The Great Miss Driver Part 34

"We should have wanted her to be with us--to pay us visits anyhow--at least until she married. Yes, it wouldn't have been just." She frowned impatiently; still more than anything else, Margaret Octon seemed to bring home to her the difficult side--the side most hard to defend--of what she had done and contemplated. She pa.s.sed away from it without more words.

"When he was dying he gave her to me. That put an end to the quarrel I told you about. It gave me back some of him and gave me something to live for. 'I know you'll do the handsome thing by her, Jenny,' he said.

I mean to try, Austin."

"I'm sure you do, but"--I could not help blurting it out--"won't her being here make matters worse?"

"Worse or better, better or worse, here she's going to be," said Jenny.

"She's been with me nearly a year already. She's one of the two things he's left behind him--to stay with me."

I did not ask what the other thing was.

"Is she to bear his name?"

"Of course she is. She's my friend and ward--and Leonard Octon's daughter."

"Rather a pill for Catsford! Dear me, what a pretty little thing it is!"

"I'm very glad she's like that. It makes so much more possible. This is a good gift that Leonard has left me. She's my joy--you must be my consolation. I can't give you anything in return, but there's something I can give her--and I'll give it full measure, for Leonard's sake." She laughed, rather reluctantly, squeezing my arm again. "Oh, yes, and I'm afraid a little bit because Jenny Driver still likes her own way! And, above all, her own way with Catsford! Shall we see if she can get it?"

CHAPTER XVIII

THE NEW CAMPAIGN

Jenny had come back with her courage unbroken--and with her ambitions unappeased, though it seemed that their direction had been in some measure changed. Somehow Margaret Octon was now one of their princ.i.p.al objects. It was not possible just now to see further into her mind, even at a tolerably close view--a much closer one than her neighbors were permitted to enjoy. It was even an appreciable time before Catsford heard of Margaret Octon at all. The presence of the girl was not obtruded, much less her name; nothing was said of her in the paragraph that went to the paper. Jenny left Catsford to digest the fact of her own return first.

It was enough to occupy the neighborhood's digestive faculties for many days. It raised such various questions, on which different minds settled with differing degrees of avidity. Questions of morality, of propriety, of conventionality on the one hand--questions of charity, of policy, of self-interest on the other. There were the party of principle and the party of expediency, cutting across the lines of the party of propriety and the party of charity. Some quoted Caesar's wife--when do they not?

Others maintained that an Englishman was innocent till he was proved guilty--and _a fortiori_ a handsome, attractive, interesting, and remarkably rich Englishwoman. It was contended by one faction that a self-banishment of nearly three years was apology enough--if apology were needed; by the other that Jenny had insolently spurned any effort to "put herself right" with public opinion. To add to the complication, people shifted their att.i.tudes from day to day--either under influence, as when they had been talked to by Mrs. Jepps or by Mr. Bindlecombe as the case might be, or from the sheer pleasure of discussing the matter over again from another point of view, and drawing out their neighbors by advocating what, twenty-four hours earlier, they had condemned.

The climax came when the news of Margaret leaked out, as it was bound soon to do, if only through the mouths of the servants at the Priory.

There was a pretty girl there, a girl of seventeen--whose name was Octon--daughter, it was understood, of the late Mr. Leonard Octon of Hatcham Ford; she was living with Miss Driver, as her friend or her ward--at any rate, apparently, as a fixture. Some found a likeness between Margaret's sudden appearance and Jenny's own, and this element added a piquancy to the situation, even though the similarity was rather superficial than essential. Old Nicholas Driver had every reason to produce his daughter and invest her formally with the position of heir-apparent to his great possessions, to his over-lordship of the town. Octon had been merely the temporary tenant of a hired house--a mere bird of pa.s.sage--and a solitary bird besides, neither giving nor receiving confidences. Why should he have talked about his dead wife and his young daughter to ears that cared not a straw about either of them?

The coincidence was noted, but it was soon swallowed up in the new issue as to Jenny's conduct which the appearance of Margaret raised.

Bluntly--for which party was this a score? Jenny's opponents saw in it a new defiance--a willful flaunting of offense; her friends found in it a romantic flavor which pleaded for her.

