The Great Miss Driver. Hope Anthony
subordinates in the house itself. Jenny's taste for splendor came out. She even loved a touch of the gorgeous; old Mr. Driver's dark blue liveries assumed a decidedly brighter tint, and I heard her express regret that postilions and four horses were in these days thought ostentatious except for very great national or local potentates. "If I were a peeress, I would have them," she declared rather wistfully. If that were the condition and the only one, after all we might perhaps live to see the four horses and the postilions at Breysgate before we were many months older. By now, there was matter for much speculation about her future; the closer you were to her, the more doubtful any speculation seemed.
This was the time of her greatest glory – when she was fresh to her state and delighting in it, when all the neighborhood seemed to be at her feet, town and county vying in doing her honor – and in accepting her hospitality.
Entertainment followed entertainment; now it was the poor, now it was the rich, whom she fed and fêted. The crown of her popularity came perhaps when she declared that she would have no London house and wanted no London season. Catsford and the county were good enough for her. The Catsford Herald and Times printed an article on this subject which was almost lyrical in its anticipation of a return of the good old days when the aristocracy found their own town enough. It was headed "Catsford a Metropolis – Why not?" And it was Jenny who was to imbue the borough with this enviable metropolitan character! This was Redeunt Saturnia regna with a vengeance!
To all outward appearance she was behaving admirably – and her acquaintance with Fillingford had reached to as near intimacy as it was ever likely to get while it rested on a basis of mere neighborly friendship. Lady Sarah had been convinced or vanquished – it was impossible to say which. At any rate she had withdrawn her opposition to intercourse between the two houses and appeared to contemplate with resignation, if not with enthusiasm, a prospect of which people had now begun to talk – not always under their breath. Fillingford Manor and Breysgate were now united closely enough for folk to ask whether they were to be united more closely still. For my own part I must admit that, if Lord Fillingford were wooing, he showed few of the usual signs; but perhaps Jenny was! I remembered the story of Rabbit – without forgetting the subject of the other nickname!
Old Cartmell was a great advocate of the Fillingford alliance. House laid to house and field to field were anathema to the Prophet; for a family lawyer they have a wonderful attraction. An estate well-rounded off, spacious, secure from encroachment and, with proper capital outlay, returning three per cent. – he admires it as the rest of us a Velasquez – well, some of us – or others, a thoroughbred. Careful man as he was, he declined to be dismayed at Jenny's growing expenditure. "The income's growing, too," he said. "It grows and must grow with the borough. Old Nick Driver had a very long head! She can't help becoming richer, whatever she does – in reason." He winked at me, adding, "After all, it isn't as if she had to buy Fillingford, is it?" I did not feel quite sure that it was not – and at a high price; but to say that would have been to travel into another sphere of discussion.
"Well, I'm very glad her affairs are so flourishing. But I wish the new liveries weren't so nearly sky-blue. I hope she won't want to put you and me in them!"
Cartmell paid no heed to the liveries. He took a puff at his cigar and said, "Now – if only she'll keep straight!" That would have seemed an odd thing to say – to anyone not near her.
Yet trouble came – most awkwardly and at a most awkward moment. Octon himself was the cause of it, and I – unluckily for myself – the only independent witness of the central incident.
He had – like Jenny – been away most of the winter, but I had no reason to suppose that they had met or even been in communication; in fact, I believe that he was in London most of the time, finishing his new book and superintending the elaborate illustrations with which it was adorned. He did, however, reappear at Hatcham Ford close on the heels of Jenny's return to Breysgate, and the two resumed their old – and somewhat curious – relations. If ever it were true of two people that they could live neither with nor without one another, it seemed true of that couple. He was always seeking her, and she ever ready and eager to welcome him; yet at every other meeting at least they had a tiff – Jenny being, I must say, seldom the aggressor, at least in the presence of third persons: perhaps her offenses, such as they were, were given in private. But there was one difference which I perceived quickly, but which Octon seemed slower to notice: I hoped that he might never notice it at all, or, if he did, accept it peaceably. Jenny preferred, if it were possible, to receive him when the household party alone was present; when the era of entertaining set in, he was bidden on the off-nights. No doubt this practice admitted of being put – and perhaps was put by Jenny – in a flattering way. But it was impossible to be safe with him – there was no telling how his temper would take him. So long as he believed that Jenny herself best liked to see him intimately, all would go well; but if once he struck on the truth – that she was yielding deference to the wishes of his enemies, her neighbors – there might very probably be an explosion. "Volcano" would get active if he thought that "Rabbit" and company – Jenny had concealed neither nickname from him – were being consulted. Or he might get just a wayward whim; if his temper were out, he would make trouble for its own sake – or to see with how much he could make her put up; each was always trying the limits of his or her power over the other.
The actual occasion of his outburst was, as usual, trivial, and perhaps – far as that was from being invariably the case – afforded him some shadow of excuse. Neither did Chat help matters. He had sent up from Hatcham Ford a bunch of splendid yellow roses, and, when he came to dinner the same evening, he naturally expected to see them on the table. "Where are my roses?" he asked abruptly, when we were half-way through dinner.
"I love them – they're beautiful – but they didn't suit my frock to-night," said Jenny, smiling. She would have managed the matter all right if she had been let alone, but Chat must needs put her oar in.
"They'll look splendid on the table to-morrow night," she remarked – as though she were saying something soothing and tactful.
"Oh, you've got a dinner-party to-morrow?" he asked – still calm, but growing dangerous.
"Nobody you'd care about," Jenny assured him; she had given Chat a look which immediately produced symptoms of flutters.
"Who's coming?"
"Oh, only Lord Fillingford and Lady Sarah, the Wares, the Rector, the Aspenicks, and one or two more."
"H'm. My roses are good enough for that lot, but I'm not, eh?"
Jenny's hand was forced; Chat had undermined her position. Not even for the sake of policy did she love to do an unhandsome thing – still less to be found out in doing one. To use the roses and slight the donor would not be handsome. She knew Aspenick's objection to meeting Octon, but probably she thought that she could keep Aspenick in order.
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