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 facade
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 Caesar. "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 aesthetic requirement.
Naturally Chat saw Jenny at the Simpsons' from her own point of
view--through herself--and by that avenue approached the topic.
"Of course things are very much changed for the better in most ways, Mr.
Austin--if they'll only last. The comforts!--And, of course, the salary!
Well, it's not the thing to talk about that. Still I daresay you
yourself sometimes think--? Yes, of course, one must consider it. But
there were features of the rectory life which I confess I miss. We had
always a very cheerful tea, and supper, too, was sociable. In fact one
never wanted for a chat. Here I'm thrown very much on my own resources.
Jenny is out or busy, and Mrs. Bennet--the housekeeper, you know--is
reserved and, of course, not at her ease with me. And then there was the
authority!" (Was Chat also among the Caesars?) "Poor Chat had a great
deal of authority at the rectory, Mr. Austin--yes--she had! Mrs. Simpson
an invalid--the rector busy or not caring to meddle--the girls were left
entirely to me. My word was law." She shook her head regretfully over
the change in her position.
"We all like that, Miss Chatters, when we can get it!"
"Jenny, of course, was different--and that made it difficult sometimes.
Besides being the eldest, she was very well paid for and, although not
pampered and, I must say, considering all things as I now know them,
very ill-supplied with pocket money, there were orders that she should
ride every day. Two horses and the hostler from the Bull every
day--except Sundays! It couldn't but make a difference, especially with
a girl of Jenny's disposition--not altogether an easy one, Mr. Austin.
It had to be give-and-take between us. If she obeyed me, there were many
little things I could do--having, as I say, the authority. If she would
do her lessons well--and her example had great influence on the
others--I didn't trouble to see what books she had in her bedroom (with
the other girls I did), nor even ask questions if she stayed out a
little late for supper. Of course we had to be very much on our guard;
it didn't do to make the Simpson girls jealous."
"You had a little secret understanding between yourselves?"
"Never, Mr. Austin! I wouldn't have done such a thing with any of my
pupils. It would be subversive of discipline."
"Of course it would; I beg your pardon." (Here a little "homage to
virtue" on both our parts!)
"She knew how far she could go; she knew when I must say 'Stop!' She
never put me to it--though I must say she went very near the line
sometimes. She came to us very raw, too, with really no idea of what was
ladylike. What those Smalls can have been like! You see what she is now.
I don't think I did so badly."
I saw what she was now--or some of it. And I seemed to see it all
growing up in that country rectory--the raw girl from the Smalls (those
deplorable Smalls!) at Cheltenham, learning her youthful lessons in
diplomacy--how far one can go, where one must stop, how keen a bargain
can be struck with Authority. Chat had been Authority then. There was
another now. Yet where the difference in principle?
"I can't have managed so very badly, because they were all
broken-hearted to lose me--I often think how they can be getting
on!--and here I am with Jenny! Well, poor Chat would have had to go
soon, anyhow. They were all growing up. That time comes. It must be so
in my profession, Mr. Austin. Indispensable to-day, to-morrow you're not
wanted!"
"That sounds sad. You must be glad, in the end, that you didn't stay?"
"It'll be the same here some day. For all you or I know, it might be
to-morrow. The only thing is to suit as long as we can, and to put by a
little."
I vowed--within my breast--that henceforth Chat's little foibles--or
defenses?--her time-serving, her cowardice, her flutters, her judgment
of Jenny's concerns from a point of view not primarily Jenny's, her
encroachments on the port and other stolen (probably transient!)
luxuries--all these should meet with gentle and sympathetic
appraisement. She was only trying to "suit"--and meanwhile to put by a
little. But I was not sure what she had done, or helped to do, to Jenny,
nor that her ex-pupil's best course would not lie in presenting her with
her _conge_ and a substantial annuity.
An invitation came from Fillingford in which Chat and I were courteously
included. Jenny, however, found work for poor Chat at home (alas, for
the days of Authority!) and made me drive her over in the dog-cart. As
we drove in at the gates, she asked suddenly, "How am I to behave?"
