ONE OF TWO LEGACIES
The clouds settled down over Jenny; a veil of silence obscured her.
Business letters were still exchanged through the bankers at Paris, but
hers bore no postmarks; they must have arrived in Paris under cover;
they came under cover to Breysgate, and thus gave no indication of her
whereabouts. She was in constant communication with Cartmell about her
affairs; to me she wrote much seldomer and only on necessity; to Chat
she never wrote at all. To none of us, I believe, did she say a word
about what had happened--and she certainly said no word to Catsford. Nor
did we; her orders stood--no excuses, no explanations, no guesses. Thus
starved of food, Catsford's interest at last languished; they did not
forget Jenny, but talk about her catastrophe and Octon's death died
down. Nobody having anything fresh to tell or any guess to make that had
not been made already, the topic grew stale.
The long wait began--it was a wait to me, for I knew that she meant to
come back in the end--and lasted for nearly three years. I employed an
ample leisure in writing my essay on "The Future of Religious and
Ethical Thought." It brought me some credit in the outside world--or
rather the small part of it that cares for such speculations; but
indifference was the best I hoped from Catsford--and I did not
altogether achieve that. Friendship sometimes gives a writer what I may
term unnatural readers--and not with the happiest results. Alison
continued to be kind and cordial to me, but he would not talk about my
book. Mrs. Jepps--what business had she with such a book at all?--shook
her head over it, and over me, very solemnly, and, as I heard, was not
slow to trace a connection between Jenny's acts and my opinions. I did
the local reputation of Breysgate no good by that book, though its
reception in the Press flattered my vanity considerably.
More important things happened in the neighborhood--for three years make
differences in a little society. Old Mr. Dormer died, carrying off with
him into the inaudible much agreeable anecdote; his cousin, a young man
of thirty, reigned at Kingston in his stead. Bertram Ware was no longer
M.P.; the domestic dissensions, in which Jenny had once seen an
opportunity for herself, had ended in his retiring at the General
Election; he was said to be sulky, and to be talking of selling his
place and going away. Lacey, his majority just attained, had been put
forward in his stead, and elected after a stiff fight with an eloquent
stranger from London--(Bindlecombe reserved himself till Catsford should
be given a borough member!)--I did not follow closely Lacey's doings--or
anybody's--at Westminster, but he was assiduous in his social duties in
the constituency. There was no change at Fillingford Manor, save that
its master looked more definitely middle-aged, and its mistress riveted
on our necks the power which Jenny's rise had threatened. Finally, Lady
Aspenick's growing girl had grown, had "come out," and was a personage
in our society. She was a rather pretty, tall, fair girl, great at all
outdoor pursuits. The gossips had already begun to say that she would
make a capital bride for Lacey--if only there were more money! The
little cloud which had arisen between the two households over Jenny had
naturally passed away, when absence and silence removed Jenny from the
arena of discussion. None the less Lady Aspenick still used our
road--and still Fillingford Manor did not.
Such was the petty chronicle. The Institute found no place in it. There
nothing was done; even Bindlecombe seemed no longer sanguine. Hatcham
Ford, with its windows shuttered and its gravel-path grass-grown,
witnessed to a project apparently still-born, no less than it recalled
the catastrophe of that last night. When I passed by, I could not help
expecting to see Octon's great figure come out and slouch across the
road--to smoke a pipe with Mr. Powers! He did not come, and a most
respectable insurance agent now dwelt where Mr. Powers had played his
unedifying game. Nor was the Flower Show any longer part of our
Breysgate programme. Cartmell had offered the grounds, but the Committee
preferred to accept a proposal from Fillingford. For the last two years
it had been held at the Manor, and was to be held there again this
year--this the third summer since Jenny left us.
Then she came back. Her return was as sudden and as unannounced as her
departure, but otherwise marked by considerably more decorum.