On the whole, so far as could be judged from Bindlecombe's accounts--he was my constant reporter--Jenny's adherents gained ground in the town--partly from her personal popularity, partly from the old power of her family, in part, perhaps (if one may venture to say so from the safe obscurity of a private station), because our lords the ma.s.ses are not in a matter of this sort very unforgiving--in which they touch hands with the opposite end of society. Self-interest probably aided--Catsford had of late basked in the somewhat wintry favor of Fillingford Manor; the beams were chilly; Breysgate would emit a kinder glow. It "paid" so many people in the town to have Jenny back! The feeling in the county was preponderatingly against her. There Fillingford Manor was a greater power; its att.i.tude was definite, resolute, not to be misunderstood.

Outside the town Jenny could look at present for little support. Old Mr.

Dormer with his pliant standards was dead. There were only the Aspenicks--Lady Aspenick must be civil--owing to what she had done about the road; but her influence, even if cordially exercised, would not be enough.

Following the example of great commanders, Jenny ma.s.sed her forces on the most favorable point. She flung herself on the workingmen of Catsford. Hesitating, probably, to expose Margaret to the chances of the campaign, she left her at home, but she requisitioned Cartmell and myself, and we drove down in full state into Catsford at noon on the fourth day after her return. Our ostensible purpose was to go to Cartmell's office, to transact some legal business; as he could easily have brought his papers up to the Priory, this did not seem very convincing. Our way took us past the great Driver works--conducted now by a limited company, in which Jenny held a controlling interest. In front of the big building was a large open s.p.a.ce, still known as "The Green" though constant traffic of feet had worn away all trace of gra.s.s.

Here was the forum of Catsford, where men a.s.sembled for open-air meetings and, less formally, for discussion, gossip--even, it was said, for betting--in their spare moments, and especially in the dinner-hour.

It happened to be the dinner-hour now--as Jenny observed innocently when we found the place full of Driver employees who had swallowed their meal and were talking together or lounging about, their pipes in their mouths. Cartmell gave a grim chuckle at Jenny's artless surprise. He had taken her return very quietly, loyally accepting his position as her man of business, but hardly welcoming her with real cordiality. I fancy that he found it hard to forgive; was not Fillingford Manor gone forever?

We had not progressed many yards before she was recognized. She courted recognition, stopping to speak to an old artisan who had once been introduced to her as a contemporary of her father's. Men gathered round her as she sat chatting with the veteran. She seemed unconscious of being gradually surrounded. At last, with a most gracious good-by, she said, "Now drive on, please," then looked suddenly round, saw all the folk, and bowed and smiled. One fellow started, "Three cheers for Miss Driver!" That set the thing going. They gave her cheer on cheer. Jenny sat through it smiling, flushed, just once glancing across to me with a covert triumph. The cheers brought more men running up; there were two or three hundred round us. "Welcome home!" they cried. "Welcome home!"

Then somebody called, "Speech, speech!" The cry was taken up with hilarious enthusiasm, and the crowd grew every minute.

Suddenly on the outskirts of the throng I saw a man on horseback. He had stopped his horse and was looking on. There was no mistaking Lacey's handsome face and trim figure.

Jenny rose to her feet and held up her hand for silence. She spoke her few words in a ringing voice. "My friends and neighbors, thank you for your welcome home. I am glad from my heart to be in Catsford again.

That's where Nicholas Driver's daughter ought to be. So I've come back."

She kissed her hand to them two or three times, standing there in the carriage. Then I saw that she caught sight of Lacey. The flush on her cheeks deepened. For a second she stood, looking at him her lips just parted in a smile; but she did not incline her head. He lifted his hat and bowed low from his saddle. Then she gave him her most radiant recognition--and sank down on the cushions of the carriage with a sigh.

Jenny could not have reckoned on that encounter--though it seemed all to the good. We were to have another, on which she had not counted either when she chose so cleverly the scene of her public reappearance. When at last they made a lane for our horses to pa.s.s, some taking leave of us with fresh cheers, others escorting us on either side, with jokes and horseplay among themselves, we met a little procession. It was Alison's custom to hold a short out-of-door service three times a week during the men's dinner-hour; the Green was his chosen pulpit, as it had been Jenny's chosen scene. He came toward us now in all his ecclesiastical panoply, attended by two or three of his (if Mrs. Jepps will allow me the term) a.s.sistant priests and by a band of choir boys, all in their robes. Jenny caught sight of the procession and leaned forward eagerly.

I looked back. Lacey was still there; a man was by his horse, talking to him no doubt, but his eyes were following our progress.

