The clouds settled down over Jenny; a veil of silence obscured her.  Business letters were still exchanged through the bankers at Paris, but hers bore no postmarks; they must have arrived in Paris under cover; they came under cover to Breysgate, and thus gave no indication of her whereabouts.  She was in constant communication with Cartmell about her affairs; to me she wrote much seldomer and only on necessity; to Chat she never wrote at all.  To none of us, I believe, did she say a word about what had happened ­and she certainly said no word to Catsford.  Nor did we; her orders stood ­no excuses, no explanations, no guesses.  Thus starved of food, Catsford’s interest at last languished; they did not forget Jenny, but talk about her catastrophe and Octon’s death died down.  Nobody having anything fresh to tell or any guess to make that had not been made already, the topic grew stale.

The long wait began ­it was a wait to me, for I knew that she meant to come back in the end ­and lasted for nearly three years.  I employed an ample leisure in writing my essay on “The Future of Religious and Ethical Thought.”  It brought me some credit in the outside world ­or rather the small part of it that cares for such speculations; but indifference was the best I hoped from Catsford ­and I did not altogether achieve that.  Friendship sometimes gives a writer what I may term unnatural readers ­and not with the happiest results.  Alison continued to be kind and cordial to me, but he would not talk about my book.  Mrs. Jepps ­what business had she with such a book at all? ­shook her head over it, and over me, very solemnly, and, as I heard, was not slow to trace a connection between Jenny’s acts and my opinions.  I did the local reputation of Breysgate no good by that book, though its reception in the Press flattered my vanity considerably.

More important things happened in the neighborhood ­for three years make differences in a little society.  Old Mr. Dormer died, carrying off with him into the inaudible much agreeable anecdote; his cousin, a young man of thirty, reigned at Kingston in his stead.  Bertram Ware was no longer M.P.; the domestic dissensions, in which Jenny had once seen an opportunity for herself, had ended in his retiring at the General Election; he was said to be sulky, and to be talking of selling his place and going away.  Lacey, his majority just attained, had been put forward in his stead, and elected after a stiff fight with an eloquent stranger from London ­(Bindlecombe reserved himself till Catsford should be given a borough member!) ­I did not follow closely Lacey’s doings ­or anybody’s ­at Westminster, but he was assiduous in his social duties in the constituency.  There was no change at Fillingford Manor, save that its master looked more definitely middle-aged, and its mistress riveted on our necks the power which Jenny’s rise had threatened.  Finally, Lady Aspenick’s growing girl had grown, had “come out,” and was a personage in our society.  She was a rather pretty, tall, fair girl, great at all outdoor pursuits.  The gossips had already begun to say that she would make a capital bride for Lacey ­if only there were more money!  The little cloud which had arisen between the two households over Jenny had naturally passed away, when absence and silence removed Jenny from the arena of discussion.  None the less Lady Aspenick still used our road ­and still Fillingford Manor did not.

Such was the petty chronicle.  The Institute found no place in it.  There nothing was done; even Bindlecombe seemed no longer sanguine.  Hatcham Ford, with its windows shuttered and its gravel-path grass-grown, witnessed to a project apparently still-born, no less than it recalled the catastrophe of that last night.  When I passed by, I could not help expecting to see Octon’s great figure come out and slouch across the road ­to smoke a pipe with Mr. Powers!  He did not come, and a most respectable insurance agent now dwelt where Mr. Powers had played his unedifying game.  Nor was the Flower Show any longer part of our Breysgate programme.  Cartmell had offered the grounds, but the Committee preferred to accept a proposal from Fillingford.  For the last two years it had been held at the Manor, and was to be held there again this year ­this the third summer since Jenny left us.

Then she came back.  Her return was as sudden and as unannounced as her departure, but otherwise marked by considerably more decorum.

I was writing one morning after lunch, and had wandered to the window, to seek from the empty air an improbable inspiration.  Suddenly I saw the unparalleled spectacle of Loft running.  Loft running!  I had never associated him with running, and should about as soon have expected to see St. Paul’s Cathedral dancing a fling down Ludgate Hill.  But there he came, down the path from the Priory.  As soon as he got near me, he shouted excitedly, “She’s come back, sir, she’s come back!” Then he came to a stand outside the window, and recovered his professional demeanor at the cost of some confusion.  “I beg your pardon, sir, but Miss Driver orders me to tell you that she has just returned, and will be glad to see you in half an hour.”

