The Great Miss Driver. Hope Anthony
Her joy in the sense in which we creatures – and the wisest among us long ago – come nearest to being able to understand and define the innermost engine or instinct whose working is most truly ourselves – the temptation to live and life itself which pair nature has so cunningly coupled together. Effective activity – the reaching out to make of external things and people (especially, perhaps, things and people that obstinately resist) part of our own domain – their currency coinage of ours, with the stamp of our mint, bearing our superscription – causing the writ of our issuing to run where it did not run before – is not this, however ill-expressed (and bigger men than I have failed, and will fail, fully to express it), something like what the human spirit attempts? Or is there, too, a true gospel of drawing in – of renouncing? In the essential, mind you! – It is easy in trifles, in indulgences and luxuries. But to surrender the exercise and expansion of self?
If that be right, if that be true – at any rate it was not Jenny Driver. She was a strong, natural-born swimmer, cast now for the first time into open sea – after the duck ponds of her Smalls and her Simpsons. It was not the smooth waters which tested, tried, or in innermost truth delighted her most.
All this in a very tiny corner? Of course. Will you find me anywhere that is not a corner, please? Alexander worked in one, and Cæsar. "What does it matter then what I do?" "No more," I must answer, being no philosopher and therefore unprepared with a theory, "than it matters whether or not you are squashed under yonder train. But if you think – on your own account – that the one matters, why, for all we can say, perhaps the other does."
That duck pond of the Simpsons'! By apparent chance – it may be, in fact, by some unusual receptivity in my own bearing – that very day Chat talked to me about it. I had grown friendlier toward Chat, having perceived that the cunning in her – (it was there, and refuted Cartmell's charge of mere foolishness) – ran to no more than a decent selfishness, informed by years of study of Jenny, deflected by a spinsterish admiration of Octon's claim to unquestioned male dominion. Her reason said – "We are very well as we are. I am comfortable. I am 'putting by.' Jenny's marriage might make things worse." The spinster added, "But this must end some day. Let it end – when it must – in an irresistible (perhaps to Chat's imagination a rather lurid) conquest." Paradoxically her instinct (for if anything be an instinct, selfishness is) squared with what I had deciphered of Jenny's strategy – in immediate action at least. Chat would not have Octon shown the door; neither would she set him at the head of the table – just yet. Being comfortable, she abhorred all chance of convulsions – as Jenny, being powerful, resented all threat of dominion. But if the convulsion must come – as it must some day – Chat wanted it dramatic – matter for gossip and for flutters! To her taste Octon fulfilled that æsthetic requirement.
Naturally Chat saw Jenny at the Simpsons' from her own point of view – through herself – and by that avenue approached the topic.
"Of course things are very much changed for the better in most ways, Mr. Austin – if they'll only last. The comforts! – And, of course, the salary! Well, it's not the thing to talk about that. Still I daresay you yourself sometimes think – ? Yes, of course, one must consider it. But there were features of the rectory life which I confess I miss. We had always a very cheerful tea, and supper, too, was sociable. In fact one never wanted for a chat. Here I'm thrown very much on my own resources. Jenny is out or busy, and Mrs. Bennet – the housekeeper, you know – is reserved and, of course, not at her ease with me. And then there was the authority!" (Was Chat also among the Cæsars?) "Poor Chat had a great deal of authority at the rectory, Mr. Austin – yes – she had! Mrs. Simpson an invalid – the rector busy or not caring to meddle – the girls were left entirely to me. My word was law." She shook her head regretfully over the change in her position.
"We all like that, Miss Chatters, when we can get it!"
"Jenny, of course, was different – and that made it difficult sometimes. Besides being the eldest, she was very well paid for and, although not pampered and, I must say, considering all things as I now know them, very ill-supplied with pocket money, there were orders that she should ride every day. Two horses and the hostler from the Bull every day – except Sundays! It couldn't but make a difference, especially with a girl of Jenny's disposition – not altogether an easy one, Mr. Austin. It had to be give-and-take between us. If she obeyed me, there were many little things I could do – having, as I say, the authority. If she would do her lessons well – and her example had great influence on the others – I didn't trouble to see what books she had in her bedroom (with the other girls I did), nor even ask questions if she stayed out a little late for supper. Of course we had to be very much on our guard; it didn't do to make the Simpson girls jealous."
"You had a little secret understanding between yourselves?"
"Never, Mr. Austin! I wouldn't have done such a thing with any of my pupils. It would be subversive of discipline."
"Of course it would; I beg your pardon." (Here a little "homage to virtue" on both our parts!)
"She knew how far she could go; she knew when I must say 'Stop!' She never put me to it – though I must say she went very near the line sometimes. She came to us very raw, too, with really no idea of what was ladylike. What those Smalls can have been like! You see what she is now. I don't think I did so badly."
I saw what she was now – or some of it. And I seemed to see it all growing up in that country rectory – the raw girl from the Smalls (those deplorable Smalls!) at Cheltenham, learning her youthful lessons in diplomacy – how far one can go, where one must stop, how keen a bargain can be struck with Authority. Chat had been Authority then. There was another now. Yet where the difference in principle?
"I can't have managed so very badly, because they were all broken-hearted to lose me – I often think how they can be getting on! – and here I am with Jenny! Well, poor Chat would have had to go soon, anyhow. They were all growing up. That time comes. It must be so in my profession, Mr. Austin. Indispensable to-day, to-morrow you're not wanted!"
"That sounds sad. You must be glad, in the end, that you didn't stay?"
"It'll be the same here some day. For all you or I know, it might be to-morrow. The only thing is to suit as long as we can, and to put by a little."
I vowed – within my breast – that henceforth Chat's little foibles – or defenses? – her time-serving, her cowardice, her flutters, her judgment of Jenny's concerns from a point of view not primarily Jenny's, her encroachments on the port and other stolen (probably transient!) luxuries – all these should meet with gentle and sympathetic appraisement. She was only trying to "suit" – and meanwhile to put by a little. But I was not sure what she had done, or helped to do, to Jenny, nor that her ex-pupil's best course would not lie in presenting her with her congé and a substantial annuity.
An invitation came from Fillingford in which Chat and I were courteously included. Jenny, however, found work for poor Chat at home (alas, for the days of Authority!) and made me drive her over in the dog-cart. As we drove in at the gates, she asked suddenly, "How am I to behave?"
"Don't look at anything as if you wanted to buy it," was the best impromptu advice I could hit on.
"I might do it tactfully! Don't you remember what my father said? – 'You may succeed in your way better than I in mine.'"
"I remember. And you think he referred to tact?"
Jenny took so long to answer that there was no time to answer at all; we were at the door, and young Lacey was waiting.
The house was beautiful and stately; I think that Jenny was surprised to find that it was also in decent repair. There was nothing ragged, nothing poverty-stricken; a grave and moderate handsomeness marked all the equipment. The fall in fortune was rather to be inferred from what was absent than rudely shown in the present condition of affairs. Thus the dining-room was called the Vandyke Room – but there were no Vandykes; a charming little boudoir was called the Madonna Parlor – but the Madonna had taken flight, probably a long flight across the Atlantic. In giving us the names Lord Fillingford made no reference to their being no longer applicable – he seemed to use them in mechanical habit, forgetful of their significance – and Jenny, mindful perhaps of the spirit of my warning, refrained from questions. But