I do not happen to know whether it be etiquette to offer or return the ordinary signs of recognition when one forms part of a procession, either secular or ecclesiastical. In the case of the latter, at all events, probably it is not. This perhaps got Alison out of a difficulty--while it left Jenny in a doubt. But I think that it must be permissible to look rather more benevolent, rather less sternly aloof, than Alison's face was as she pa.s.sed, escorted by her jesting adherents.

To say that he took no more notice of us or of them than if we had not been there is inadequate. His ignoring of us achieved a positive quality. He pa.s.sed by with his eyes purposely, aggressively, indifferent. The boys and men looked after him and his procession, and nudged one another with smiles.

Jenny's face told nothing of her view of this little incident. She was still smiling when we quickened up and, with final hand-wavings, shook ourselves clear of our adherents. At Cartmell's office her head was as clear and her manner as composed as possible. The business that brought us having been transacted, she opened fire on Cartmell about Oxley Lodge and the outlying farms of Hingston. Verily she was losing no time in her campaign!

Cartmell was obviously amused at her. "That's making up for lost time with a vengeance, Miss Jenny! Hingston and Oxley all at once!" As soon as they got on to business--got to work again--his old pride and pleasure in her began to revive.

"Only a bit of Hingston!" Jenny pleaded with a smile.

"There's plenty of money," he said thoughtfully. "In spite of keeping things going here as you ordered--much too lavishly done it was, too, in my opinion--it's been piling up since you've been away. If they're willing to sell--I hear on good authority that Bertram Ware is if he can get his price--the money's not the difficulty. But what's the good?"

"The good?" asked Jenny.

"Surely you've got plenty? What's the good of a lot more? Isn't it only a burden on you?"

She answered him not with her old impatience, but with all her resoluteness--her old certainty that she knew what she wanted, and why she wanted it--and that it was quite immaterial whether anyone else did.

"You look after the money, Mr. Cartmell; you can leave the good to me--and the burden!"

"Yes, yes, you and your father!" he grumbled. "No good advising--not the least! 'Slave-Driver' I used to call him over our port after dinner sometimes. You're just the same, Miss Jenny."

"All that just because I want to buy a pretty house!" said Jenny, appealing deprecatingly to me.

She would not go away without his promise to press both matters on.

Having extracted this, she went home--and ended her first day's campaign by issuing an ukase that all the Driver workmen should, at an early date, have a day's holiday on full wages, with a great feast for them, their wives, children, and sweethearts in the grounds of Breysgate--wages and feast alike to be provided out of the privy purse of Miss Driver. Catsford was behaving well and was to be petted! Jenny did not mention whether she intended to invite its chief spiritual director.

I dined at the Priory that night--a night, on the whole, of distinct triumph--and made acquaintance with Margaret Octon. Strange daughter of such a father! Mrs. Octon must--one was inclined to speculate--have been marvelously different from her husband--and from Jenny Driver.

Imagination began to picture something ineffably timid, shrinking, gentle--something which, blending with Octon's strong rough strain, would issue in this child. She seemed all things in turn--except self-confident. Evidently she was devoted to Jenny; perpetually she referred all she did to Jenny's approval--but that "all" included many varieties. Now she would be demure, now venturesome, now childishly merry, now a.s.suming a premature sedateness. She played tricks with Jenny, her brown eyes always asking whether she might play them; she enjoyed herself immensely--by Jenny's kind permission. This constant reference and this constant appeal found no warrant in anything in Jenny's manner; the child was evidently a privileged pet and could do just as she pleased--Jenny delighted in her. It was then in the girl's nature itself. She was grace and charm--without strength. It would be very appealing, if one were the person appealed to; it would be most attractive, most tempting, when seconded by her frail fairy-like beauty.

For it was a joy to look at her; and if she looked at you, asking leave to be happy, what could you say but--"By all means--and pray let me do all I can to help!"

Jenny seemed to watch her gayeties and her demureness, her ventures and retreats, with delight indeed, but also with a more subtle feeling. She not only enjoyed; she studied and pondered. She gave the impression of wanting to know what would be thought by others. This with Jenny was unusual; but her manner did unmistakably ask me my opinion several times, and when, after dinner, Margaret had waltzed Chat out of the room for a stroll in the garden, she asked it plainly.

"Isn't she just as charming as she looks?"

"She worships you," I remarked.

"That's nothing--natural just at first, while she's so young. But don't you find her charming?" Jenny persisted.

"I don't know about women--but if that form of flattery were brought to bear on any man, I don't see how he could possibly resist."

"It's quite natural; it's not put on in the least."