“When did she come?”

“Just in, sir ­the 2.45 from London, it must be.”

“How does she look?”

“Much the same as usual, sir ­a little thinner in the face perhaps.”

I looked at Loft; he was grinning.  So, I suppose, was I.  “This is good, Loft.”

“You may say that, sir!”

“Did she come alone?”

“No, sir.  Her maid ­a Frenchwoman, I think, sir ­and a young lady.  If she’d brought twenty, she’d have found the house all ready for them.”

“I’m sure she would.  Tell her I’ll come up in half an hour.”

Her coming transformed everything for me; it seemed to put life into the place, life into the big dull house on the hill, life into my little den, life into that summer’s day.  It was the breaking of a long frost, the awakening from a stupor.  The coming that I had always believed in began to seem incredible only now, when it had happened; incredible it seemed that by just walking up the hill I could see Jenny again and hear her voice.  Absence and silence had rendered her so distant to sight or sound, so intangible and remote.  My last clear memory of her was still at Hatcham Ford ­as she asked Fillingford for the loan of his carriage, and, with “God bless you, Austin,” vanished into the night.  A man can, I suppose, get on without anyone, if he must; but he cannot always make out how he has managed to do it.

I found her sitting in her old place in the big drawing-room; she wore ­whether by purpose or not what was in effect slight mourning, a white summer frock with touches of black.  Yes, her face was a little thinner, but it had not lost its serenity.  She was less a girl, more a woman ­but not a woman prematurely aged.

“Dear Austin!” she said, as I kissed the hand she held out to me.  “You’ve waited a long while ­here I am at last!  You’ve become famous in the interval ­yes, you have.  I’ve seen your book, and I wish Leonard could have read it.  He’d have liked it.  But though you’re famous, still you waited for me!”

“I don’t think you expected me to do anything else.”

She smiled at me.  “Perhaps not.  But, do you know, I’m afraid you’ve done something else than grow famous.  Have you grown into an old bachelor?  You look rather like it.”

“I expect I have,” said I ruefully, and with an anxious gaze at my coat.  “It’s rather an old coat, isn’t it?”

“And the knees of your trousers!” pursued Jenny remorselessly.

They were atrocious ­there was no denying it.  “There’s been nobody to dress for.  I’ll order a new suit to-morrow.”

“Things begin to move directly I come back, don’t they?  Is there any news in the neighborhood?”

I told her my little budget, sketching it in as lightly as I could and with as little reference to herself.  She fastened on the news about Eunice Aspenick.

“Grown up, of course, by now, isn’t she?  And you say she’s pretty.  Very pretty?”

“Not so very, in my judgment.  Very fresh and healthy, and rather handsome.”

Jenny smiled mysteriously.  “Oh, that doesn’t matter ­if it comes to no more than that,” she said contemptuously.  She saw me smiling.  “Oh, yes, I’m scheming again!” she declared with a laugh.  “Not for myself, though.  I’ve done with schemes about myself.”

“At five-and-twenty?”

Jenny grew grave.  “Things count, not years ­or, anyhow, sooner than years.  Have I any friends left?”

She smiled again when I told her of Lady Aspenick’s faction, and how Lady Aspenick still used the road.  “Come, that’s not so bad,” was her comment, rather playfully than seriously given.  “And you ask me no questions?” she said the next moment, rather abruptly.

“No, I don’t want to ask you any questions.  I was very much grieved for him.”

She nodded.  “When I went away with him,” she said, “I burned my boats.  I wanted them burned, Austin.  I was so sick of doubts ­and of tricks and maneuvers.  Recklessness seemed fine; and everything seemed to have gone out of the world ­except me and him.  There was some business to be done and I did it ­with the surface of my mind; it made no real part of my thoughts.  There I was all hatred for what I had been doing ­yes, and horrible hatred of having been found out ­I’d better be frank about that.  I’d been tricking ­I wanted to defy.  Leonard didn’t mind defying either, did he?  That lasted a week ­ten days, perhaps.  Then the old thing came back ­the fear of him, the fear of it.  I couldn’t help it ­it’s so deep in my blood, Austin.  He told me I ought to marry him for my own sake ­for his own he was indifferent.  I think he really was.  I was terribly afraid but, as you must know from the papers, I agreed, and everything was in train when ­he died.  That was my fault partly ­but only partly.  The young man did ­make a mistake about me ­but he apologized most humbly and courteously.  But Leonard wouldn’t take it properly, and picked a quarrel with him the next evening.”

