The Great Miss Driver

"Brave? But not very – ?"

"Let's leave it where it is. What about Cartmell's letter?"

"That'll do to-morrow." (Of course it would – it had been only an instrument of dismissal.) "I'm tired to-night." Her face grew grave: she experienced another mood – or touched another note. "My friend, you must believe that I always listen to what you say. I mayn't see things just as you seem to, sometimes, but what you say always makes me think. By the bye, are you very busy, or could you ride to-morrow?"

"Of course!" I cried eagerly. "Seven-thirty, as usual?"

"A quarter to eight sharp. Good night." She gave me a contented friendly smile, with just a hint of triumph about it, and went upstairs.

It shows what a good thing life is that I, too, in spite of my questionings and apprehension, repaired home forgetful of them for the time and full of exultation. I loved riding; and Jenny on horseback was a companion for a god.

On reflection it might have occurred to me that it was easier for her to invite me to ride than to listen too exactly to my counsels – quite as easy and really as well calculated to keep me content. Happily the youth in me found in her more than the subject of fears or the source of questionings. She could also delight.

CHAPTER VI

TAKING TO OPEN SEA

On her morning rides Jenny wore a habit of russet brown and a broad-brimmed hat to match; her beautiful mare was a golden chestnut; the motive and the crown of all the scheme showed in her brilliant hazel eyes. On this fine morning – there was a touch of autumn frost, slowly yielding before the growing strength of the sun, but the ground was springy under us – Jenny bore a holiday air; no cares and no schemes beset her. To my poor ability I shared and seconded her mood, though my black coat and drab breeches were a sad failure in the matter of outward expression. She made straight for the north gate of the Priory park; we passed through it, crossed the road, and entered, by a farm-gate, on to Fillingford territory. "I almost always come here," she told me. "There's such a splendid gallop. Now and then I meet Lord Lacey, and we have a race."

Not being an habitual party to these excursions – it was my usual lot to lie in wait for the early post and reduce the letters to order for our after-breakfast session – I had seen and heard nothing of her encounters with young Lacey. I conceived that the two houses were still on the terms of distant civility to which Lady Sarah's passive resistance had endeavored to confine them. A formal call from each lady on the other – a no less formal visit to Jenny from Lord Fillingford (who left his son's card also) – there it had seemed to stop, the Mayor of Catsford and the Memorial Hall perhaps in some degree contributing to that result. Fine mornings a-horseback and youthful blood had, however, sapped Lady Sarah's defenses. I was glad – and I envied Lacey. He had much to be thankful for. True, they talked of sad financial troubles at Fillingford Manor, but you may hear many a fine gentleman rail at the pinch of poverty, as he pours, in no ungenerous measure, his own champagne down his throat at half-a-crown a glass. Perhaps at Fillingford that luxury did not rule every day; but at any rate Lacey had a good horse to ride – to say nothing of pleasant company.

Well, all he had he deserved, if only because he looked what he was so splendidly. If Providence, or nature, or society makes a scheme of things, it is surely a merit in us poor units to fit into it? Let others attack or defend the country gentleman. Anyhow, if you are one, look it! And for such an one as does look it I have a heartfelt admiration, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot – with a special affection for his legs in perfect boots and breeches. Young Lacey was such a consummate type; I did not wonder that Jenny's ever liberal appreciation smiled beams of approval as he appeared over the crest of a rising hillock and rode on to meet us. Excellent, too, were the lad's manners; he appeared really glad to see me – which in the nature of the case he hardly can have been in his heart.

"I'm going to win this morning!" he cried to Jenny. "I feel like winning to-day!"

"Why to-day? You don't win very often."

"That's true," he said to me. "Miss Driver's won two to my one, regular. At sixpence a race I owe her three shillings already."

I had a feeling that Jenny glanced at me, but I did not look at Jenny. I did not even do the sum, though it was easy arithmetic.

"But to-day – well, in the first place I've got my commission – and in the second Aunt Sarah's gone to London for a week."

"I congratulate you on the commission."

"And you're loftily indifferent about Aunt Sarah?" he asked, laughing. "I say, though, come along! Are you a starter, Mr. Austin?"

I declined the invitation, but I managed to keep them well in sight – and my deliberate opinion is that Jenny pulled. She could have won, I swear it, if she had liked; as it was, she was beaten by a length. The lad was ingenuously triumphant. "Science is beginning to tell," he declared. "You won't hold your lead long!"

"Sometimes it's considered polite to let a lady win," Jenny suggested.

"Oh, come! If she challenges she must take her chance in fair fight."

"Then what chance have we poor women?" asked deceptive Jenny – who could have won the race.

"You beat us in some things, I admit. Brains, very often, and, of course, charm and all that sort of thing." He paused a moment, blushed a little, and added, "And – er – of course – out of sight in moral qualities."

I liked his "moral qualities." It hinted that reverence was alive in him. I am not sure it did not indicate that the reverence due to woman in the abstract was supremely due to the woman by his side.

"Out of sight in moral qualities?" she repeated thoughtfully. "Yes, I suppose even a woman may hope that that's true. Don't you think so, Mr. Austin?"

"It has always been conceded in civilized communities," I agreed.

