NOT PROVEN
In the stern condemnation of moral delinquencies, when such are
discovered or conjectured, we may be content to find nothing but what is
praiseworthy; the simultaneous exhibition of a hungry curiosity about
them is one of those features of human nature which it is best to accept
without comment--if only for the reason that no man can be sure that he
does not in some degree share it. In Catsford at this time it was
decidedly prominent. The place went wild on the news that Sir John
Aspenick, happening to be in Paris on a flying visit, thought that he
saw Jenny go by as he stood outside the Cafe de la Paix: great was the
disappointment that Sir John could not contrive even to think that he
had seen Octon with her! Lady Sarah Lacey, working on the feminine clew
of Jenny's having departed luggageless, set inquiries afoot among London
dressmakers, with the happy result of revealing the fact that Jenny had
bought a stock of several articles of wearing apparel: the news worked
back to Chat from one of the dressmakers, and from Chat I had it, with
more details of the wearing apparel that my memory carries. Mrs. Jepps
waylaid Chat--who had timidly ventured into the town under a pressing
need of finding some very special form of needle--in the main street and
tried the comparative method, not at all a bad mode of investigation
where manners forbid direct questions. She told Chat numbers of stories
of other "sad cases" and looked to see how Chat "took" them--hoping to
draw, augur-like, conclusions from Chat's expression. I myself--well, I
would not be uncharitable. My friends were all honorable men; they might
naturally conclude that I was depressed and lonely; why look farther for
the cause of the frequent visits from them which I enjoyed? Bindlecombe
and a dozen more so honored me, and Cartmell told me that only the
severest office discipline kept his working hours sacred from kind
intruders.
Moreover, a little problem arose, not in itself serious, but showing the
extreme inconvenience which results when people who are in a position to
confer pleasant favors so act as to make it doubtful whether favors can
properly be accepted from them. Such a state of affairs puts an unfair
strain on virtue, inconsiderately demanding martyrdom where
righteousness only has been volunteered. As may have been gathered,
Jenny's neighbors were in the habit of using the road through her park
as an alternative route to the high road in their comings and goings to
and from Catsford. For some it was shorter--as for the Wares, the
Dormers, and the Aspenicks; for all it was pleasanter. What was to be
done about this now? Fillingford had no doubt; neither he nor Lady Sarah
used the park road any more; but then the road was no great saving of
distance for the folks at the Manor--their martyrdom was easy--whereas
it was very materially shorter for the Wares, the Dormers, and, above
all, for the Aspenicks. The question was so acute for the Aspenicks that
I heard of Lady Aspenick's collecting opinions on the subject from
persons of light and leading. She did not consider Fillingford's course
impartial--nor decisive of the question; it was easy for him to take the
virtuous line; it did not involve his going pretty nearly two miles out
of his way.
Discussion ran high on the question. Mrs. Jepps declared against using
the road, though her fat pair of horses had been accustomed to get what
little exercise they ever did get along it three afternoons a week.
"If I use the road, and she comes back and finds me using it, where am
I?" asked Mrs. Jepps. "I can't cut her when I'm driving in her park by
her permission. Yet I may feel obliged to refuse to bow to her!"
The attitude had all Mrs. Jepps's logic in it; it was unassailable. Very
reluctantly old Mr. and Mrs. Dormer gave in to it--they would go round
by the King's highway, longer though it was. Bertram Ware, lawyer and
politician, stole round the difficulty--and along the park road--by
adopting a provisional attitude; until more was known, he felt justified
in using--and in allowing Mrs. Ware to use--the road. He reserved
liberty of action if more facts condemnatory of Jenny should appear.
The Aspenicks remained--to whom the road was more precious than to any
of the others. Sir John would have none of Ware's provisional
attitude--it was not what he called "straight"; but then he had a
prejudice against lawyers, and held no particularly high opinion of
Bertram Ware.
"Make up your mind," he said to his wife. "Either we use it or we don't.
But if we use it, it's taking a favor from her, and that may be awkward
later on."
Now Lady Aspenick wanted to use the road very much indeed--and not
merely the road for her tandem, so sadly famous in history, but also the
turf alongside it for her canters. But in the first place Lady Aspenick
was herself a model of propriety, and in the second--it was an even
weightier consideration--she had a growing girl; Eunice Aspenick was now
nearly sixteen--and rode with her mother. Supposing Lady Aspenick and
Eunice used the road, supposing Jenny were guilty of enormities, came
back guilty of them, and discovered Lady Aspenick, with Eunice, on the
road! Lady Aspenick's problem was worse than Mrs. Jepps's--because of
Eunice on the one hand, and of Lady Aspenick's remarkably strong desire
to use the road on the other.