I was writing one morning after lunch, and had wandered to the window,
to seek from the empty air an improbable inspiration. Suddenly I saw the
unparalleled spectacle of Loft running. Loft running! I had never
associated him with running, and should about as soon have expected to
see St. Paul's Cathedral dancing a fling down Ludgate Hill. But there he
came, down the path from the Priory. As soon as he got near me, he
shouted excitedly, "She's come back, sir, she's come back!" Then he came
to a stand outside the window, and recovered his professional demeanor
at the cost of some confusion. "I beg your pardon, sir, but Miss Driver
orders me to tell you that she has just returned, and will be glad to
see you in half an hour."
"When did she come?"
"Just in, sir--the 2.45 from London, it must be."
"How does she look?"
"Much the same as usual, sir--a little thinner in the face perhaps."
I looked at Loft; he was grinning. So, I suppose, was I. "This is good,
Loft."
"You may say that, sir!"
"Did she come alone?"
"No, sir. Her maid--a Frenchwoman, I think, sir--and a young lady. If
she'd brought twenty, she'd have found the house all ready for them."
"I'm sure she would. Tell her I'll come up in half an hour."
Her coming transformed everything for me; it seemed to put life into the
place, life into the big dull house on the hill, life into my little
den, life into that summer's day. It was the breaking of a long frost,
the awakening from a stupor. The coming that I had always believed in
began to seem incredible only now, when it had happened; incredible it
seemed that by just walking up the hill I could see Jenny again and hear
her voice. Absence and silence had rendered her so distant to sight or
sound, so intangible and remote. My last clear memory of her was still
at Hatcham Ford--as she asked Fillingford for the loan of his carriage,
and, with "God bless you, Austin," vanished into the night. A man can, I
suppose, get on without anyone, if he must; but he cannot always make
out how he has managed to do it.
I found her sitting in her old place in the big drawing-room; she
wore--whether by purpose or not what was in effect slight mourning, a
white summer frock with touches of black. Yes, her face was a little
thinner, but it had not lost its serenity. She was less a girl, more a
woman--but not a woman prematurely aged.
"Dear Austin!" she said, as I kissed the hand she held out to me.
"You've waited a long while--here I am at last! You've become famous in
the interval--yes, you have. I've seen your book, and I wish Leonard
could have read it. He'd have liked it. But though you're famous, still
you waited for me!"
"I don't think you expected me to do anything else."
She smiled at me. "Perhaps not. But, do you know, I'm afraid you've done
something else than grow famous. Have you grown into an old bachelor?
You look rather like it."
"I expect I have," said I ruefully, and with an anxious gaze at my coat.
"It's rather an old coat, isn't it?"
"And the knees of your trousers!" pursued Jenny remorselessly.
They were atrocious--there was no denying it. "There's been nobody to
dress for. I'll order a new suit to-morrow."
"Things begin to move directly I come back, don't they? Is there any
news in the neighborhood?"
I told her my little budget, sketching it in as lightly as I could and
with as little reference to herself. She fastened on the news about
Eunice Aspenick.
"Grown up, of course, by now, isn't she? And you say she's pretty. Very
pretty?"
"Not so very, in my judgment. Very fresh and healthy, and rather
handsome."
Jenny smiled mysteriously. "Oh, that doesn't matter--if it comes to no
more than that," she said contemptuously. She saw me smiling. "Oh, yes,
I'm scheming again!" she declared with a laugh. "Not for myself, though.
I've done with schemes about myself."
"At five-and-twenty?"
Jenny grew grave. "Things count, not years--or, anyhow, sooner than
years. Have I any friends left?"
She smiled again when I told her of Lady Aspenick's faction, and how
Lady Aspenick still used the road. "Come, that's not so bad," was her
comment, rather playfully than seriously given. "And you ask me no
questions?" she said the next moment, rather abruptly.
"No, I don't want to ask you any questions. I was very much grieved for
him."
