The Great Miss Driver

The grooms had looked dangerously at Octon, and were now saying something to one another; but it needed at least one to hold the horse, and Octon would be far more than a match for either of them singly. His angry eyes seemed only to hope that they would give him some excuse for violence.

"Follow your mistress," I said to them. "It's no affair of yours."

I think that they were glad to get my sanction for their retreat. Off they went, and I was left alone with Octon.

"If it had been a man, I wouldn't have left a whole bone in his body. She struck me deliberately – on purpose."

"It wasn't a man. Why didn't you give her more room?"

"There was plenty of room?" he persisted. "The whole road isn't hers, is it?" With that he turned on his heel and sauntered off toward the south gate, in the direction of his own house.

There was the incident – and I had the grave misfortune of being the only independent witness of it. There was the incident – and there was the dinner-party in the evening, to which both the Aspenicks and Leonard Octon were bidden. Clearly the matter could not stand where it was; it was, alas! no less clear that I should have to give my evidence. Of course the meeting at dinner must not take place; whatever else might or might not follow from the affair, that much was certain. I went back to the house and asked to see Jenny.

I told her the story plainly and fully – all that I had seen and all that had been said; she did not interrupt me once.

"There it is," I ended. "His case is that he gave her plenty of room and that she purposely lashed him over the face. Hers is that he gave her too little room, deliberately annoying her, that her leader was restive and she had to use her whip, and that, if she hit him, it was his own fault for standing where he did."

"His snatching away the whip and breaking it – isn't that bad?" she asked. "Or if he thought she meant to hit him?"

"Then it's still bad, I suppose, since she's a woman; but it's perhaps understandable – above all in him."

"Well, what's your own opinion about it?"

"That's just what I don't want to give," I objected.

"But you must. I have to come to some decision about this."

"Well, then – I think he did leave her room – enough and a little more than enough; but I also think that he meant to annoy her. I'm sure he didn't mean to put her in danger of an upset, but I do think that, with such a horse as she was driving, an upset might have been the result, and he ought to have thought of that – only he doesn't know much about horses. On the other hand I don't think she deliberately made up her mind to hit him – but I do think she meant to go as near to it as she could without actually doing it; I think she meant to make him jump. That's about my idea of the truth of the matter."

"Yes, I daresay," she said thoughtfully. "When Sir John comes to you, bring him straight up here. They mustn't meet to-night, of course, but I should like to see Sir John first – if he comes this morning or soon after lunch."

"It's all very tiresome," said I lugubriously.

She suddenly put her hands in mine – in one of her moments of impulse. "Oh, yes, yes, dear friend!" she murmured with an acute note of distress in her voice. Tiresome as the affair was, it hardly seemed to call for that; but I had not yet realized her position in its full difficulty; I did not know what every new proof of Octon's "impossibility" meant to her.

Sir John arrived, hot-haste, before lunch. Happily Fillingford was with him. I say happily, for I gathered that the angry husband's first intention had been to go straight to Hatcham Ford and undertake the horse-whipping of Leonard Octon – which enterprise must have ended in broken bones for Sir John, and probably the police court for both combatants. Fillingford happened to be with him when Lady Aspenick arrived at home and told her story; with difficulty he dissuaded Aspenick from violent measures; above all, nothing must get into the papers; all the same, it was a case for decisive private action. According to my orders I took Sir John up to Jenny, and Fillingford came with us.

There – before her – we had the whole story over again. Sir John told his wife's version, I put Octon's forward against it – if only for fair play's sake. Sir John naturally would have none of Octon's, nor would Fillingford. Then I repeated my own impression of the affair. Any points in it which made for Octon Sir John violently rejected; Fillingford's attitude was wiser, the position he took up less open to the charge of prejudice; he disliked Octon intensely, but he would not rest his case on the weak foundation of an angry temper.

"I'm quite content to accept Mr. Austin's view of the facts, which he has given us so clearly and so impartially. Where does his view lead? Why to this – Not only was Mr. Octon inexcusably violent at the end, but he was the original aggressor. He did not, Mr. Austin is convinced, mean to cause danger to Lady Aspenick, but he did mean to cause her vexation – in fact to offer her an affront. In my opinion anything on her part that followed is imputable to his own fault, and he had no title to resent it. I base my decision not on Lady Aspenick's account, but on Mr. Austin's independent testimony; and I say that Mr. Octon behaved as no gentleman and as no good neighbor should."

