SAVING A WEEK
Seen in retrospect, the history of the ensuing days stands out clearly;
subsequent knowledge supplies any essential details of which I was then
ignorant and turns into certainties what were, in some cases, only
strong suspicions at the moment. If it be wondered--and it well may
be--that any woman should choose to live through such a time, it is
hardly less marvelous that she could stand the strain of it. Brain and
feelings alike must have been sorely taxed. Jenny never faltered; she
looked, indeed, tired and anxious, but she had many intervals of gayety,
and, as the crisis approached, she was remarkably free from her not
unusual little gusts of temper or of petulance. To all around her she
showed graciousness and affection, desiring, as it seemed, to draw from
us expressions of attachment and sympathy, making perhaps an instinctive
attempt to bind us still closer to her, to secure us for friends if
anything went wrong in the dangerous work on which she was engaged.
She had a threefold struggle--one with Fillingford, one with Octon, the
last and greatest--really involving the other two--with herself.
Fillingford was pressing for her answer now. It was not so much that any
heat of emotion, any lover's haste, urged him on; he had begun to be
fearful for his dignity, to be apprehensive of the whispers and smiles
of gossip, if Jenny played with him much longer. She had made up her
mind to accept him. Not only were there the decorative attractions and
the wider sphere of influence; she felt that in a marriage with him lay
safety. She was not afraid of him; it would be a partnership in which
she could amply hold her own--and more than that. The danger pointed out
in her father's warning--so congenial to her that it sank deep into her
own mind and was never absent from it--would here be reduced to a
minimum. There the attractions of the project stopped. She was not the
least in love with him; I do not think that she even considered him an
actively agreeable companion. An absence of dislike and a genuine esteem
for his honorable qualities--that was all she could muster for him. No
wonder, perhaps, that, though her head had decided, her heart still
pleaded for delay.
With Octon the case was very different. There she was fascinated, there
she was in thrall--so much in thrall that I am persuaded that she would
deliberately have sacrificed the attractions of the Fillingford
alliance, braved her neighbor's disapproval, imperiled the brilliant
fabric of popularity and power which she had been at such pains to
create--save for one thing. She was fascinated to love by the quality
which, above all others, she dreaded in marriage. In that great respect
wherein Fillingford was harmless, Octon was to her mind supremely to be
feared. The very difficulty she now felt in sending him away was earnest
of the dominion which he would exercise. Since he was a lover, no doubt
he made the usual lover's vows--or some of them; very likely he told her
that her will would be his law, or spoke more impassioned words to that
effect. Such protestations from his lips carried no conviction. The man
could not help being despotic. She was despotic, too. If he would not
yield, she could not answer for it that she would, and perhaps aspired
to no such abdication. Her foresight discerned, with fatal clearness,
the clash of their opposing forces, accentuated by the permanent
contrast of their tastes and dispositions. The master of Breysgate
Priory might again break Lady Aspenick's whip or insult the Mayor of
Catsford! Trifles from one point of view, but Jenny would not have such
things done. They were fatal to popularity and to power; they broke up
her life as she had planned it. There would arise an inevitable
conflict. In victory for herself--even in that--she saw misery. But she
could not believe in victory. She was afraid.
Then she must let him go. She had the conviction clear at last; her
delicate equipoise--the ignorance of Fillingford against Octon's
suspicious but hopeful doubt--her having it both ways, could not be
maintained forever. Sentence was passed on Octon. I think that in his
heart he must have known it. But her fascination pleaded with her for a
long day--that the sentence should not be executed yet. To determine to
do it was one thing; doing it was quite another. Day by day she must
have debated "Shall it be to-morrow?" Day after day she delayed and
dallied. Day after day she saw him; whether they met at Ivydene with
Powers for sentinel, or whether she seized her chance to slip across
from Ivydene to Hatcham Ford, I know not. However that may be--and it
matters little--every afternoon she went down to Ivydene--to transact
Institute business--between tea and dinner. Late for business? Yes--but
Fillingford came earlier in the afternoons--and now it grew dark early.