She nodded. "When I went away with him," she said, "I burned my boats. I
wanted them burned, Austin. I was so sick of doubts--and of tricks and
maneuvers. Recklessness seemed fine; and everything seemed to have gone
out of the world--except me and him. There was some business to be done
and I did it--with the surface of my mind; it made no real part of my
thoughts. There I was all hatred for what I had been doing--yes, and
horrible hatred of having been found out--I'd better be frank about
that. I'd been tricking--I wanted to defy. Leonard didn't mind defying
either, did he? That lasted a week--ten days, perhaps. Then the old
thing came back--the fear of him, the fear of it. I couldn't help
it--it's so deep in my blood, Austin. He told me I ought to marry him
for my own sake--for his own he was indifferent. I think he really was.
I was terribly afraid but, as you must know from the papers, I agreed,
and everything was in train when--he died. That was my fault partly--but
only partly. The young man did--make a mistake about me--but he
apologized most humbly and courteously. But Leonard wouldn't take it
properly, and picked a quarrel with him the next evening."
"Then it doesn't seem to have been your fault."
"My being--vulnerable--made Leonard more, even more, than usually
aggressive. That's all. They brought him back to me dying. He lived only
about half an hour. We were curiously happy in that half hour--but it
was terrible afterwards." She fell into silence, her eyes very
sorrowful. Then she turned to me, with a gesture of her hands. "That's
all the story--and it's for you alone--because you're Austin."
I took her hand for a moment and pressed it. "For me alone--I thank
you."
"A thing like that seems to sweep across life like a hurricane, doesn't
it? Leveling everything, destroying such a lot!"
"You've come back to build it all up again."
She smiled for a moment. "So you've found that out? But I can't build it
all up. Some things I shall never try to build again. The track of the
hurricane will always be left."
"Time, time, time!" said I.
"Not even time. Life's not over--but it's life with a difference. I
don't complain. I accept that readily. I almost welcome it. I may cheat
the world, but I won't cheat myself. I'm not at my old trick of having
it both ways for myself, Austin."
She was determined to see clearly herself, but admitted no obligation to
allow outsiders a view. She would not minimize the thing for herself,
but was quite ready to induce the rest of the world to ignore it. It was
her affair. To her the difference was made, over her life the hurricane
had swept.
"I have no kith or kin; nobody is bound to me. The love of my friends is
free--free to withhold, free to give. I did it for myself, open-eyed.
There is nobody who has a right to harbor it against me."
And she meant that there never should be? It sounded like that.
"As a private offense against him, or her, I mean--as a personal
offense. Of course they've a right to their opinions--and with their
opinions I expect I should agree."
She would agree with the opinions, but did not feel bound to furnish
material for them. She could hardly be blamed there. The candle and the
white sheet--in open congregation--have fallen into such general disuse
that Jenny could not be asked to revive them. So far she might be
excused--people do not expect confessions. But she seemed to underrate
what she termed "opinions" even though, as opinions, she thought that
she would agree with them. On this subject neither Alison nor Mrs. Jepps
would talk of "opinions"; they would use other words. When she said that
there was nobody who had a right to harbor the affair against her, it
was easy to understand her meaning; but her meaning did not exhaust the
case. Society claims the right--and has the power--to harbor things
against us; hence the gallows, the prisons, and decrees of social
banishment. However, this sort of talk was confidential--between her and
me only. If society were disposed to give her the benefit of the doubt,
it would be very unlike Jenny not to make the thing as easy as possible
for society. Often society has no objection to being "cheated"; it will
let you shut its eyes to what you have done--strictly on condition that
you do not so much as hint that you had any right to do it. But it was
doubtful whether Jenny would find all Catsford in this accommodating
temper.
"What's your opinion?" she asked abruptly.
"If I understand you rightly, you did a serious thing; on any theory and
to anybody who thinks--never mind his precise views--a very serious
thing. But you seem to know that well enough, and more talk about it
won't mend matters."