Jenny had listened to all the stories in silence, and in silence also she heard Fillingford's summing-up. Now she looked at him and asked briefly, "What follows?"

"It follows that he must be cut," interposed Aspenick in dogged anger.

"We have a right to protect ourselves – above all the ladies of our families – from the chance of such occurrences. They mustn't be exposed to them if we can help it; they certainly need not and must not be exposed to the unpleasantness of meeting the man who causes them. We have a right to act on that line – and I, for one, feel bound to act on it, Miss Driver."

"Not a man in the place will do anything else," declared Aspenick.

But I was wondering what Jenny would do. Almost without disguise they were presenting to her an ultimatum. They were saying, "If you want him, you can't have us. We can't come where he comes. Is he to go on coming to Breysgate? Is he to go on using your park?" She did not like dictation – nor did she like sending her friends away. To send them away on dictation – would she do that? Or would she fall into one of her rages, bid them all go hang, and throw in her lot with boycotted Octon? She turned to me.

"Do you agree with what these gentlemen say?" she asked.

In the end I liked Octon or, at any rate, found him very interesting, and I was therefore ready, for myself, to put up with his tempers and his tantrums. People who did not like him nor find him interesting could not be asked to do that. And he stood condemned on my own evidence.

"They are quite within their rights," I had to answer.

She was not in a rage; she was anxious and distressed. Nor was the anxiety all hers. Aspenick indeed had at the moment no thought but of anger on his wife's account, but Fillingford must have had other things in his mind. To put it at the lowest, he valued his acquaintance with the mistress of Breysgate Priory; there were good grounds for guessing that he valued it very much. If he had learned anything at all about her, he must have known that he was risking it now. But he showed no hesitation; he awaited her answer with a grave deference which declared the importance he attached to it but gave no reason to hope that his own course of action could be affected, whatever the answer might be.

Neither did she give the impression of hesitating – it was not exactly that. Whether in her heart she hesitated I cannot tell; if she did, she would not let them see it. Her demeanor betrayed nothing more than a pained reluctance to condemn utterly, to recognize that one who had been received as a friend and as a gentleman had by his own fault forfeited his claim to those titles. Her delay in giving her decision – for the real question now was whether she would join in Octon's ostracism – did not impugn their judgment nor seem to weigh their merits against the culprit's. It did not declare a doubt of their being right; it said only with what pain she would recognize that they were right.

"Yes – it's the only thing," she said at last.

"I was sure you would agree with us – painful as such a course is," Fillingford said.

"It's only cutting a cad," Aspenick grumbled, half under his breath. Jenny did not or would not hear him.

The bargain was struck, and fully understood without more words. Jenny's friends must not be exposed to meeting Octon at Breysgate or in Breysgate park. They would be strangers to Octon; if Jenny would be their friend, she must be a stranger to him. Dropping Octon was the condition of holding her place in their society. She understood the condition and accepted it. There was no more to be said.

They took leave and she did not ask them to stay to lunch. Her farewell to Aspenick was cold, though she made a civil reference to seeing him again at dinner – nothing was said about Octon in that connection! But toward Fillingford she showed a marked, if subdued, graciousness. Clearly she meant to convey to him that, distressed as she was by the incident and its necessary consequences, she attached no blame to him for the part he had taken – nay, was grateful to him for his counsel and guidance.

"I never had any doubt of your coming to a right decision," he told her, holding her hand for a moment longer than he need. She looked into his eyes, but said nothing; she gave the air of being heartily content to surrender her judgment to his.

I saw them off and came back to her. She was still standing in the same place, looking very thoughtful and frowning slightly; it was by no means the trustful expression with which her eyes had dwelt on Fillingford's.

"Directly after lunch I must go down to Hatcham Ford and see Mr. Octon. I want you to come with me."

"I? Not Miss Chatters?"

"You – not Chat. Don't be stupid," she said.