This question of the road--work on the Institute at a standstill--no
more parties at Breysgate (what of the Flower Show next summer?)! Verily
Jenny was causing endless inconvenience!
It would not be just to say that this difficulty about the road--and
Eunice--determined Lady Aspenick's attitude toward Jenny; it is perhaps
permissible to conjecture that it led her to reconsider it. After the
lapse of a fortnight she came out on Jenny's side, and signified the
same by calling on Chat at Breysgate Priory. Chat and I sometimes
consoled one another's loneliness at afternoon tea; I was present when
Lady Aspenick arrived.
We had our lesson pat--so long as we were not cross-examined. Jenny was
wintering abroad; Chat's health (this was our own supplement) had made
traveling inadvisable for her, and Jenny had found other companions.
Lady Aspenick was most affable to the story; she admitted it to belief
at once. Sympathy with Chat, pleasure at not being deprived of Chat's
society, kind messages through Chat to Jenny--all came as easily and
naturally as possible. Not an awkward question! It was with real
gratitude that I conducted Lady Aspenick to her carriage. But she had a
word for me there.
"I didn't want to talk about it to that poor old thing," she said, "but
have you any--news, Mr. Austin?"
"None, except what I've told you. She isn't a great letter-writer."
"They're saying horrid things. Well, Sarah Lacey would, of course. I
can't see any reason for believing them. I'm on her side! One may wonder
at her taste--one must--but she has a right to please herself, and to
take her own time about it. Of course that night journey--!" Lady
Aspenick smiled in a deprecating manner.
"Impulsive!" I observed.
Lady Aspenick caught at the word joyfully. "That's it--impulsive! That's
what I've always said. Dear Jenny is impulsive--that's all!" She got
into her carriage and ordered the coachman to drive her to Mrs. Jepps's.
She was going to tell Mrs. Jepps that Jenny was impulsive--going by the
road through the park to tell Mrs. Jepps that it was no more than that.
Her own line taken, Lady Aspenick gathered a tiny faction to raise
Jenny's banner. They could not do much against Lady Sarah's open
viciousness, Fillingford's icy silence, the union of High Church and Low
in the persons and the adherents of Alison and of Mrs. Jepps. But Sir
John followed his wife, Bindlecombe took courage to uplift a friendly
voice, and old Mr. Dormer began to waver. His memories went back to
George IV.--days in which they were not hard on pretty women--having,
indeed, remarkably little right to be. Mr. Dormer was reported to be
inclined to think that the men of the surrounding families might ride in
Jenny's park--about their ladies it was, perhaps, another question. It
was understood that Lady Aspenick's faction gave great offense at
Fillingford Manor. The alliance between the two houses had been close,
and Fillingford Manor saw treachery to itself in any defense of Jenny.
So they debated and gossiped, sparred and wrangled--and no more news
came. At the Priory we began to settle down into a sort of routine,
trying to find ourselves work to do, trying to fill the lives that
seemed now so empty. Our position--like Bertram Ware's attitude about
the park road--was provisional--hopelessly provisional. We were not
living; we were only waiting. Not the actual events of to-day, but the
possible event of to-morrow was the thing for which we existed. It was
like listening perpetually for a knock on the door. Little could be made
of a life like that. Well, we were not to sink into the dullness of our
routine just yet.
In my youth I have heard a sage preach to the young men, his hearers and
critical disciples, on the text of the certainty of life; discarding,
perhaps thinking trite, perhaps deeming misleading, the old _Memento
mori_. He bade them recollect that for practical purposes they had to
reckon on--and with--thirty, forty, fifty, years of life and activity.
That was a long time--order the many days! You could not afford to
calculate on the accident of an early death to end your responsibility.
It was well said; yet not even the broadest sanest argument can
altogether persuade Death out of his traditional role, nor induce
Atropos to wield her shears always without caprice. Yet again, in this
case there seemed little caprice; the likely ending came rather
quickly--that was all; it was just such an ending as, in some form or
other, might have been expected--just such as once, in talk with me, the
man himself had, hardly gravely yet quite sincerely, treated as likely,
almost as inevitable.
I was the first to get the news--at breakfast time one November morning.
A telegram came to me from Jenny; it was sent from Tours. "Leonard has
died from wound received in a duel. Do not come to me. I want to be
alone.--JENNY DRIVER."