"It was a wonderful time--my time of defiance--my time of surrender. At
least I tried to make it surrender--and my greatest surrender was to
consent not to go on defying. While I defied, I could surrender--because
I could lose sight of everything in him. He was big enough, Austin! I
seemed then to be putting the world--both worlds, if you like--quite out
of sight, annihilating them for myself, saying I could get on without
them if only I had Leonard--or, rather, if only Leonard would--would
swallow me up!" She looked at me with one of her straight candid
glances. "Well, he had no objection to that." Her lips curved in a
reluctant smile. "You wouldn't expect him to have, would you? We made a
plan. We were to go to Africa--somewhere in British East Africa--and
live there--away from everything. Not because of fear or anything of
that sort, you know--but because we felt we could get on better there. I
wanted to strip myself of everything that made me distinct from him--of
all I had or was, apart from him. I knew all the time that here, at
home, we should be impossible together; you know I felt that because you
watched the whole thing, Austin, and must have known that only that
feeling could have kept me from him. Well, I could only try to drive out
that fear of him by accepting all it meant--by being quite natural about
it--by saying, 'I've an instinct that you'll absorb me; I yield to
it--only make it easy--give it the best chance--don't keep me where all
sorts of things compel me to struggle against it. Struggling isn't a
possible life; perhaps surrender is. Let's try.' All this was the
underlying thing--the real thing that was going on. On the top we were
doing all sorts of interesting outside things--he was a wonderful
companion--but this was what we were battling out all the time--how to
make it work--how we could give our lives a chance of working together.
We both wanted that--and we both knew that it was horribly difficult.
The greatest thing about him is that he knew my side of the difficulty
so extraordinarily well. Isn't that rather rare?"
"To his mind you were a great woman. He called you so to me. That
accounts for it."
"How difficult it all is! The more the thing is worth while, the more
difficult! Well, we were to try--to be married and go to Africa and try.
Leonard didn't press marriage on me, but he admitted that he'd prefer
it--for a particular reason that I'll tell you about presently. And I
agreed; but neither of us made a great thing of that. Marriage may be a
great thing, but I can't think that marrying just to mend matters is
anything very great and sacred, can you? And that was all ours would
have come to, of course. It would have been by way of apology."
She had a remorseless mind--most remorseless for herself and her
motives. Yet a man might be a bit puzzled how to meet her reasoning.
"We're getting into the sphere of those opinions," I said. "We shall be
up against Alison and Mrs. Jepps in a moment!"
"I know, and I'm only trying to tell you what happened--how we felt
about the thing. And then--we needn't have troubled! A gay young
gentleman, a little merry with wine--a lady in a cafe--a hot-tempered
man particularly jealous to exact respect for her--what a simple,
obvious, silly way to bring everything to dust!"
"You said you were happy at last."
"Our fight was done; our love was perfect. Oh, but we managed a quarrel;
I wanted to die, too, and that made him terribly angry." She
laughed--and the tears rolled down her cheeks. "Dear, dear Leonard--he
said that, if he'd known I should talk such nonsense, he'd have thrown
the Frenchman into the Loire and had no more trouble about it. So he
died--his crossness with me just over!"
"Well over, I think," I said gently.
"He gave just one turn of his great great body, laid his head on my
breast, swore at a fly that settled on his nose--oh, Austin!--and went
to sleep there like a little child. It was above two hours before I
could bear to call anybody. Then--they took him away."
After a long pause, which I had no inclination to break, she went on: "I
daresay you wonder why I came back here?"
"I thought you'd come back. Things never seem irremediable to you; you
never like to let go finally."
"That's true, I suppose. But I've a more special reason than that.
Leonard left me a legacy--that brings me here--but don't let's talk
about that for a minute. Is it true that Bertram Ware talks about
selling Oxley. Mr. Cartmell said something about it in one of his
letters."
"He's understood to be open to a good offer, I fancy."
"Then we'll make him one."
"You're at work already!"
"A pretty place and a nice little estate--just between Fillingford Manor
and Overington!" Was the inherited liking for "driving wedges" still in
force? She had lost Fillingford Manor, but Oxley Lodge would make a
useful wedge. "I wonder if there's any chance of that new man at
Hingston selling! I don't want the house, but those farms round Hilton
Heath would round us off nicely."