CHAPTER VIII

A SECRET TREATY

Jenny's first remark as we drove down together to Hatcham Ford seemed to have very little to do with the matter in hand. Still less to do with it, as one would think, had the fact that, just before starting, she had – I learned it afterwards – given Chat a piece of handsome old lace.

"I like your name," she remarked. "'Austin Austin' – quite a good idea of your parents'! One's only got to drop the 'Mr.' to be friendly at once. No learning a strange Algernon, or Edward, or things of that kind!"

"Do drop it," said I.

"I have, Austin," said Jenny. She edged ever so little nearer to me, yet looked steadily out of the window on the other side of the brougham. "I'm frightened," she added in a low voice.

"Upon my honor," said I, "I don't wonder at it."

Such was the beginning of a remarkable kindness, a gentleness, almost an appealing attitude, which Jenny displayed during several weeks that followed. I must not flatter myself – Chat shared the rays of kindly sunshine. If I were promoted to the Christian name, Chat got the lace.

"What will you call me?" she asked. "'Miss Driver' sounds – Say 'Jenny'!"

"Before the county? Impossible!"

"Well, then, when we're alone?"

"Shall it be Lady Jenny? For ourselves?"

She sighed acquiescence. "You're a great comfort to me," she added. "You'll come in, won't you, if you hear me scream?"

"Come in?"

"I've got to see him alone, you know." She raised her hands for an instant, as though in lamentation; "Oh, why is he like that?"

There was no treating this lightly – for one who felt for her what I did. I was no such fool as not to see that her sudden access of graciousness had a purpose – I had to be conciliated and stroked the right way for some reason; so doubtless had Chat. But again I was, so I humbly trust, no such churl as to resent the purpose – though I did not know precisely what it was. I was her 'man,' as the old word was – her vassal. If my liking or my honor refused that situation, well and good – I could end it. While it lasted, I was hers. Within me the thing went deeper still than that.

She was frightened. Therefore she was very gracious, seeking allies however humble. I declare that I have always limited my expectation of attachments entirely disinterested. Are there any? Who cherishes a friend from whom there is neither profit nor pleasure to be had? Or, at any rate, from whom neither has been had? The past obligation is often acknowledged – and acquitted – with a five-pound note.

The westering sun caught her face through the window as we entered the outskirts of Catsford; her eyes looked like a couple of new sovereigns.

"Yes, I'm frightened."

"Not you! You've courage enough for a dozen."

"Ah, I like you to say that! But I must make terms with him, you know." She caught and pressed my hand. "But I don't believe I'm quite a coward."

All this could mean but one thing – Octon had a great hold on her; yet against him was a powerful incentive. Between the two – between his power, which was great, and the power against him whose greatness she had acknowledged to Fillingford that morning, she must patch up conditions of peace – a secret treaty. I had no idea what the terms could or would be. If Octon had the naming of them, they would not be easy.

Hatcham Ford just held its freedom against the encroaching town. No more than fifty yards from its gates was the last villa – a red-brick house of eccentric architecture but comfortable dimensions; its side windows looked toward the gate of the Ford, and on the left its garden ran up to the road on to which the shrubberies encircling the old house faced. A tall oak fence surrounded the garden – on the gate was written, in large gilt letters, "Ivydene." That house, like so many in Catsford, was on Jenny's land. I wished that Cartmell would keep a tighter hand on his builders.

Nearly swallowed by the flood of modern erections as it was, the old house still preserved its sequestered charm. The garden was hidden from the road by a close screen in front; at the back it ran gently down to the murmuring river. Within were low ceilings crossed by old beams, and oak paneling everywhere. Octon's tenancy and personality were marked by clusters of barbaric spears and knives, hung against the oak, burnished to a high polish, flashing against their time-blackened background.

Visitors were not expected. Octon's man – a small wizened fellow of full middle age – seemed rather startled by the sight of Jenny; he hastily pushed, rather than ushered, us into the dining room, a room on the left of the doorway. In a moment or two Octon came to us. He stood in the doorway, his big frame looking immense under the low lintel which his head all but touched.

"You're not the visitors I expected," he said with a laugh. "I've stayed in, waiting for Aspenick."

