The Great Miss Driver Part 53

"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 ent.i.tle 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 st.u.r.dy 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 Inst.i.tute. No day had pa.s.sed 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 Inst.i.tute opened, and Mr. Bindlecombe Sir John, I think I may sing _Nunc 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d--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.

CHAPTER XXVII

A MAN OF BUSINESS

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 Inst.i.tute. 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 inst.i.tutes, 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 hoa.r.s.e. 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 bra.s.s 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?"