He had insulted somebody--in a country where men still fought on the
point of honor. The conclusion sprang forward on a glance. He had passed
much time abroad, I knew--the code was not strange to him, nor the use
of his weapons. Though both had been strange, little would he have
shunned the fight! He would take joy in it--joy in shedding the
advantage of his mighty strength, glad to meet his man on even terms,
eagerly accepting the leveling power of a bullet. He had made himself
intolerable again; some one had uprisen and done away with the incubus
of him. The whole affair seemed just what might be looked for; he had
died fighting--for him a natural death.
So the life was out of the big man--and he had been so full of it. That
was strange to think of.
Somehow he seemed incompatible with death. I remember drawing a long
breath as I said to myself "Dead!" and thought grewsomely of the
carrying out of that great coffin--with all the mighty weight of him
inside; even dead he would oppress men by size, insolently crushing
their shoulders with his bulk. "Part of the objection to me is because
I'm so large," he had said. Even the undertaker's men would share in
that objection. "I shall certainly be stamped out. Ah, well, small
wonder--and what a pity!"
He had a power over me; something of his force had reached me, too--or
my thoughts would not have dwelt on him so long; they would have turned
sooner to Jenny. To what end? Her message forbade the one thing which it
was in my mind to do--go to her directly. She would not have it; she
would be--as she was--alone. I had no thought of disobedience--only a
great sorrow that I must obey. I read the telegram again. "Jenny
Driver!" She had hesitated too long. Ways could not be kept open
forever. Mr. Powers had taught her this truth once, and she had not
hearkened. Death himself came to enforce the lesson. She stood no longer
between the fascination that she loved and feared and the independence
which she cherished and yet wearied of. She was free perforce; the
tenure of her liberty was no longer precarious; and the joy of her heart
was dead. Her equipoise--another of her delicate balancings--was
hopelessly upset; when Death flung his weight into one of her scales,
the other kicked the beam.
So long as I was alone, it did not occur to me to think of the bearings
of the event--and of its announcement--on her outward fortunes. My mind
was with herself--asking how she faced the thing, in what mood it left
her; nay, going back to the days before it, viewing them in the alien
light of their sudden end. Not what would be said or thought, but what
was, engrossed my meditation. Death brings that color to the mind; it
takes us "beyond these voices." But they who live must soon return
within hearing.
I did not hear Cartmell come in--I had been out before breakfast, and I
believe I had left my door ajar. His hand was on my shoulder before I
was aware of his presence. He held a morning paper in his hand, but he
did not show it to me directly. He looked down in my face as I sat in my
arm-chair and then said, "You've heard, haven't you?"
"Yes," I answered, giving him Jenny's telegram.
He read it. "This must be between you and me, Austin. So far, there's
nothing in the paper to show that she was there--to show who the woman
was, I mean."
"The woman?"
"The woman mentioned in the paper. Read it." He pushed it into my hand.
His practical mind did not waste itself in memories or speculation; it
flew to the present need. I had lost myself in wonderings about the man
and the woman; he was concerned solely with our local institution--Miss
Driver of Breysgate. He was right.
The telegram in the paper came from Reuter's news agency. "A quarrel in
the Cafe de l'Univers last night resulted in a duel this morning, in
which an Englishman named Octon was mortally wounded at the first fire.
He subsequently expired at the house of a lady, understood to be Mrs.
Octon, in the Rue Balzac, to which he had been carried at his own
request."
Beneath was a short paragraph stating that it was conjectured that the
"deceased gentleman" was "Mr. Leonard Octon, the well-known traveler and
entomologist." On inquiry at his publishers', those gentlemen had stated
that Mr. Octon was, to their knowledge, traveling in France.
"Not much harm done if it stops there," said Cartmell, thoughtfully
rubbing his hands together.
"How can it? There'll have to be an inquest--or something corresponding
to it, I suppose?"
"She's very clever."
"Will she care about being clever?" I asked, studying the paragraph
again. "Understood to be Mrs. Octon" had a smack of Jenny's own
ambiguity and elusiveness. And it hardly sounded as though the house to
which he had been carried at his own request were the house where he
himself had been lodging.
"Of course it'll be all over Catsford in an hour. There's no helping
that. But, as I say, there's no particular harm done yet."
"They'll guess, won't they?"
"Of course they will; but there's all the difference between guessing
and having it in print. We must wait. I've got to go out of town--and
I'm glad of it."
I did not go away, but I hid myself. The only person I saw that day was
Chat: she was entitled to the news.
Telling her was sad work; her devotion to Octon rose up against her
accusingly. She railed at herself for all her dealings with Jenny;
old-time delinquencies in duty at the Simpsons' dressed themselves in
the guise of great crimes; she had been a guilty party to Jenny's
misdemeanors; they had led to this.
