The Great Miss Driver Part 11

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

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

But if the convulsion must come--as it must some day--Chat wanted it dramatic--matter for gossip and for flutters! To her taste Octon fulfilled that aesthetic requirement.

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

"Of course things are very much changed for the better in most ways, Mr.

Austin--if they'll only last. The comforts!--And, of course, the salary!

Well, it's not the thing to talk about that. Still I daresay you yourself sometimes think--? Yes, of course, one must consider it. But there were features of the rectory life which I confess I miss. We had always a very cheerful tea, and supper, too, was sociable. In fact one never wanted for a chat. Here I'm thrown very much on my own resources.

Jenny is out or busy, and Mrs. Bennet--the housekeeper, you know--is reserved and, of course, not at her ease with me. And then there was the authority!" (Was Chat also among the Caesars?) "Poor Chat had a great deal of authority at the rectory, Mr. Austin--yes--she had! Mrs. Simpson an invalid--the rector busy or not caring to meddle--the girls were left entirely to me. My word was law." She shook her head regretfully over the change in her position.

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

"Jenny, of course, was different--and that made it difficult sometimes.

Besides being the eldest, she was very well paid for and, although not pampered and, I must say, considering all things as I now know them, very ill-supplied with pocket money, there were orders that she should ride every day. Two horses and the hostler from the Bull every day--except Sundays! It couldn't but make a difference, especially with a girl of Jenny's disposition--not altogether an easy one, Mr. Austin.

It had to be give-and-take between us. If she obeyed me, there were many little things I could do--having, as I say, the authority. If she would do her lessons well--and her example had great influence on the others--I didn't trouble to see what books she had in her bedroom (with the other girls I did), nor even ask questions if she stayed out a little late for supper. Of course we had to be very much on our guard; it didn't do to make the Simpson girls jealous."

"You had a little secret understanding between yourselves?"

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

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

"She knew how far she could go; she knew when I must say 'Stop!' She never put me to it--though I must say she went very near the line sometimes. She came to us very raw, too, with really no idea of what was ladylike. What those Smalls can have been like! You see what she is now.

I don't think I did so badly."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After lunch Lacey carried Jenny off to the garden--his father seemed to think that he had done enough as host and to acquiesce readily in the devolution of his duties--and I sat awhile with Fillingford, smoking cigarettes--well, he only smoked one. It seemed to me that the man was like his house; just as the state of its fortune was not rudely declared in anything unbecoming or shabby, but had to be gathered from the gaps where beauties once had figured, so the essence of him, and the road to understanding him, lay in his reserves, his silences, his defensiveness.

What he refrained from doing, being, or saying, was the most significant thing about him. His manners were irreproachable, his courtesy cast in a finer mold than that of an ordinary gentleman, yet he did not achieve real cordiality and remained at a very long arm's length from intimacy.

His highest degree of approval seemed to consist in an absence of disapprobation; yet, feeling that this negative reward of merit was hard to win, the recipient took the unsubstantial guerdon with some gratification. My own hope was to escape from his presence without having caused him to think that I had done anything offensive; if he had nothing against me, I should be content. I wondered whether he were satisfied to have the like measure meted out to him. His son had said he was "not expansive": that was like denying silkiness to a porcupine. Yet there was that about him which commanded respect--at least a respect appropriately negative; you felt certain that he would do nothing sordid and touch nothing unclean; he would always be true to the code of his cla.s.s and generation.

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

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

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

"Yes, he must go and do some work, while I hold the fort for him at home. Landed property needs a great deal of attention nowadays, Mr.

Austin." Again he smiled, but now wearily, as though his stewardship were a heavy burden.

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

"We've found a picture of Miss Driver in the West Gallery," cried Amyas.

"Really it must be her--it's exactly like!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"She got into sad disgrace--and very nearly into the Tower, I believe.

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

"What was her name?"

"Mistress Eleanor Lacey."