The Great Miss Driver Part 14

"Directly after lunch I must go down to Hatcham Ford and see Mr. Octon.

I want you to come with me."

"I? Not Miss Chatters?"

"You--not Chat. Don't be stupid," she said.

CHAPTER VIII

A SECRET TREATY

Jenny's first remark as we drove down together to Hatcham Ford seemed to have very little to do with the matter in hand. Still less to do with it, as one would think, had the fact that, just before starting, she had--I learned it afterwards--given Chat a piece of handsome old lace.

"I like your name," she remarked. "'Austin Austin'--quite a good idea of your parents'! One's only got to drop the 'Mr.' to be friendly at once.

No learning a strange Algernon, or Edward, or things of that kind!"

"Do drop it," said I.

"I have, Austin," said Jenny. She edged ever so little nearer to me, yet looked steadily out of the window on the other side of the brougham.

"I'm frightened," she added in a low voice.

"Upon my honor," said I, "I don't wonder at it."

Such was the beginning of a remarkable kindness, a gentleness, almost an appealing att.i.tude, which Jenny displayed during several weeks that followed. I must not flatter myself--Chat shared the rays of kindly suns.h.i.+ne. If I were promoted to the Christian name, Chat got the lace.

"What will you call me?" she asked. "'Miss Driver' sounds--Say 'Jenny'!"

"Before the county? Impossible!"

"Well, then, when we're alone?"

"Shall it be Lady Jenny? For ourselves?"

She sighed acquiescence. "You're a great comfort to me," she added.

"You'll come in, won't you, if you hear me scream?"

"Come in?"

"I've got to see him alone, you know." She raised her hands for an instant, as though in lamentation; "Oh, why is he like that?"

There was no treating this lightly--for one who felt for her what I did.

I was no such fool as not to see that her sudden access of graciousness had a purpose--I had to be conciliated and stroked the right way for some reason; so doubtless had Chat. But again I was, so I humbly trust, no such churl as to resent the purpose--though I did not know precisely what it was. I was her 'man,' as the old word was--her va.s.sal. If my liking or my honor refused that situation, well and good--I could end it. While it lasted, I was hers. Within me the thing went deeper still than that.

She was frightened. Therefore she was very gracious, seeking allies however humble. I declare that I have always limited my expectation of attachments entirely disinterested. Are there any? Who cherishes a friend from whom there is neither profit nor pleasure to be had? Or, at any rate, from whom neither has been had? The past obligation is often acknowledged--and acquitted--with a five-pound note.

The westering sun caught her face through the window as we entered the outskirts of Catsford; her eyes looked like a couple of new sovereigns.

"Yes, I'm frightened."

"Not you! You've courage enough for a dozen."

"Ah, I like you to say that! But I must make terms with him, you know."

She caught and pressed my hand. "But I don't believe I'm quite a coward."

All this could mean but one thing--Octon had a great hold on her; yet against him was a powerful incentive. Between the two--between his power, which was great, and the power against him whose greatness she had acknowledged to Fillingford that morning, she must patch up conditions of peace--a secret treaty. I had no idea what the terms could or would be. If Octon had the naming of them, they would not be easy.

Hatcham Ford just held its freedom against the encroaching town. No more than fifty yards from its gates was the last villa--a red-brick house of eccentric architecture but comfortable dimensions; its side windows looked toward the gate of the Ford, and on the left its garden ran up to the road on to which the shrubberies encircling the old house faced. A tall oak fence surrounded the garden--on the gate was written, in large gilt letters, "Ivydene." That house, like so many in Catsford, was on Jenny's land. I wished that Cartmell would keep a tighter hand on his builders.

Nearly swallowed by the flood of modern erections as it was, the old house still preserved its sequestered charm. The garden was hidden from the road by a close screen in front; at the back it ran gently down to the murmuring river. Within were low ceilings crossed by old beams, and oak paneling everywhere. Octon's tenancy and personality were marked by cl.u.s.ters of barbaric spears and knives, hung against the oak, burnished to a high polish, flas.h.i.+ng against their time-blackened background.