"Sir John won't come," said Jenny. "But I must speak to you – alone." She turned to me. "You're sure you don't mind, Austin?"

"Of course you must see him alone. Where shall I go?"

"Stay here," he said. "We'll go next door – in the study."

He held the door for her, and she went out. I heard them enter a room next to the one in which I was; the door was shut after them. Then for a long while I heard nothing more, except the murmur of the little river, which seemed loud to my unaccustomed ears, though probably people living in the house would soon cease to notice it.

Presently I heard their voices; his was so loud that, for fear of hearing the words, I had deliberately to abstract my mind by looking at this, that, and the other thing in the room – more spears and knives on the walls, books about his subject on the shelves, a couple of fine old silver tankards gleaming on the mantelpiece. The voices died down again just as I had exhausted the interest of the tankards, and taken in my hand a miniature which stood on the top of the marble clock.

His voice fell to inaudibility; the welcome silence left me alone with the little picture. It represented a child perhaps fourteen years old – a small, delicate face, dark in complexion, touched on the cheeks with a red flush, with large dark eyes, framed in plentiful black hair which curled about the forehead. Whoever the young girl was, she was beautiful; her eyes seemed to gaze at me from some remote kingdom of childish purity; her lips laughed that I should feel awe at her eyes. How in the world came she on Octon's mantelpiece?

Picked up somewhere for half a sovereign – as a pretty thing! That was the suggestion of common sense, in rebellion against a certain sense of over-strained nerves under which I was conscious of suffering. Yet, after all, Octon, like other men, must have kith and kin. The style of the picture was too modern for it to be his mother's. There were such things as sisters; but this did not look like Octon's stock. An old picture of a bygone sweetheart – that held the field as the likeliest explanation; well, except the one profanely offered by common sense. Octon was, to and for me, so much a part of Jenny's life and surroundings that it was genuinely difficult to realize him as a man with other belongings or associations; yet I could not but recognize that in all probability he had many – perhaps some apart from those which he might chance to have inherited.

Suddenly, through the wall, I heard a wail – surely I heard a little sob? The picture was instantly forgotten. I stood intensely awake, alert, watchful. If that sound came again, I determined that I would break in on their conference. For minutes I waited, but the sound came no more. I flung myself into a chair by the fire and began to smoke. I fell into a meditation. No further sound came to break it; the murmur of the river already grew familiar.

I heard a door open; the next moment they were in the room with me.

"What a time we've kept you! Have you been very bored?" asked Jenny.

Her words and her tone were light, but her face was as I had never seen it. It was drawn with the fatigue of deep feeling: she had been struggling; if I did not err, her eyes bore signs of crying – I had never known her cry. At that moment I think I knew to the full that Octon was, for good or evil, a great thing in her life. How could it be for good? She herself, she alone, must bear the burden of answering that question.

But he, standing behind her, wore an unmistakable air of victory. So confident was it, and so assured the whole aspect of his dominant figure, that I prepared myself to hear that the verdict of the morning was reversed and that the neighborhood – and all that meant – were to go hang. Yet his first words contradicted both my forecast and his own appearance. He spoke in a chafing tone.

"Behold in me, Austin, the Banished Duke! Never again may I tread the halls of Breysgate – at any rate, not for the present! I have offended a proud baronet – a belted earl demands my expulsion. And my liege lady banishes me!"

"Don't be so silly," said Jenny – but gently, ever so gently, and with a smile.

"Serves you right, in my opinion," said I.

"I suppose so," he answered, "and I bear no malice. I'm glad Aspenick didn't force me to wring his neck. But I shall be very lonely – nobody comes here – well, not many are invited! Will you drop in on the exile and smoke a pipe now and then after dinner?"

"Oh, yes, I'll look you up." My tone was impatient, I know: his burlesque was neither intelligible nor grateful to me.

"After dinner, if that suits you. I'm going to take advantage of my solitude to work in the daytime. The door will be barred till nine o'clock."

I nodded – and looked at my watch.

"Yes," said Jenny, "we must be going. Everything's settled, Austin, and – and Mr. Octon has been very kind."

"I'm glad to hear that anyhow," I said grumpily. If he had been kind, why had I heard that wail?

