The Great Miss Driver Part 33

"We're getting into the sphere of those opinions," I said. "We shall be up against Alison and Mrs. Jepps in a moment!"

"I know, and I'm only trying to tell you what happened--how we felt about the thing. And then--we needn't have troubled! A gay young gentleman, a little merry with wine--a lady in a cafe--a hot-tempered man particularly jealous to exact respect for her--what a simple, obvious, silly way to bring everything to dust!"

"You said you were happy at last."

"Our fight was done; our love was perfect. Oh, but we managed a quarrel; I wanted to die, too, and that made him terribly angry." She laughed--and the tears rolled down her cheeks. "Dear, dear Leonard--he said that, if he'd known I should talk such nonsense, he'd have thrown the Frenchman into the Loire and had no more trouble about it. So he died--his crossness with me just over!"

"Well over, I think," I said gently.

"He gave just one turn of his great great body, laid his head on my breast, swore at a fly that settled on his nose--oh, Austin!--and went to sleep there like a little child. It was above two hours before I could bear to call anybody. Then--they took him away."

After a long pause, which I had no inclination to break, she went on: "I daresay you wonder why I came back here?"

"I thought you'd come back. Things never seem irremediable to you; you never like to let go finally."

"That's true, I suppose. But I've a more special reason than that.

Leonard left me a legacy--that brings me here--but don't let's talk about that for a minute. Is it true that Bertram Ware talks about selling Oxley. Mr. Cartmell said something about it in one of his letters."

"He's understood to be open to a good offer, I fancy."

"Then we'll make him one."

"You're at work already!"

"A pretty place and a nice little estate--just between Fillingford Manor and Overington!" Was the inherited liking for "driving wedges" still in force? She had lost Fillingford Manor, but Oxley Lodge would make a useful wedge. "I wonder if there's any chance of that new man at Hingston selling! I don't want the house, but those farms round Hilton Heath would round us off nicely."

"Buy the county and the town! Isn't that what you want?"

"I don't want one single thing, Austin--for myself. But I have a little plan in my head. Well, I must do something with my life, mustn't I--and with all this money?"

"Build the Inst.i.tute!"

"I really think I shall be able to manage that. Mr. Bindlecombe's my friend still?"

"He has plucked up courage--under the influence of Lady Aspenick."

"Ah, yes," said Jenny, "I must try not to lose Lady Aspenick." She looked thoughtful. "Yes, I must try." She seemed to antic.i.p.ate some difficulty.

Her plan of campaign was indicated, if not revealed. She had come back; she was going to try to "get back." What had happened was to make a difference only just where, and in so far as, she herself decided that it must. About that she had not been explicit, but it was evidently a great point with her--a thing which profoundly affected her inner life.

But her outer life was not to be affected--her external position was not in the end to suffer. And this ambition, this plan, was somehow connected with her "legacy" from Leonard Octon.

Suddenly she spoke again. "When a mask is on, you can't see the face. I shall wear a mask--don't judge my face by it. I've taken it off for you to-day. I have given you the means of judging. But I shall wear it day by day--against everybody; even against you generally, I expect, though I may sometimes lift a corner up for you."

What had I seen while the mask was off? A woman profoundly humiliated in herself but resolute not to accept outward humiliation? It was hardly that, though that had an element of applicability in it. A woman ready--even determined--to pay a great penalty for what she had done, but resolved to evade or to defy the obvious and usual penalties? There was truth in that, too. But more remained. It seemed as though, with the hurricane of which she spoke, there had come an earthquake. It had left her alive, and in touch with life; life was not done. But it was different--forever and irrevocably different. Her relations to life had all been shifted. That was the great penalty she accepted--and she was prepared to accept its executions, its working-out, seeing in that, apparently, the logically proper, the inevitable outcome of her act. The obvious penalties were not to her mind inevitable; she would admit that they were conventionally proper--but that admission left her free to avoid them if she could. The outward punishment she would dodge; before the inward she would bow her head. And the sphere of the penalty must be the same as the sphere of the offense. Her intellect had not offended, and that was left free to work, to expatiate, to enjoy. On her heart fell the blows, as from her heart had come the crime. There it was that the shifting of relations, the change of position, the transformation of feelings, had their place.