"Don't look at anything as if you wanted to buy it," was the best
impromptu advice I could hit on.
"I might do it tactfully! Don't you remember what my father said?--'You
may succeed in your way better than I in mine.'"
"I remember. And you think he referred to tact?"
Jenny took so long to answer that there was no time to answer at all; we
were at the door, and young Lacey was waiting.
The house was beautiful and stately; I think that Jenny was surprised to
find that it was also in decent repair. There was nothing ragged,
nothing poverty-stricken; a grave and moderate handsomeness marked all
the equipment. The fall in fortune was rather to be inferred from what
was absent than rudely shown in the present condition of affairs. Thus
the dining-room was called the Vandyke Room--but there were no Vandykes;
a charming little boudoir was called the Madonna Parlor--but the Madonna
had taken flight, probably a long flight across the Atlantic. In giving
us the names Lord Fillingford made no reference to their being no longer
applicable--he seemed to use them in mechanical habit, forgetful of
their significance--and Jenny, mindful perhaps of the spirit of my
warning, refrained from questions. But for what was to be seen she had a
generous and genuine enthusiasm; the sedate beauty and serenely grand
air of the old place went to her heart.
But one picture did hang in the Madonna Parlor--a half-length of a
beautiful high-bred girl with large dark eyes and a figure slight almost
to emaciation. Lacey and I, who were behind, entered the room just as
the other two came to a stand before it. I saw Jenny's face turn toward
Fillingford in inquiry.
"My wife," he said. "She died thirteen years ago--when Amyas was only
five." His voice was dry, but he looked steadily at the picture with a
noticeable intentness of gaze.
"This was mother's own room, Miss Driver," Lacey interposed.
"Yes. How--how it must have suited her!" said Jenny in a low voice.
Fillingford turned his head sharply round and looked at her; with a
slight smile he nodded his head. "She was very fond of this room. She
had it furnished in blue--instead of yellow." Then he moved quickly to
the door. "There's nothing else you'd care to see here, I think."
After lunch Lacey carried Jenny off to the garden--his father seemed to
think that he had done enough as host and to acquiesce readily in the
devolution of his duties--and I sat awhile with Fillingford, smoking
cigarettes--well, he only smoked one. It seemed to me that the man was
like his house; just as the state of its fortune was not rudely declared
in anything unbecoming or shabby, but had to be gathered from the gaps
where beauties once had figured, so the essence of him, and the road to
understanding him, lay in his reserves, his silences, his defensiveness.
What he refrained from doing, being, or saying, was the most significant
thing about him. His manners were irreproachable, his courtesy cast in a
finer mold than that of an ordinary gentleman, yet he did not achieve
real cordiality and remained at a very long arm's length from intimacy.
His highest degree of approval seemed to consist in an absence of
disapprobation; yet, feeling that this negative reward of merit was hard
to win, the recipient took the unsubstantial guerdon with some
gratification. My own hope was to escape from his presence without
having caused him to think that I had done anything offensive; if he had
nothing against me, I should be content. I wondered whether he were
satisfied to have the like measure meted out to him. His son had said he
was "not expansive": that was like denying silkiness to a porcupine. Yet
there was that about him which commanded respect--at least a respect
appropriately negative; you felt certain that he would do nothing sordid
and touch nothing unclean; he would always be true to the code of his
class and generation.
We heard laughter from Jenny and Lacey echoing down the long passages as
they returned from the garden; from the noise their feet made they
seemed to be racing again. The sounds interrupted a rather perfunctory
conversation about Nicholas Driver and the growth of Catsford. Rather to
my surprise--I must confess--his face lit up with a smile--a smile of
pensive sweetness.
"That sounds cheerful," he said. "More like old days!" Then he looked at
me apprehensively, as though afraid that he had proffered an uninvited
confidence. He went on almost apologetically. "It's very quiet here. My
health doesn't fit me for public life, or even for much work in the
county. We do our duty, I hope, but we tend rather to fall out of the
swim. It wasn't so in my wife's time. Well, Amyas will bring all that
back again some day, I hope."