Visitors were not expected. Octon's man--a small wizened fellow of full middle age--seemed rather startled by the sight of Jenny; he hastily pushed, rather than ushered, us into the dining room, a room on the left of the doorway. In a moment or two Octon came to us. He stood in the doorway, his big frame looking immense under the low lintel which his head all but touched.

"You're not the visitors I expected," he said with a laugh. "I've stayed in, waiting for Aspenick."

"Sir John won't come," said Jenny. "But I must speak to you--alone." She turned to me. "You're sure you don't mind, Austin?"

"Of course you must see him alone. Where shall I go?"

"Stay here," he said. "We'll go next door--in the study."

He held the door for her, and she went out. I heard them enter a room next to the one in which I was; the door was shut after them. Then for a long while I heard nothing more, except the murmur of the little river, which seemed loud to my unaccustomed ears, though probably people living in the house would soon cease to notice it.

Presently I heard their voices; his was so loud that, for fear of hearing the words, I had deliberately to abstract my mind by looking at this, that, and the other thing in the room--more spears and knives on the walls, books about his subject on the shelves, a couple of fine old silver tankards gleaming on the mantelpiece. The voices died down again just as I had exhausted the interest of the tankards, and taken in my hand a miniature which stood on the top of the marble clock.

His voice fell to inaudibility; the welcome silence left me alone with the little picture. It represented a child perhaps fourteen years old--a small, delicate face, dark in complexion, touched on the cheeks with a red flush, with large dark eyes, framed in plentiful black hair which curled about the forehead. Whoever the young girl was, she was beautiful; her eyes seemed to gaze at me from some remote kingdom of childish purity; her lips laughed that I should feel awe at her eyes.

How in the world came she on Octon's mantelpiece?

Picked up somewhere for half a sovereign--as a pretty thing! That was the suggestion of common sense, in rebellion against a certain sense of over-strained nerves under which I was conscious of suffering. Yet, after all, Octon, like other men, must have kith and kin. The style of the picture was too modern for it to be his mother's. There were such things as sisters; but this did not look like Octon's stock. An old picture of a bygone sweetheart--that held the field as the likeliest explanation; well, except the one profanely offered by common sense.

Octon was, to and for me, so much a part of Jenny's life and surroundings that it was genuinely difficult to realize him as a man with other belongings or a.s.sociations; yet I could not but recognize that in all probability he had many--perhaps some apart from those which he might chance to have inherited.

Suddenly, through the wall, I heard a wail--surely I heard a little sob?

The picture was instantly forgotten. I stood intensely awake, alert, watchful. If that sound came again, I determined that I would break in on their conference. For minutes I waited, but the sound came no more. I flung myself into a chair by the fire and began to smoke. I fell into a meditation. No further sound came to break it; the murmur of the river already grew familiar.

I heard a door open; the next moment they were in the room with me.

"What a time we've kept you! Have you been very bored?" asked Jenny.

Her words and her tone were light, but her face was as I had never seen it. It was drawn with the fatigue of deep feeling: she had been struggling; if I did not err, her eyes bore signs of crying--I had never known her cry. At that moment I think I knew to the full that Octon was, for good or evil, a great thing in her life. How could it be for good?

She herself, she alone, must bear the burden of answering that question.

But he, standing behind her, wore an unmistakable air of victory. So confident was it, and so a.s.sured the whole aspect of his dominant figure, that I prepared myself to hear that the verdict of the morning was reversed and that the neighborhood--and all that meant--were to go hang. Yet his first words contradicted both my forecast and his own appearance. He spoke in a chafing tone.

"Behold in me, Austin, the Banished Duke! Never again may I tread the halls of Breysgate--at any rate, not for the present! I have offended a proud baronet--a belted earl demands my expulsion. And my liege lady banishes me!"

"Don't be so silly," said Jenny--but gently, ever so gently, and with a smile.