An intelligible att.i.tude--but a proud, indeed a very arrogant, one. Only Jenny should punish Jenny--that was pretty well what it said. She herself had decreed her penalty. It might be adequate--perhaps she alone could know the truth of that--but it was open to the objection that it was quite unauthorized. Neither in what it included nor in what it excluded did it conform to any code of religious or social obligation.

It was Jenny's sentence on Jenny--and Jenny proposed to carry it out.

Centralization of power seemed to shake hands with anarchy.

Jenny's mood grew lighter on her last words. "To-night we'll send a paragraph to the Catsford paper to announce my return," she said, smiling. "I'm not skulking back!"

"It will occasion interest and surprise."

"It's not the only surprise I've got for them," laughed Jenny. Then, suddenly, she held up her hand for silence. From the terrace outside the window I heard a merry sweet-toned laugh. Jenny rose and went to the window, and I followed her.

Old Chat was on the terrace, and beside her stood a girl, not tall, very slender. Her arm was through Chat's, her back toward us, her face in profile as she turned to talk--and she was talking briskly and in excited interest--to her companion. The profile was small, regular, refined; I could not see the eyes; the hair was a golden brown, very plentiful.

"Who's that pretty girl?" I cried.

Jenny copied the att.i.tude of the pair on the terrace; she put her arm through mine and said with a laugh, "She is pretty, then?" The laugh sounded triumphant. "Why, as pretty a little thing as a man could find in a lifetime!" I cried in honest enthusiasm.

"Oh, come, you're not such a hopeless old bachelor after all," said Jenny. "Not that I in the least want you to fall in love with her--not you, Austin."

"I think I am--half!"

"Keep just the other half for me. Half's as much as I want, you know."

Her voice sounded sad again, yet whimsically sad. "But I do want that from you, I think." She pressed my arm; then, waiting for no answer, she went on gayly, "I think I shall surprise Catsford with that!"

"She's going to pay you a visit?" I asked.

"She's going to live here," Jenny answered. "That's my legacy, Austin."

I smote my free arm against my thigh. "By Heaven, the girl on the mantelpiece at Hatcham Ford!" I cried.

At the moment the girl on the terrace turned round, saw us, and waved her hand merrily to Jenny. Certainly the prettiest little creature you ever saw--in the small, dainty, delicate, roguishly appealing way: and most indubitably the original of that picture which I had seen at Hatcham Ford, which vanished on the night when Octon went forth alone--little thinking that Jenny would follow him.

I turned from her to Jenny in astonishment. "But I'd made up my mind that it was his wife."

"I'm glad he told you he was married. He told you the dreadful thing about it, too, didn't he? It wasn't a thing one could talk about--he'd never have allowed that for a minute--but I wish everybody could have known. It seems a sort of excuse for what they all quarreled with in him. He'd been made to feel the world his enemy when he was young; that must tell on a man, mustn't it?"

"This is a daughter? He never said anything about a daughter."

"Well, I suppose you didn't happen to get on that--and you didn't ask. A woman would have asked, of course, whether there were any children--and how old they were, and what was the color of their hair."

"Upon my soul, it never occurred to me!"

"It wouldn't," she remarked, smiling. "But this is Margaret."

"Where's she been all the while?"

"Oh, only at school--there's no mystery. He was only at Hatcham Ford four years--just her school years. He didn't bring her there in the holidays, because that would have meant a chaperon--he couldn't have looked after a girl--and he hated the idea of that. And I think he was afraid, too, that the people wouldn't be nice to her. He was very sensitive for her, though he wasn't at all for himself." She paused a moment. "Does that explain anything else I've said?"

I thought, for a moment, over our talk. "About the marriage?"

"Yes," said Jenny. "It didn't seem fair to her without that. That weighed with him more than anything else--and with me, too, a good deal.

I don't think I need be ashamed of that."

"Certainly you needn't--quite the contrary in fact."