A carriage or a car took her--but she never kept it waiting. She always
came home on foot in the gathering darkness.
After her one explicit confidence, "The signal's at Danger," she became
unapproachable on the subject which filled alike her thoughts and mine.
Hence a certain distance came between us in spite of her affectionate
kindness. There were no more morning rides; she went only once or twice
herself; I did not know whether she met Lacey. I was less often at lunch
and dinner. We confined ourselves more to our official relations. We
were both awkwardly conscious of a forbidden or suppressed subject--one
that could not be approached to any good purpose unless confidence was
to be open and thorough. To that length she would not--perhaps could
not--go; she had to fight her battle alone. Only once she came near to
referring to the position of affairs, then no more than indirectly.
"You looked rather fagged and worried," she said one day. "Why don't you
take a little holiday, and come back when things are settled?"
"Would you rather I went away for a bit? I want you to tell me the
truth."
"Oh, no," she answered with evident sincerity, almost with eagerness. "I
like to have you here." She smiled. "Somebody to catch me if I fall!"
Then, with a quickness that prevented any answer or comment of mine, she
returned to our business.
So I stayed and watched--there was nothing else to do. If anybody
objects that the spectacle which I watched was not a pleasant one, I
will not argue with him. If anyone asserts that it was not a moral one,
not tending to edification, I may perhaps have to concede the point. I
can only plead that to me it was interesting--painful, perhaps, but
interesting. I believed that she would win; we who were about her got
into the way of expecting her to win. We looked for some mistakes, but
we looked also for dexterous recoveries and ultimate victories won even
in the face of odds. I will volunteer one more confession--I wanted her
to win--to win the respite she craved without detection and without
disaster. The sternness of morality is apt to weaken before the appeal
of a gallant fight--valor of spirit, and dexterity, and resource in
maneuver. We forget the merits of the cause in the pluck of the
combatant. As I believed, as I hoped, that Jenny would win, I also hoped
that she would not take too great, too long, a risk. The signal pointed
straighter to "Danger" every day.
Chat--whom I have been in danger of forgetting, though I am sure I mean
her no disrespect--had her work in the campaign. It was to create
diversions, to act as buffer, to cover up Jenny's tracks when that was
necessary, to give plausible reasons for Jenny's movements when such
were needed; above all, delicately to imply to the neighborhood that the
Fillingford matter was all right--only they must give Miss Driver time!
Chat was a loyal, nay, rabid Octonite herself, but she was also a
faithful hound. She obeyed orders--and obeyed them with a certain skill.
On the subject of Jenny's shrinking timidity when faced with an offer of
marriage, Chat was beautifully convincing--I heard her do the trick once
for Mrs. Jepps's edification. The ladies were good enough not to make a
stranger of me. Mrs. Jepps, I may observe in passing, took a
healthy--and somewhat imperious--interest in one's marriage, and one's
means, and so on, as well as in one's religious opinions.
"Always the same from a girl, Mrs. Jepps!" said Chat. "And after five
years of her I ought to know. I assure you we couldn't get her to speak
to a young man!"
"Very unusual with girls nowadays," observed Mrs. Jepps.
"Ah, our little village wasn't like Catsford! We were, I suppose you'd
call it, behind the times there. I had been brought up on the old lines,
and I inculcated them on my pupils. But, as I say, with Jenny there was
no need. The difficulty was the other way. Why, I remember a very nice
young fellow, named Maunders (was Maunders Rabbit, I wondered), who paid
her such nice attentions--so respectful! (Maunders was Rabbit, depend
upon it!) She used to be angry with him--positively angry, Mrs. Jepps."
Chat nodded sagely. "Comparing small things and great, it's the same
thing here." Thus did Chat transform into girlish coyness Jenny's
masterful grip on liberty!
"It's possible to carry it too far. Then it looks like
shilly-shallying," said Mrs. Jepps.
