which her wandering thoughts flew back—that the point on which their flight instinctively alighted. Not the heart-trying, heart-testing, perhaps heart-breaking, days of union and partnership, but the days of liberty and friendship.
I must have smiled to myself over her answer, for she said sadly, yet with a smile herself, "I can't help it! That was what I was thinking, Austin."
So think, dear mistress—and not on the harder days! Defiance, doubt, despair, are over. Abide in peace.