The Great Miss Driver Part 29

"Oh, I'm glad of that, I'm glad of that!" Her sobbing again broke the silence of the great empty house.

CHAPTER XV

IN THE DOCK

She had gone--and we, her friends, were left to make the best of the situation.

It proved, indeed, easy enough to deal with Powers; the police court was not to be added to our troubles! The man was thoroughly frightened and shaken; confronted with the suggestion that Octon might well return in a few days, he was eager to hide himself. Cartmell took advantage of his mood and pared down his money cruelly; he took what he could get--no doubt he had been well paid from Fillingford Manor--and within two days was out of Catsford with all his belongings. There, one might well hope, was an end of Powers; even Jenny would not call him back again!

But an end of Powers did not much mend matters; even the fact that Jenny's engagement to Fillingford had not been formally announced failed to a.s.sist them to any great extent. The engagement had been a subject of general speculation, confidently foretold and almost daily expected. Now the subject of common talk was very different. Jenny was gone, Octon was gone. So far, perhaps, little. One might return, the other had, no doubt, good reasons for departure. But there were witnesses of their departure together, and of circ.u.mstances which made it look strange.

Alison the Rector was one of these--a friendly unimpeachable witness. He had been seeing two lads off to London--former members of his choir who had returned to pay a visit to old friends--and he told Cartmell (he did not speak to me, nor, I believe, to anybody but Cartmell) how he had seen Jenny come hurriedly on to the platform; she was veiled, but her face was easily to be distinguished, and her bearing alone would have caused her to be recognized. She stood for a moment looking about her, then caught sight of Octon's tall figure by the bookstall. She went straight up to him. He turned with a start. "The man's face when he saw her was a wonder," said Alison. They talked a little, then walked to the train. Octon spoke to the guard and gave him money. The guard put them into a compartment and turned the key. No sign of companion, maid, footman, or even luggage, appertaining to Jenny! Did Miss Driver of Breysgate Priory travel by night to London in that fashion?

What he had seen others saw--both Jenny and Octon were well known in Catsford--and others were less reticent than the Rector. When no announcement was made of Jenny's return and none of her engagement, when Powers vanished and Ivydene was shut up, then the stream of talk began to flow. Fillingford was loyally silent; his silence seemed only to add significance to the rumors. Lacey abruptly rejoined his regiment, though he had engagements for three weeks ahead--yet another unexplained departure! The whole town--the whole neighborhood--were agog. Human nature being what it is, small blame to them!

Of course his interview with Alison sent Cartmell flying up to me in excitement and consternation. He had become devoted to Jenny; he was devoted also to that fabric of influence and importance which she had been building for herself. He was terribly upset. He had not been so far behind the scenes as I had, or as Chat; the catastrophe came on him with unmitigated suddenness. He had been a great partisan of the Fillingford match; that crumbled before his eyes. But the greater blow was the mystery of her flight with Octon.

"I can tell you nothing. We must wait for a letter." It was all I could say unless and until Jenny gave me leave to speak.

That she did promptly, so far as Cartmell was concerned, thereby enabling me to use his services in regard to Powers. A letter arrived on Sat.u.r.day morning--the flight had been on Thursday. It was a brief letter, and a businesslike one. It showed two things: that Jenny was, for the moment, in London--she did not say where--and that she was not coming back. It told me to take Cartmell into my full confidence, to tell him all I knew; neither he, nor Chat, nor I, was to say a word to anybody else. "Announce that I am going to winter abroad, and say nothing else--absolutely nothing--no explanations, no excuses, no guesses. Say just what I have told you, and nothing else. Tell Chat that I want nothing sent on. I shall get what I want. I will write at length about business--to you or to Mr. Cartmell--as soon as I have made my plans." Then she bade me go to Hatcham Ford, to pay off Octon's two servants, and have the house put in charge of a caretaker. That injunction was the only reference to Octon; of her own position, feelings, or intentions in respect to him she made no mention whatever.

Cartmell heard the letter, and the story which, in obedience to it, I told him, without signs of very great surprise. He twisted his mouth about and grunted over Jenny's folly and double-dealing--but to his practical mind the present situation was the question; my story seemed to make that more, not less, explicable. Jenny, in honor pledged to Fillingford, found that she wanted to marry Octon; she had not dared to tell Fillingford so; hence all the subterfuges, the secret meetings, the catastrophe, and the flight.

"In a day or two we shall get news of their marriage, no doubt. It's very silly, and not very creditable--but it's hardly a tragedy, Austin.

Only--there goes Fillingford Manor forever! And what a master for Breysgate!"

His was as plain and reasonable a view as the situation could be fitted into. Jenny would now marry Octon, wait till the sensation was over, and then come back to Breysgate with her husband. Or perhaps she would not come back to Breysgate; perhaps she would not face the neighborhood with her record behind her--and Octon by her side, ever recalling it. She would break up all the fabric which she had made--and start anew somewhere else. That did not seem unlikely; a suggestion of it filled Cartmell with fresh dismay.