"She does carry it too far," Chat hastened to admit candidly. "Much too
far. Why, between ourselves, I tell her so every day." (Oh, oh, Chat, as
if you dared!) "I try to use some of my old authority." Chat smiled
playfully over this.
"Well," said Mrs. Jepps, rising to go, "I suppose the poor man's got to
put up with anything from sixty thousand a year!"
In that remark Mrs. Jepps, shrewdly unconvinced by Chat's convincing
precedent, hit off the growing feeling of the neighborhood--the feeling
of whose growth Fillingford had begun to be afraid. He believed that all
communication with Octon had been broken off; he had never considered
Octon as a rival. He saw no ostensible reason for Jenny's hesitation; he
was either sure that she would say yes if forced to an answer, or he
made up his mind at last to take the risk. He came over to Breysgate
Priory with a formal offer and the demand for a formal answer.
Needless to say, he did not confide this fact to me, but I had
information really as good as first-hand. On the day in question I was
sitting reading in my own house after lunch when, with a perfunctory
knock, young Lacey put his head in at the door.
"Got any tobacco and a drink, Mr. Austin? We've walked over. I've
dropped the governor up the hill."
I welcomed him, provided him with what he wanted, and sat him down by
the fire; it was late autumn now and chilly. He was looking amused in a
reflective sort of way.
"I say, I suppose you're pretty well in the know up there, aren't you?"
He nodded in the direction of the Priory. "Not much danger of the
governor slipping up, is there? Oh, you know what I mean! There's no
reason you and I shouldn't talk about it."
"Perhaps I do, Lord Lacey. Your father's at the Priory now?"
"I've just left him there. It's a bit odd to do bottleholder for one's
governor on these occasions. It'd seem more natural the other way,
wouldn't it?"
"Depends a bit on the relative ages, doesn't it?"
"Yes, of course, that's it. The governor's getting on, though." He
looked across at me. "He's a gentleman, though. The way he told Aunt
Sarah and me about it was good--quite good. He said his mind had been
made up for some time, but he couldn't formally take such a step without
discovering the feelings of the--well, he called us something
pleasant--the people who'd lived with him and done so much for his
happiness for so many years, ever since mother--'your dear mother,' he
said--died. So he told us what he was going to do, and asked our good
wishes. Rather straight of him, don't you think?"
"I should always expect the straight thing of him," I said.
"Yes--and that'll suit her at all events." (Did he unintentionally hint
that some other things would not?) "She's straight as a die, isn't she?
Look at the straight way she's treated me! As soon as she saw me--well,
inclined to be--oh, you know!--she put it all straight directly; and
we're the best of pals--I'd go through fire and water for her--and I
wished the old governor luck with all my heart."
"I'm delighted to hear you feel like that about it--I really am. And I'm
sure Miss Driver would be, too. I hope Lady Sarah is equally pleased?"
His blue eyes twinkled. "You needn't put that on for me, Austin," he
remarked, with a pleasant lapse into greater intimacy. "I imagine Aunt
Sarah's feelings are no secret! However, she said all the proper things
and pecked the governor's cheek. Couldn't ask more, could you?" He
laughed as he stretched his shapely gaitered legs before the fire.
"After all, there'll be two pretty big houses--Fillingford and
Breysgate! Room for all!"
"You'll be wanting one presently."
"I shall live with the old folks--I say, how'd Miss Driver like to hear
that?--till I get married--which won't be for a long while, I hope. Then
we'll set Aunt Sarah up at Hatcham Ford. Octon will be gone by then, I
hope! I saw the fellow in the town the other day. I wonder he doesn't
go. It can't be pleasant to stop in a place where you're cut!"
"Octon has his own resources, I daresay."
"Sorry for the resources!" Lacey remarked. "I say, how long ought we to
give the governor?"
"Don't hurry matters."
"It can't take very long, can it? The governor means to settle it out of
hand; he almost said as much."
"But then there's the lady. Perhaps she----"
"Between ourselves, I fancy he thinks he's waited long enough."
