Did his humility, hardly less disagreeable than his insolence, disarm her wrath? Did her mood change--or had the moment come for an artistic dissimulation? I must confess that I do not know; but suddenly she struck him playfully on the point of the chin with her glove and began to laugh. "Then, you dear silly old Powers, don't be such a fool," she said. "Don't quarrel with your bread and b.u.t.ter, and don't take so much whisky and water. Because whisky brings vapors, and then you think you're a great man, and get romancing about what you could do if you liked. I've stood a good deal from you, haven't I? I would stand a good deal for old times' sake. You know that; but is it kind to presume on it, to push me too far just because you know I like you?"

This speech I defend less than the unladylike one; I liked her better on the subject of the thrashing. But there is no denying that it was very well done. Was it wholly insincere? Perhaps not. In any event she meant to conquer Powers, and was not without reason, or precedent, in trying to see if blarney would aid threats.

He responded plausibly, summoning his mock gentlemanliness to cover his submission, and, I may add, his malice. He regretted his mistakes, he deplored misunderstanding, he avowed unlimited obligation and eternal grat.i.tude. He even ventured on hinting at the memory of a sentimental attachment. "I can take from you what I would from no other lady." (At no moment, however agitated, would Powers forget to say "lady.") The remark was accompanied by an unmistakable leer.

Even that, which I bore with difficulty, Jenny accepted graciously. She gave him her hand, saying, "I know. Now let's forget all this and work pleasantly together." She glanced at me. "And Mr. Austin, too, will forget all about our little quarrel?"

"I'm always willing to be friends with Mr. Powers, if he'll let me," I said.

"And so are all my friends, I'm sure," said Jenny.

Going out, we had a strange encounter, which stands forth vivid in memory. Jenny's brougham was waiting perhaps some thirty yards up the road toward Catsford: the coachman had got down and was smoking; it took him a moment or two to mount. In that s.p.a.ce of time, while we waited at the gate, Octon came out from Hatcham Ford and lounged across the road toward us. At the same instant a landau drove up rapidly from the other direction, going toward Catsford. In it sat Lady Sarah Lacey. She stared at Octon and cut him dead; she bowed coldly and slightly to Jenny; she inclined her head again in response to a low bow and a florid flourish of his cap from Powers. I lifted my hat, but received no response. Jenny returned the salute as carelessly as it was given, bestowed a recognition hardly more cordial on Octon, and stepped into the brougham which had now come up. As we drove off, Powers stood grinning soapily; Octon had turned on his heel again and slouched slowly back, to his own house.

Jenny threw herself into the corner of the brougham, her body well away, but her eyes on my face. For many minutes she sat like this; I turned my eyes away from her; the silence was uncomfortable and ominous. At last she spoke.

"You've guessed something, Austin?"

I turned my head to her. "I couldn't help it."

She nodded, rather wearily, then smiled at me. "The signal's at 'Danger,'" she said.

CHAPTER XII

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 impa.s.sioned 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 pa.s.sed 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 Inst.i.tute 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 f.a.gged 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 a.s.serts 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 pa.s.sing, 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 a.s.sure 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."