"Buy the county and the town! Isn't that what you want?"
"I don't want one single thing, Austin--for myself. But I have a little
plan in my head. Well, I must do something with my life, mustn't I--and
with all this money?"
"Build the Institute!"
"I really think I shall be able to manage that. Mr. Bindlecombe's my
friend still?"
"He has plucked up courage--under the influence of Lady Aspenick."
"Ah, yes," said Jenny, "I must try not to lose Lady Aspenick." She
looked thoughtful. "Yes, I must try." She seemed to anticipate some
difficulty.
Her plan of campaign was indicated, if not revealed. She had come back;
she was going to try to "get back." What had happened was to make a
difference only just where, and in so far as, she herself decided that
it must. About that she had not been explicit, but it was evidently a
great point with her--a thing which profoundly affected her inner life.
But her outer life was not to be affected--her external position was not
in the end to suffer. And this ambition, this plan, was somehow
connected with her "legacy" from Leonard Octon.
Suddenly she spoke again. "When a mask is on, you can't see the face. I
shall wear a mask--don't judge my face by it. I've taken it off for you
to-day. I have given you the means of judging. But I shall wear it day
by day--against everybody; even against you generally, I expect, though
I may sometimes lift a corner up for you."
What had I seen while the mask was off? A woman profoundly humiliated in
herself but resolute not to accept outward humiliation? It was hardly
that, though that had an element of applicability in it. A woman
ready--even determined--to pay a great penalty for what she had done,
but resolved to evade or to defy the obvious and usual penalties? There
was truth in that, too. But more remained. It seemed as though, with the
hurricane of which she spoke, there had come an earthquake. It had left
her alive, and in touch with life; life was not done. But it was
different--forever and irrevocably different. Her relations to life had
all been shifted. That was the great penalty she accepted--and she was
prepared to accept its executions, its working-out, seeing in that,
apparently, the logically proper, the inevitable outcome of her act. The
obvious penalties were not to her mind inevitable; she would admit that
they were conventionally proper--but that admission left her free to
avoid them if she could. The outward punishment she would dodge; before
the inward she would bow her head. And the sphere of the penalty must be
the same as the sphere of the offense. Her intellect had not offended,
and that was left free to work, to expatiate, to enjoy. On her heart
fell the blows, as from her heart had come the crime. There it was that
the shifting of relations, the change of position, the transformation of
feelings, had their place.
An intelligible attitude--but a proud, indeed a very arrogant, one. Only
Jenny should punish Jenny--that was pretty well what it said. She
herself had decreed her penalty. It might be adequate--perhaps she alone
could know the truth of that--but it was open to the objection that it
was quite unauthorized. Neither in what it included nor in what it
excluded did it conform to any code of religious or social obligation.
It was Jenny's sentence on Jenny--and Jenny proposed to carry it out.
Centralization of power seemed to shake hands with anarchy.
Jenny's mood grew lighter on her last words. "To-night we'll send a
paragraph to the Catsford paper to announce my return," she said,
smiling. "I'm not skulking back!"
"It will occasion interest and surprise."
"It's not the only surprise I've got for them," laughed Jenny. Then,
suddenly, she held up her hand for silence. From the terrace outside the
window I heard a merry sweet-toned laugh. Jenny rose and went to the
window, and I followed her.
Old Chat was on the terrace, and beside her stood a girl, not tall, very
slender. Her arm was through Chat's, her back toward us, her face in
profile as she turned to talk--and she was talking briskly and in
excited interest--to her companion. The profile was small, regular,
refined; I could not see the eyes; the hair was a golden brown, very
plentiful.
"Who's that pretty girl?" I cried.
Jenny copied the attitude of the pair on the terrace; she put her arm
through mine and said with a laugh, "She is pretty, then?" The laugh
sounded triumphant. "Why, as pretty a little thing as a man could find
in a lifetime!" I cried in honest enthusiasm.