"What I hate about that fellow Octon – Oh, I beg pardon – isn't he a friend of yours?"

"I know him pretty well. He's rather interesting."

"I hate the fellow's tone about – about that sort of thing. Cheap, I call it. But I don't suppose he does it to you; you wouldn't stand it."

"I'm very patient with my friends," said Jenny.

"Friends! You and that – ! Oh, well, let's have another gallop."

The gallop brought us in full view of Fillingford Manor; it lay over against us in the valley, broad expanses of meadow and of lawn leading up to a formal garden, beyond which rose the long low red-brick façade half covered with ivy, and a multitude of twisting chimneys.

"Jolly old place, isn't it?" cried Lacey. "I say, wouldn't you like to see over it? I don't expect Aunt Sarah showed you much!"

"I should like to see over it very much, if your father would ask me."

"Oh, he will – he'll be delighted. I say, come this week – while we're by ourselves?"

"Yes, if he invites me."

"He'll invite you. He likes you very much – only he's not exactly expansive, you know, the governor!"

"Never mind, you are. Now Mr. Austin and I must go back to breakfast and to work."

"By Jove, I must be getting back, too, or I shall keep the governor waiting, and he doesn't like that."

"If you do, tell him it's my fault."

The boy looked at her, then at me, again blushed a little, and laughed. The slightest flush appeared on Jenny's smiling face. I took the opportunity to light a cigarette. The morning races had not been talked about at Fillingford!

"Well no – you mustn't put it on the woman, must you?" said Jenny, as she waved a laughing farewell.

On our way home she was silent and thoughtful, speaking only now and then and answering one or two remarks of mine rather absently. One observation threw some light on her thoughts.

"It's very awkward that Mr. Octon should make himself so unpopular. I want to be friends with everybody, but – " She broke off. I did no more than give a nod of assent. But I knew – and thought she must – how Octon stood. He was considered to have made himself impossible. He was not asked to Fillingford; Aspenick had bluntly declared that he would not meet him on account of a rude speech of Octon's, leveled at Lady Aspenick; Bertram Ware and he were at daggers drawn over some semipolitical semiprivate squabble in which Octon's language had been of more than its usual violence. The town loved him no better than the county. Jenny wanted to be popular everywhere – popular, influential, acclaimed. She was weighted by this unpopular friendship – which yet had such attraction for her. The cares of state had fastened on her again as we jogged homeward.

Well, they were the joy of her life – it would have needed a dull man not soon to see that. The real joy, I mean – not what at that moment – nay, nor perhaps at any moment – she would herself have named as her delight. Her joy in the sense in which we creatures – and the wisest among us long ago – come nearest to being able to understand and define the innermost engine or instinct whose working is most truly ourselves – the temptation to live and life itself which pair nature has so cunningly coupled together. Effective activity – the reaching out to make of external things and people (especially, perhaps, things and people that obstinately resist) part of our own domain – their currency coinage of ours, with the stamp of our mint, bearing our superscription – causing the writ of our issuing to run where it did not run before – is not this, however ill-expressed (and bigger men than I have failed, and will fail, fully to express it), something like what the human spirit attempts? Or is there, too, a true gospel of drawing in – of renouncing? In the essential, mind you! – It is easy in trifles, in indulgences and luxuries. But to surrender the exercise and expansion of self?

If that be right, if that be true – at any rate it was not Jenny Driver. She was a strong, natural-born swimmer, cast now for the first time into open sea – after the duck ponds of her Smalls and her Simpsons. It was not the smooth waters which tested, tried, or in innermost truth delighted her most.

All this in a very tiny corner? Of course. Will you find me anywhere that is not a corner, please? Alexander worked in one, and Cæsar. "What does it matter then what I do?" "No more," I must answer, being no philosopher and therefore unprepared with a theory, "than it matters whether or not you are squashed under yonder train. But if you think – on your own account – that the one matters, why, for all we can say, perhaps the other does."

That duck pond of the Simpsons'! By apparent chance – it may be, in fact, by some unusual receptivity in my own bearing – that very day Chat talked to me about it. I had grown friendlier toward Chat, having perceived that the cunning in her – (it was there, and refuted Cartmell's charge of mere foolishness) – ran to no more than a decent selfishness, informed by years of study of Jenny, deflected by a spinsterish admiration of Octon's claim to unquestioned male dominion. Her reason said – "We are very well as we are. I am comfortable. I am 'putting by.' Jenny's marriage might make things worse." The spinster added, "But this must end some day. Let it end – when it must – in an irresistible (perhaps to Chat's imagination a rather lurid) conquest." Paradoxically her instinct (for if anything be an instinct, selfishness is) squared with what I had deciphered of Jenny's strategy – in immediate action at least. Chat would not have Octon shown the door; neither would she set him at the head of the table – just yet. Being comfortable, she abhorred all chance of convulsions – as Jenny, being powerful, resented all threat of dominion. But if the convulsion must come – as it must some day – Chat wanted it dramatic – matter for gossip and for flutters! To her taste Octon fulfilled that æsthetic requirement.

Naturally Chat saw Jenny at the Simpsons' from her own point of view – through herself – and by that avenue approached the topic.