"A pretty thing that!" he said. "After all our tall talk about our love for Catsford, and our Inst.i.tute, and all the rest of it! How am I to face Bindlecombe, eh? And look at the money she's put into the estate!

She'll never get that back on a sale."

I found Cartmell rather comforting--at least he created a diversion in my thoughts. His care for the externals of the position, for the material and even the pecuniary aspects of it, was a relief to an imagination which, all against its will, had been engrossed in the state and the struggle of Jenny's heart--dwelling on her intentions not about her estate and her Inst.i.tute, but about herself, picturing the strong rush of feeling which had impelled her to her flight, asking whither it would lead or had led her--and asking doubtfully.

Cartmell tapped my knee with the end of his stick. "The sooner we get news of the marriage, the better--though bad's the best!" he said with a solemn nod of his head.

He was right--but most heartily did I echo his "Bad's the best!" Had Jenny herself ever thought differently--at least before that fatal night? What was she thinking now--when the night was past?

Two days later a long letter reached Cartmell; he came up to me with it directly after breakfast, when I was in my office at the Priory. A lonely, weary great place was the house now--no life in it; Chat in bed and probably in flutters--she had taken to both on the night of the disaster, and clung to both; Loft's face and gait was p.r.o.nouncedly funereal. Visitors, of course, there were none. The establishment seemed to be in quarantine.

Jenny's letter was in her best style--concise, clear--and handsome.

Everything was to go on at Breysgate as though she herself were there.

Cartmell was given full control of finances--a power of attorney was to follow from London. Chat was to stay till further orders. Nothing was to be shut up, n.o.body to be dismissed. I was directed to take full charge of the house and grounds, allotted ample funds for the expenses, and intrusted with the care of all her correspondence. Urgent letters were to be sent under cover to her bankers at Paris; there all communications were to be addressed, thence all would come. Money for her own use was to be deposited there also. Finally, the Committee was fully empowered to proceed with the plans and preliminaries of the Inst.i.tute; they were to be credited with five thousand pounds for this purpose. I was to act on her behalf and report progress to her from time to time. Whatever her feelings were, her brain was active, busy, and efficient.

"It doesn't look as if she meant to give up Breysgate, anyhow," said Cartmell.

"Neither does it look as if she meant to come back," said I.

That, again, was like Jenny. She did not mean to come back, but neither did she mean to let go. She elaborately provided for a long absence, but by careful implication negatived the idea that the absence was to be permanent. Though she was not there, her presence was to be felt. Though she was away, she would rule through her deputies--Chat, Cartmell, the Inst.i.tute Committee, myself. She forsook Catsford, but would remain a power there.

With all this, not a word of what she herself meant to do or where she meant to go--no explanation of the past or information about the future.

Not a word of Octon--not a word of marriage! The old signature held still, "Jenny Driver." The silences of the letter were even more remarkable than its contents. The whole effect was one of personal isolation. That great local inst.i.tution, Miss Driver of Breysgate, was all to the fore. Jenny had withdrawn behind an impenetrable veil. Miss Driver of Breysgate was benign, conciliatory, gracious, loyal to Catsford. Jenny was enigmatic, unapologetic, defiant. Jenny slapped while Miss Driver stroked. What would they make out of these contradictory att.i.tudes of the dual personality?

Cartmell put his common-sense finger on the spot--on the very pulse of Catsford and the neighborhood.

"What they'll want to hear about is the marriage. Any irregularity in her position--!" He waved his hands expressively.

Graciousness and loyalty, charities continued and inst.i.tutes built--excellent in their way, but no real use if there were any irregularity in her position! Cartmell was right--and I am far from wishing to imply that Catsford was wrong, or that its pulse beat otherwise than the pulse of a healthy locality should. The rules must be kept--at any rate, homage must be paid to them. Jenny herself never denied the obligation, whether it were to be regarded as merely social or as something more. It is no business of mine to question it on her behalf--and I feel no call to do it on my own account.

Cartmell's words flung a doubt. Was there much positive reason for that doubt yet? People may get married without advertising the fact. Even although they have departed by the same train for the same place, they may behave with propriety pending arrangements for a wedding. Jenny had great possessions; she was not to be married out of hand, like a beggar-girl. Settlements clamored to be made, lawyers to be consulted.

Cartmell cut across these soothing reflections of mine.

"It's a funny thing that I've had no instructions about settlements.

She'd surely never marry him without settlements?"

I cut my reflections adrift, it was the only line left open to me. "How could you expect a girl to think about them in such circ.u.mstances?"

"I should expect Jenny Driver to," he said.

"She'd be thinking of nothing except the romance of it."

"Is that the impression you get from her letter?"

"There are always two sides to her mind," I urged.

"One's in that letter," he said, pointing to it. "What's the other doing, Austin?"

To ask that question was, as things stood, to cry to an oracle which was dumb. Miss Driver of Breysgate spoke--but Jenny was obstinately mute.

