The Great Miss Driver Part 51

"It's a very considerable fortune. As I have said, Miss Driver regards Margaret Octon as in the place of her own daughter. Miss Driver thought it only right that these circ.u.mstances should be placed before you as possibly bearing on the decision you felt it your duty to make yourself, or to recommend to your son."

"Why does she do it?" he asked abruptly.

"I've just given you the reason which I was directed to give. I wasn't commissioned to give any other. She regards Miss Octon in the light of an only child--the natural object of her bounty and, in due course of time, her natural successor."

"We met once at Hatcham Ford, Mr. Austin," he said abruptly. "You remember? I think you knew pretty well the state of things then existing between Miss Driver and myself? I've charged you with possessing that knowledge before. That piece of knowledge may enable you to understand how the present proposition affects me. This isn't all love for Margaret Octon."

"No, not all love for Margaret. But now you're asking me for my opinion, not for my message."

"I didn't mean it as a question. But I see that you agree with me. Then you may understand that I can feel no grat.i.tude for this offer. It--and consequently the arrangement of which it is a part--would transform everything here. It would accomplish the task which I haven't even had the courage to try to accomplish. It would blot out my great failure.

But, coming whence it does and why it does, I can feel no grat.i.tude for it."

"It would be very far from Miss Driver's thoughts to expect anything of the kind."

Suddenly he pushed back his chair, rose to his feet, and went to the window, impatiently letting one of the ugly brown blinds fly up to the ceiling by a tug at its cord. He stood there two or three minutes. His back was still toward me when he spoke again.

"I've been a steward more than an owner--a caretaker, I should rather say. This would make my son and his son after him owners again. It's the restoration of our house." His voice sank a little. "And it would come through her and Leonard Octon!" Silence came again for a while; then he turned round and faced me. "I've no right to decide this question. She has taken the decision out of my hand by this. I have memories, resentments, what I think to be wrongs and humiliations. Perhaps I have cause for thinking so."

"I wasn't sent here to deny that, Lord Fillingford. If that hadn't been so, not I should have been here, but she who sent me."

"And so," he went on slowly, "I'm no judge. I should sin against my conscience if I were to judge. The question is not for me--let her go to Amyas himself."

I was glad at heart--we had escaped bullying; only in one moment of temper had I hinted at it, and that moment seemed now far away. It was easy to see the defects of this man, and easier still to feel them as a vaguely chilling influence. His virtues were harder to see and to appreciate--his justice, his candor of mind, his rect.i.tude, the humility beneath his pride.

"Lord Lacey attaches enormous importance to your opinion. I know that as well as you do. Can't you go a little further?"

"I thought I had gone about as far as could be expected."

"Not quite. Won't you tell your son what you would do if you were in his place?"

"I think you'd better not ask me to do that. I'm less sure of what I should do than I am of what he will do. What he'll do will, I think, content you--I might think too much of who his father is, and of who her father was, and from whose hand these splendid benefits come. I think I'd better not advise Amyas."

"But you'll accept his decision? You'll not dissuade him?"

"I daren't dissuade him," he answered briefly and turned his back on me again. He added in a tone that at least strove to be lighter, "My grandchildren might rise up and call me cursed! But if she looks for thanks--not from this generation!"

For the first time--though I sacrifice finally my character for morality by that confession--I was genuinely, in my heart and not in my pretenses or professions, inclined to regret the night at Hatcham Ford--the discovery and the flight. All said, he was a man. After much conflict they might have come together. If she had known then that it was man against man--not man against name, t.i.tle, position, respectability--why, the case might have seemed changed, the issue have been different. But he was so seldom able to show what he was. He had no spontaneous power of expressing himself; the revelation had to be wrung out by force--_peine forte et dure_; he had to be pressed almost to death before he would plead for himself, for his case, for what he felt deep down within him. All that was too late to think about--unless some day, in the future, it might avail to make them decently friendly--avail against the deep wound to pride on one side, against the obstinate champions.h.i.+p of the dead on the other.

But to-day he had opened himself frankly enough to absolve me from formalities.

"Grat.i.tude isn't asked. I imagine that the proper forms would be."

He turned to me very quickly. "I'm on terms of acquaintance with a lady, or I'm not. If I am, I hope that I omit no courtesy."

"Nor give it grudgingly?"

"She told you to say that?"

"No--nor some other things I've said. But I know how she'd take any paring down of what is requisite." I ventured a smile at him. "You would have to call, I think, to-morrow." I let that sink in. "And Lady Sarah a few days afterwards."

He gave a short laugh. "You're speaking of matters of course, if this thing is decided as it looks like being."

I got up from my chair. "I go back with the promise of your neutrality?"

I asked.

"Neutrality is surrender," he said.

"Yes, I think so. Young blood is in the question. Besides--as you see yourself--the prospect may to a young man seem--rather dazzling."

"Let me alone, Mr. Austin, let me alone, for G.o.d's sake!"

"I go the moment you wish me to, Lord Fillingford. I carry my answer with me--isn't it so?"

Wonderfully recovering himself--with the most rapid transition to an orderly self-composure--he came and sat down at his table again.

"I shall see my son on this matter directly after lunch. It will be proper to convey immediate news of our decision to Breysgate Priory. I shouldn't like--in the event we both contemplate--to appear tardy in paying my respects to Miss Driver. At what hour to-morrow afternoon do you suppose that it would be convenient to her to receive me?"

"I should think that about four o'clock would be quite convenient," I answered.

With that, I rose to my feet--my mission was ended. Neither quite as we had hoped, nor quite as we had feared. We had not bullied--we had hardly threatened. If we had bribed, we had not bribed the man himself. He--he himself--would have had none of us; for him--himself--the betrayal at Hatcham Ford governed the situation and his feelings about it. But he saw himself as a trustee--a trustee for unborn generations of men, born to inherit--yet, as things stood, born more than half disinherited!

There was no telling what Jenny thought of. Very likely she had thought of that, when she made her bribe no mere provision--nor even merely that "handsome thing"--but the new bestowal of a lost ancestral heritage.

Amid profound incompatibilities, they both had broad views, long outlooks--a large conception of the bearings of what men do. Jenny had not been so wrong in thinking of him--nor he in thinking that he could take her with what she brought. Powerfully had Octon, in his rude irresistible natural force, and its natural appeal, broken the current, real if subtle, between them.

I went up to him, holding out my hand. We had won the victory; I did not feel very triumphant.

"Mr. Austin," he said, as he shook hands, "we make a mistake if we expect not to have done to us as we do to others, I learn that as I grow older. Do you understand what I'm at, when I say this?"

"Not very well, I confess, Lord Fillingford."

"Once I went to Miss Driver, holding what I have--my old name, my old place, my position, my t.i.tle--I can't think of anything they've given me except care and a hopeless sense of my own inadequacy--holding those in my hand and asking for her money. I see now the opposite thing--she comes holding the money, and asks for what I have. I didn't have my way.

She'll have hers."

"There are the young people." It was all I had to say.

"Ask her to leave me a little of my son. Because there's no doubt.

You've taken away all my weapons, Mr. Austin."

"I wish you'd had this conversation with her--you two together."

He relapsed into his formal propriety of demeanor. "I shall, I trust, give Miss Driver no reason to complain of any want of courtesy--if Amyas persists."

"You've accepted it that he will."

"Yes--that's truth," he said. "I may be expected at Breysgate to-morrow at four."

"Then try to make it happy!"

He gave me a slow pondering look. "There is much between me and her--not all against her nor for me. I've come to see that. I'll do my best, Mr.

Austin."