"I shall have to render an account for it," said poor Chat, rocking her
body to and fro, as was her habit in moments of agitation: her speech
was obviously reminiscent of church services. "If I had done my duty by
her, this would never have happened." I am afraid that "this" meant the
scandal, rather than any conduct which gave rise to it. But if Chat were
going to be so aggressively penitent as this, the case was lost.
"We must hope for the best--and, anyhow, put the best face on it," I
urged.
Chat cheered up a little. "Dear Jenny is very resourceful." Cartmell had
observed that she was clever. I was waiting with a vague expectancy for
some move from her, some turn or twist in her favor. We had not lost
faith in her, any of us; the faith had become blind--if you will,
instinctive--surviving even the Waterloo of her flight and this
calamitous tragedy.
Were we wrong? Only the future could show that; but the next day brought
us some encouragement. There was a fuller paragraph, confirming the
conjectured identification of Octon, giving a notice of his work, and
the name of his opponent in the duel--an officer belonging to an old
family distinguished for its orthodox Catholic opinions. "The quarrel is
said to have originated in a discussion of religious differences." That
sounded quite likely, and relieved the fear that it might have sprung
from a more compromising origin. Then came--well, something very like an
apology for that phrase about the lady "understood to be Mrs. Octon."
The lady was not, it now appeared, Mrs. Octon; she was "a Miss Driver"
(_A_ Miss Driver--that would sound odd to Catsford!) to whom the
deceased gentleman was engaged to be married. This Miss Driver had taken
a house in the Rue Balzac, where she was residing with another lady, her
friend: the deceased gentleman had recently arrived at the Hotel de
l'Univers; notice of their intended marriage had been given at the
British Consulate three days before the fatal occurrence. A few days
more would have seen them man and wife. "Much sympathy is felt for the
lady under the very painful circumstances of the case. It is understood
that she will leave Tours immediately after the funeral."
It would hardly be doing Cartmell a wrong to describe him as gleeful;
the statement was so much less damaging than might have been expected.
To the world at large it was, indeed, not damaging at all; it rather
appealed to sympathy and invested Jenny with a pathetic interest. In
Catsford the case was different: there was the flight, the silence, the
interval. But even for Catsford we had a case--and the difference
between even a bad case and no case at all is, in matters like this,
enormous.
What was the truth of it? It was not possible to believe that the notice
to the Consulate was a mere maneuver, a pretense, and a sham. She was
neither so cold-blooded nor so foolish as that--and Octon would have
ridiculed such a sham out of existence. The notice to the Consulate
showed that her long hesitation had at last ended--possibly on Octon's
entreaties, though I continued to doubt that--possibly for conscience'
sake, possibly from regard for the world's opinion. She had made up her
mind to let go her "precarious liberty." But for this stroke of fate she
would have become Octon's wife.
How did the stroke of fate leave her? Or, rather, leave her fame? Of
herself I knew nothing--save that she would be alone. She loved an
equipoise. Her fame was balanced in one now. Fillingford and Lady Sarah,
Mrs. Jepps and Alison, would think still what they had thought; probably
the bulk of opinion would be with them. But we had a case. We could
brazen it out. Bertram Ware could still be provisional, Lady Aspenick
could use the road through the park--even Eunice might ride with her;
and old Mr. Dormer would scarcely strain the proprieties to breaking
point if he permitted himself to be accompanied by his wife. The verdict
could be "Not Proven."
A week later the French authorities forwarded to me a letter from
Octon--found on his table at the hotel and written the evening before
the meeting:
"MY DEAR AUSTIN--I have to fight a fellow to-morrow--a very
decent fellow--on the ostensible ground of my having spoken
disrespectfully of the Pope, which naturally is not at all the
real cause of quarrel. I rather think I shall be killed--first,
for the sensible reason that he is angry (I hit him. 'Of course
you did,' I hear you say) and a good shot; secondly, because
she has at last elected to settle things and that offers a
temptation to chance--not such a sensible reason--indeed an
utterly nonsensical one, which accordingly entirely convinces
me. I leave her to you. Don't try to marry her--it only worries
her--but serve her well, and as you serve her, so may God
Almighty, in whom I believe though you think I don't, serve
you. You couldn't spend your life (you're not a great man, you
know) to better account. How I have spent mine doesn't matter.
I have on the credit side of the balance the discovery of five
new insects. It is to be hoped that this will not be
overlooked.--Yours,
"L. O."
New insects--five! Private faults--how many? What is the Table of
Weights? That must be known, to strike the balance of Leonard Octon's
life.