I had the same impression, but my mind had wandered back to another
point.
"When did you see Octon?" I asked.
"I trotted Aunt Sarah down to that place--what's it called?--where the
Institute offices are. Aunt Sarah's got very keen on the Institute; she
must mean to queer it somehow, I think! Well, Octon was there, talking
to the clerk. She cut him dead, of course--marched by the pair of them
with her head up. Powers ran after her, and I addressed an observation
to Octon. You remember that little spar we had?"
"At the Flower Show? Yes, I remember."
"I was a bit fresh then," he confessed candidly, "and perhaps he wasn't
so far wrong to sit on me. But the beggar's got a rough way of doing it.
Well, it didn't seem civil to say nothing, so I said, 'I haven't had
that thrashing yet, and I'm getting a bit too big for it, like you, Mr.
Octon.'"
"Was that your idea of something civil?" I felt constrained to ask.
"He didn't mind," Lacey assured me. "But he said a funny thing. He
grinned at me quite kindly and said, 'You're just coming to the size for
something much worse.' What do you think he meant by that, Austin?"
"I haven't the least idea."
"He's a bounder--at least he must be, or he'd never have done that to
Susie Aspenick; but he's got his points, I think. I tell you what, I
shouldn't so much mind serving under him. One don't mind being sat on by
the C. O."
"What was happening between Lady Sarah and Powers all this time?" I
asked.
"Lord bless you, I don't know!" he answered scornfully. "Institute, I
suppose! I should be inclined to call the Institute rot if Miss Driver
wasn't founding it. At any rate Aunt Sarah and Powers--rather like a
beach photographer, isn't he?--seem as thick as thieves." He finished
off his whisky and soda. "Well, women must do something, I suppose," he
remarked. "Shall we go and beat up the governor?"
He was impatient. I yielded, although I did not think that "the
governor" would be ready for us yet; I thought that, if Lord Fillingford
was to gain his cause that afternoon, he was in for a long interview
with Jenny. Evidently Lacey meant to wait. I was game to wait with him.
In these days I was all suspicion--on the alert for danger. It made me
uneasy to hear that Lady Sarah and Powers were "thick as thieves."
Mentally I paused to acknowledge the exquisite accuracy of Lacey's
"beach photographer." On the genus it would have been a libel; for the
species it was exact. I saw him with his velveteens, his hair, his
collar--against a background of paper-littered sands and "nigger
minstrels"; the picture recalled childhood, but without the proper
sentimental appeal.
I was right. We had to walk up and down the terrace in front of the
house for a long while. Lacey talked all the time--his views, his
regiment, sports, races, what not. From the top of my mind--the surface
responsive to externals--I answered. Within I was following in
imagination the struggle of my dear, wayward, unreasonable mistress--of
her who wanted both ways, who would lead half a dozen lives, and unite
under her sway kingdoms between which there could be neither union nor
alliance.
It was almost five o'clock by the time Fillingford came out; the sun had
begun to lose power; the peace of evening--and something of its
chill--rested on the billowing curves of turf and the gently swaying
treetops. As we saw him we came to a standstill, and so awaited his
approach.
Under no circumstances, I imagine, could Lord Fillingford have looked
radiant. Even any overt appearance of triumph his taste, no less than
his nature, would have rejected; and his taste was infallible in
negatives. Yet on his face, as he came to us, there was unmistakable
satisfaction; he had done quite as well as he had expected--or even
better. I was glad--with a sharp pang of sorrow for the limitations of
human gladness. In my heart I should have been glad for Jenny to be
allowed to break rules--to have it all ways--as she wanted--for as long
as she wanted. There was the moral slope of which I have before made
metaphorical mention!
He greeted me with a cordiality very marked for him, and laid a hand on
his son's shoulder affectionately. "I've kept you a terribly long time,
Amyas, and we mustn't bother Miss Driver any more. She's tired, I fear.
We'll go home for a cup of tea."