"Oh, come, you're not such a hopeless old bachelor after all," said
Jenny. "Not that I in the least want you to fall in love with her--not
you, Austin."
"I think I am--half!"
"Keep just the other half for me. Half's as much as I want, you know."
Her voice sounded sad again, yet whimsically sad. "But I do want that
from you, I think." She pressed my arm; then, waiting for no answer, she
went on gayly, "I think I shall surprise Catsford with that!"
"She's going to pay you a visit?" I asked.
"She's going to live here," Jenny answered. "That's my legacy, Austin."
I smote my free arm against my thigh. "By Heaven, the girl on the
mantelpiece at Hatcham Ford!" I cried.
At the moment the girl on the terrace turned round, saw us, and waved
her hand merrily to Jenny. Certainly the prettiest little creature you
ever saw--in the small, dainty, delicate, roguishly appealing way: and
most indubitably the original of that picture which I had seen at
Hatcham Ford, which vanished on the night when Octon went forth
alone--little thinking that Jenny would follow him.
I turned from her to Jenny in astonishment. "But I'd made up my mind
that it was his wife."
"I'm glad he told you he was married. He told you the dreadful thing
about it, too, didn't he? It wasn't a thing one could talk about--he'd
never have allowed that for a minute--but I wish everybody could have
known. It seems a sort of excuse for what they all quarreled with in
him. He'd been made to feel the world his enemy when he was young; that
must tell on a man, mustn't it?"
"This is a daughter? He never said anything about a daughter."
"Well, I suppose you didn't happen to get on that--and you didn't ask. A
woman would have asked, of course, whether there were any children--and
how old they were, and what was the color of their hair."
"Upon my soul, it never occurred to me!"
"It wouldn't," she remarked, smiling. "But this is Margaret."
"Where's she been all the while?"
"Oh, only at school--there's no mystery. He was only at Hatcham Ford
four years--just her school years. He didn't bring her there in the
holidays, because that would have meant a chaperon--he couldn't have
looked after a girl--and he hated the idea of that. And I think he was
afraid, too, that the people wouldn't be nice to her. He was very
sensitive for her, though he wasn't at all for himself." She paused a
moment. "Does that explain anything else I've said?"
I thought, for a moment, over our talk. "About the marriage?"
"Yes," said Jenny. "It didn't seem fair to her without that. That
weighed with him more than anything else--and with me, too, a good deal.
I don't think I need be ashamed of that."
"Certainly you needn't--quite the contrary in fact."
"We should have wanted her to be with us--to pay us visits anyhow--at
least until she married. Yes, it wouldn't have been just." She frowned
impatiently; still more than anything else, Margaret Octon seemed to
bring home to her the difficult side--the side most hard to defend--of
what she had done and contemplated. She passed away from it without more
words.
"When he was dying he gave her to me. That put an end to the quarrel I
told you about. It gave me back some of him and gave me something to
live for. 'I know you'll do the handsome thing by her, Jenny,' he said.
I mean to try, Austin."
"I'm sure you do, but"--I could not help blurting it out--"won't her
being here make matters worse?"
"Worse or better, better or worse, here she's going to be," said Jenny.
"She's been with me nearly a year already. She's one of the two things
he's left behind him--to stay with me."
I did not ask what the other thing was.
"Is she to bear his name?"
"Of course she is. She's my friend and ward--and Leonard Octon's
daughter."
"Rather a pill for Catsford! Dear me, what a pretty little thing it is!"
"I'm very glad she's like that. It makes so much more possible. This is
a good gift that Leonard has left me. She's my joy--you must be my
consolation. I can't give you anything in return, but there's something
I can give her--and I'll give it full measure, for Leonard's sake." She
laughed, rather reluctantly, squeezing my arm again. "Oh, yes, and I'm
afraid a little bit because Jenny Driver still likes her own way! And,
above all, her own way with Catsford! Shall we see if she can get it?"