In fact I was thoroughly puzzled – and therefore both vexed and uneasy. He accepted his banishment – and yet was friendly. That result seemed a great victory for Jenny – yet she did not look victorious. It was Octon who wore the air of exultation and self-satisfaction; yet he had been thrown to the wolves, abandoned to the pack of Fillingfords and Aspenicks. Well, that could not be the whole truth of it, though what more there might be I could not guess.

He came with us down the gravel path which led from the hall door to the road, where the brougham was waiting. Jenny pointed across the road – where Ivydene stood with its strip of garden.

"That's the house I meant, you know," she said, evidently referring to something that had passed in their private conversation.

He stood smiling at her, with his hands in his pockets. He really was, for him, ridiculously amiable, though his amiability, like everything else about him, was rough, almost boisterous.

"If you must go on with your beastly Institute," he said, "and must have a beastly house for a beastly office, to make your beastly plans and do your other beastly work in, why, I daresay that beastly house will do as well as any other beastly house for your beastly purpose. Only do choose beastly clerks, or whatever they're going to be, who haven't got any beastly children to play beastly games and make a beastly noise in the garden."

Quite the first I had heard of this idea! Quite the first time, too, that Leonard Octon had been so agreeable – he meant to be agreeable, though the humor was like a schoolboy's – about the Institute!

"I think I'll speak to Mr. Bindlecombe about it," said Jenny, as she gave him her hand. Her farewell was more than gracious; it was grateful, it was even appealing. Nor for all my anger and vexation could I deny the real feeling in his eyes as he looked at her; he was admiring; he was affectionate; nay more, he seemed to be giving her his thanks.

She was very silent all the way home, answering only by a "yes" or a "no" the few remarks I ventured to make. On her own account she made only one – as the result of a long reverie. "It'll all blow over some day," she said.

If it was her only observation, at least it was a characteristic one. Jenny had a great belief in things "blowing over" – a belief that inspired and explained much of her diplomacy. What seemed sometimes in retrospect to have been far-sighted scheming or elaborate cunning had been in reality no more than waiting for a thing to "blow over" – holding the balance, maintaining an artificial equilibrium by a number of clever manipulations, until things should right themselves and gain, or regain, a proper and natural basis. The best opinion I could form of her present proceedings was that they rested on some such idea. For the moment she banned Octon under the pressure of her other neighbors; but in time the memory of his offenses would grow dimmer – and in time also her own position and power would be more firmly established. Then he could come back. She might have persuaded him into good humor by such a plea as that. If it were so, I thought that she had misled him and perhaps deceived herself. People have long memories for social offenses. And – one could not help asking the question – what of Fillingford? Where was he to fit in, what part was he to play? Was a millennium to come when he was to lie down on Jenny's hearthrug side by side with Octon?

There was a lady too many at dinner – a man short! Jenny could have avoided this blot on her arrangements by eliminating Chat – and poor Chat was quite accustomed to being eliminated. But she chose not to adopt this course. I rather think that she liked to feel herself a bit of a martyr in the matter, but possibly she was also minded to make a little demonstration of her submission, to let them guess that Octon had been coming and that she had acted on their orders with merciless promptitude. In other respects the party was one of her most successful. Great as was the strain which she had been through in the afternoon, she herself was gay and sparkling. And how they petted her! Lady Aspenick might naturally have looked to be the heroine of the occasion – nor had she any reason to complain of a lack of interest in her story (I had to complain of a great deal too much interest in mine) – but it was for Jenny that the highest honors were reserved; the most joy was over the one sinner that repented.

Fillingford, of course, took her in to dinner. It was not in the man to pay what are called "marked attentions" before the eyes of others, but his manner to her was characterized by a pronounced friendliness and deference; he seemed to be trying to atone for the coercion which he had been compelled to exert earlier in the day. He did not fall into the mistake of treating her acquiescence as a trifle or the case as merely that of "cutting a cad," to use Aspenick's curtly contemptuous phrase. He raised her action to the rank of an obligation conferred on her neighbors and especially on himself. He was man of the world enough to convey this impression without departing too far from the habitual reserve of his demeanor.