Lacey was excited and anxious, but he knew his father better than to put
even the most veiled question to him in my presence.
"All right, sir. Austin's been looking after me first-rate."
I could not be mistaken; a touch of ownership over me--the hint of a
right to approve of me--came into Fillingford's voice. I seemed to feel
myself adopted as a retainer--or, at least, my past services to one of
the family acknowledged.
"I'm sure Mr. Austin is always most kind."
The impression was subtle, but it confirmed, more than anything that had
yet happened, my certainty of Jenny's answer. I had further confirmation
the next moment. He stood on the edge of the terrace, his arm through
his son's, and looked over the view.
"A fine position!" he said. "If it had been the fashion to build on the
top of a hill three centuries ago, we should have put the house here, I
suppose, instead of selling to the Dormers. It was part of our land
originally, you know, Mr. Austin." He pulled himself up with a laugh. "A
feudal lord's reminiscences! We do well enough if we can keep what we've
got nowadays--without regretting what we used to have. Come along,
Amyas, or your aunt will have given us up for tea!"
He had sought to correct the impression he had given--to withdraw the
idea implicit in his words about Breysgate Priory; yet the withdrawal
seemed formal, made in deference to an obligation rather than really
effective or important. I was sure that, as he trod Breysgate park that
evening, he trod the soil as, in his own mind, already part of the
Fillingford domains. The most reserved of men cannot but tell something;
only a god or a brute, as the philosopher has it, can be absolutely
unrevealing. If Fillingford could have succeeded in attaining to
that--and I have no doubt that he tried--his son would have spoiled the
mystery. Familiarity taught him to read more clearly his father's
visage. His face beamed with exultation; as he had "wished the governor
luck with all his heart," now, without question, the moment I was out of
hearing, he wished him joy.
I went in to Jenny, without stopping to think whether she had bidden me
come or not. I could not keep away; it even seemed to be something like
hypocrisy to keep away now on the pretext that I had not been expressly
summoned. She had told me that she liked me to stay--as "somebody to
catch her if she fell." That was, surely, at least a permission to be
near her?
She was alone, save for Loft who was setting out the tea-tray in his
usual deft, speedy, deliberate way. She sat in the middle of the sofa,
looking straight in front of her. But she spoke to me directly I came
in, while Loft and the footman were still in the room.
"You've just missed Lord Fillingford. Or did you see him as he went
away?
"Yes, I met him and had a little talk with him. Young Lacey's been
gossiping with me most of the afternoon."
Loft must have wanted to hear, but you'd never have known it! He
withdrew, imperturbable and serene. I think that Loft should be added to
the god and the brute, to form a trinity of impeccable illegibility.
At a sign from Jenny I took my tea and drank it. She sat very quiet,
exhausted as it seemed, yet still thinking hard. I did not speak.
"A long call, wasn't it?" she said at last, and a faint smile flickered
on her lips.
"It was--and it seemed so, I daresay."
"How did he look?"
"Exceedingly well-content. And Lacey seemed most contented with his
appearance."
She shrugged her shoulders and smiled again rather contemptuously. I set
down my cup and came to her. "Well, good-night, Lady Jenny," I said.
She looked up at me and suddenly spoke out the truth--in a hard voice,
bitter and resentful.
"With prayers and vows--yes, and tears," she said, "I've saved a week."
"Before you give your answer?"
"No. The answer is given. Before the engagement is announced."
"If you've given your answer, announce it to-night."
She did not resent my counsel. But she shook her head. "I've fought that
battle with him already. I--I can't." She rose suddenly to her feet and
stood before me. "I've done it. I've managed to do it. It's done--and I
stand by it. But not to-day! I must have a week." She stretched out her
hands to me in appeal; there was a curious mixture of mockery and of
passion in her voice. She mocked me for certain--perhaps she mocked
herself, too; yet she was strongly moved. "Dear old, kind,
little-understanding Austin, you must give poor Jenny Driver her last
week!"
The last week, which she must have, did all the mischief.