"I'm glad to hear that he's got his commission," said I.
"Yes, he must go and do some work, while I hold the fort for him at
home. Landed property needs a great deal of attention nowadays, Mr.
Austin." Again he smiled, but now wearily, as though his stewardship
were a heavy burden.
The laughing pair burst into the room. Amyas was flushed, Jenny seemed
out of breath; they had a great joke to tell.
"We've found a picture of Miss Driver in the West Gallery," cried Amyas.
"Really it must be her--it's exactly like!"
"Fancy my picture being in your house all this time, Lord
Fillingford--and you never told me!"
Fillingford was looking intently at Jenny now. He raised his brows a
little and smiled, as the result of his survey.
"Yes--I'm afraid I know which picture Amyas means, though I don't often
go to the West Gallery. The one on the right of the north door, Amyas?"
"Yes--in a wonderful gown all over pearls, you know."
"Who is she--besides me?" asked Jenny. "Because I believe she has a look
of me really."
"She's an ancestress--a collateral ancestress at least--of ours. She was
one of Queen Elizabeth's ladies. But we're not proud of her--and you
mustn't be proud of the likeness--if there is one, Miss Driver."
"But I am proud of it. I think she's very pretty--and some day I'll have
a gown made just like that."
"Why aren't we proud of her, father?" asked young Lacey.
"She got into sad disgrace--and very nearly into the Tower, I believe.
Elizabeth made her kinsman Lord Lacey--one of my predecessors--take her
away from Court and bring her down to the country. Here she was kept--in
fact more or less imprisoned. But it didn't last many years. Smallpox
carried her off, poor thing--it was very bad in these parts about
1590--and, unluckily for her, before the queen died.
"What was her name?"
"Mistress Eleanor Lacey."
"And what had she done?" pursued Jenny, full of interest.
"Ah, well, what was the truth about it--who can tell now? It was never
important enough to get put on record. But the family tradition is that
the Queen was jealous of her place in Leicester's affections." He smiled
at Jenny. "I wish Amyas had found you a more acceptable prototype!"
"Oh, I don't know," said Jenny thoughtfully. "I like her looks. Do you
believe that what they said was true?"
"I'm sorry to say that, again according to the family tradition, it
was."
Our dog-cart had been ready for some minutes. Jenny said good-by, and
both father and son escorted her to the door.
"I hope we shall see you at dinner as soon as my sister comes back,"
said Fillingford, as he helped her to mount into the cart. "We must have
a little festivity for Amyas before he joins."
Jenny was all thanks and cordiality, and drove off smiling and waving
her hand gayly.
"Isn't that really rather interesting about Eleanor Lacey? Mind you go
and see the picture next time you're there! It's really very like."
I promised to see the picture, and asked her how she had got on with
Fillingford.
"Oh, I like him well enough, but--" She paused and smiled reflectively.
"Down at the Simpsons' there was a certain young man--boy he really
was--whom we called Rabbit. That was only because of the shape of his
mouth, and has nothing to do with the story! I used sometimes to walk
home with Rabbit--from evening church, or lawn-tennis parties, and so
on, you know." (Were these the occasions on which she was rather late
for supper--without incurring Chat's rebuke?) "We girls used to laugh at
him because he always began by taking great pains to show you that he
didn't mean to flirt--well, at all events, didn't mean to begin the
flirtation. If you wanted to flirt, you must begin yourself--that was
Rabbit's attitude, and he made it perfectly plain in his behavior.
"Rabbit can't have been a very amusing youth to walk home with in the
gloaming?" I ventured to suggest.
"He wasn't, but then there wasn't much choice down at the Simpsons', you
know. Besides, it could be made rather funny with Rabbit. You see, he
wouldn't begin because he had such a terror of being snubbed." She
laughed in an amused reminiscence. "I think I shall call Lord
Fillingford Rabbit," she ended.
"It'll be very disrespectful."
"Oh, you can't make all the nicknames for yourself!" She paused and
added, apparently with a good deal of satisfaction--"Rabbit--and
Volcano--yes!"