Before many days were out, Catsford became one colossal "Why?" It must have been by a supreme effort, by a heartrending sacrifice to traditional decorum, that the editor of the _Herald and Times_ refrained from writing articles or "opening our columns to a correspondence" on the subject.

At last there came a word about herself--to me and to me only. It was contained in the last communication I received from her before she left London; she spoke of herself as being "just off." The letter dealt with nothing more important than the treatment of a pet spaniel which had been ailing at the time of her flight. But there was a postscript, squeezed in at the foot of the page; the ink was paler than in the letter itself. It looked as though the postscript had been added by an afterthought--perhaps after hesitation--and blotted immediately. "I still hold my precarious liberty."

The one sentence answered one question--she was not married. There were things which it left unanswered; her present position and her intentions for the future lay still in doubt. She held her liberty, but the liberty was precarious. Here was no material for a rea.s.suring public announcement; even if I had not been sure that the postscript was meant for me alone--and of that I was sure--I could only have held my tongue; it was charged with so fatal an ambiguity, it left so much in the dark.

Yet in its way it was to me full of meaning, most characteristic, most illuminating--and it fitted in with the picture which my own imagination had drawn. Out of a tangle of hesitations and doubts she had plunged into her wild adventure. How far it had carried her it was not possible to say; but here were the hesitations and doubts back again. After the impulsive fervor of feeling had had its way with her, the cool and cautious brain was awake again--awake and struggling. The issue was doubtful; the liberty to which her mind clung was "precarious"--menaced and a.s.sailed by a potent influence. Past experience made it easy to appreciate the state in which she was--her wishes on one side, her fears on the other--her strong inclination to Octon against her obstinate independence, her feelings crying for surrender, her mental instinct urging that she should still keep the line of retreat open.

But was it still open in any effective sense? As regards her position, so far as the opinion of the world--of her world--went, every day barred it more and more. She must know that; she must realize how her silence would be interpreted, how no news about her would be confidently reckoned the worst of news. For Octon she had sacrificed so much that there was nothing for it but to give him all--to give him even her liberty, if marriage with him meant the loss of it. There was no other possible conclusion if she would look at the matter as others looked at it, if she would use the eyes and ears of Catsford, and see what they made of her situation. But perhaps she was no readier to surrender herself to them than to Octon himself. She might answer that in her own soul she would still be free, though her freedom were bought at a great price, though in the eyes of the world she had forfeited her right to it.

My memory harked back to a conversation which I had once held with Alison. A mind that thought for itself in worldly matters, I had suggested to him, would very likely think for itself in moral or religious ones, too--and such thought was apt to issue in suspending general obligations in a man's own case. I had hazarded the opinion that Miss Driver would be capable of suspending a general obligation in her own case--as the result of careful thought about it--as an exercise of power, to repeat the phrase I had used. If that were her disposition now--if what I had foreshadowed as a possibility had become a fact--would Octon save her from the results of it? He was the last man in the world to do that. Skeptic in mind and rebel in temper, he would not insist on obedience to obligations in whose sanction he did not believe, nor be urgent in counseling outward conformity with conventions which he disliked and took a positive pleasure in scorning. On the other hand, he would not be swayed by a vulgar self-interest; he would be too proud to seek to bind her to him that he might thus bind her money also.

If she said "I will remain free," he would acquiesce and might even applaud. If she said "I will be free and yet with you," it was not likely that he would offer any strong opposition.

Meanwhile she stood where people who arrogate to themselves the liberty of defying the law cannot reasonably complain of standing--in the dock.

That is the fair cost of the freedom they claim. Jenny was arraigned at the bar of the public opinion of her neighbors; unless she could and would clear herself of suspicion, there was not much doubt how the verdict would go. The first overt step in the proceedings took place under my own eyes.

Cartmell had apprised Bindlecombe of Jenny's wish that the work of the Inst.i.tute should proceed in her absence, and of her financial arrangements to this end. Bindlecombe, as Chairman, convened a meeting of the Committee. Cartmell was out of town that day and did not attend, but I went to represent Jenny's side of the affair. Fillingford and Alison were talking together in low voices when I came in. Fillingford greeted me with his usual reserved courtesy, Alison with even more than his wonted kindness. Bindlecombe was visibly nervous and perturbed as he read to us Cartmell's letter. When he had finished it, he looked across the table to Alison and said, "I understand that you have something to say, Mr. Alison?"

"What I have to say, sir, is soon said," Alison answered. He spoke low and very gravely, like a man who discharges an imperative but distasteful task. "The Inst.i.tute is very closely connected with the personality of the liberal--the very liberal--donor. In my opinion--and I believe that I am very far from being alone in the opinion--it is inexpedient to proceed with the work until we can feel sure of being able to enjoy Miss Driver's personal cooperation. I move that, while thanking Miss Driver for the offer contained in the letter we have just heard, we express to her our opinion in that sense." He had not looked at any of us, but had kept his eyes lowered as he spoke.