“Then it doesn’t seem to have been your fault.”

“My being ­vulnerable ­made Leonard more, even more, than usually aggressive.  That’s all.  They brought him back to me dying.  He lived only about half an hour.  We were curiously happy in that half hour ­but it was terrible afterwards.”  She fell into silence, her eyes very sorrowful.  Then she turned to me, with a gesture of her hands.  “That’s all the story ­and it’s for you alone ­because you’re Austin.”

I took her hand for a moment and pressed it.  “For me alone ­I thank you.”

“A thing like that seems to sweep across life like a hurricane, doesn’t it?  Leveling everything, destroying such a lot!”

“You’ve come back to build it all up again.”

She smiled for a moment.  “So you’ve found that out?  But I can’t build it all up.  Some things I shall never try to build again.  The track of the hurricane will always be left.”

“Time, time, time!” said I.

“Not even time.  Life’s not over ­but it’s life with a difference.  I don’t complain.  I accept that readily.  I almost welcome it.  I may cheat the world, but I won’t cheat myself.  I’m not at my old trick of having it both ways for myself, Austin.”

She was determined to see clearly herself, but admitted no obligation to allow outsiders a view.  She would not minimize the thing for herself, but was quite ready to induce the rest of the world to ignore it.  It was her affair.  To her the difference was made, over her life the hurricane had swept.

“I have no kith or kin; nobody is bound to me.  The love of my friends is free ­free to withhold, free to give.  I did it for myself, open-eyed.  There is nobody who has a right to harbor it against me.”

And she meant that there never should be?  It sounded like that.

“As a private offense against him, or her, I mean ­as a personal offense.  Of course they’ve a right to their opinions ­and with their opinions I expect I should agree.”

She would agree with the opinions, but did not feel bound to furnish material for them.  She could hardly be blamed there.  The candle and the white sheet ­in open congregation ­have fallen into such general disuse that Jenny could not be asked to revive them.  So far she might be excused ­people do not expect confessions.  But she seemed to underrate what she termed “opinions” even though, as opinions, she thought that she would agree with them.  On this subject neither Alison nor Mrs. Jepps would talk of “opinions”; they would use other words.  When she said that there was nobody who had a right to harbor the affair against her, it was easy to understand her meaning; but her meaning did not exhaust the case.  Society claims the right ­and has the power ­to harbor things against us; hence the gallows, the prisons, and decrees of social banishment.  However, this sort of talk was confidential ­between her and me only.  If society were disposed to give her the benefit of the doubt, it would be very unlike Jenny not to make the thing as easy as possible for society.  Often society has no objection to being “cheated”; it will let you shut its eyes to what you have done ­strictly on condition that you do not so much as hint that you had any right to do it.  But it was doubtful whether Jenny would find all Catsford in this accommodating temper.

“What’s your opinion?” she asked abruptly.

“If I understand you rightly, you did a serious thing; on any theory and to anybody who thinks ­never mind his precise views ­a very serious thing.  But you seem to know that well enough, and more talk about it won’t mend matters.”

“It was a wonderful time ­my time of defiance ­my time of surrender.  At least I tried to make it surrender ­and my greatest surrender was to consent not to go on defying.  While I defied, I could surrender ­because I could lose sight of everything in him.  He was big enough, Austin!  I seemed then to be putting the world ­both worlds, if you like ­quite out of sight, annihilating them for myself, saying I could get on without them if only I had Leonard ­or, rather, if only Leonard would ­would swallow me up!” She looked at me with one of her straight candid glances.  “Well, he had no objection to that.”  Her lips curved in a reluctant smile.  “You wouldn’t expect him to have, would you?  We made a plan.  We were to go to Africa ­somewhere in British East Africa ­and live there ­away from everything.  Not because of fear or anything of that sort, you know ­but because we felt we could get on better there.  I wanted to strip myself of everything that made me distinct from him ­of all I had or was, apart from him.  I knew all the time that here, at home, we should be impossible together; you know I felt that because you watched the whole thing, Austin, and must have known that only that feeling could have kept me from him.  Well, I could only try to drive out that fear of him by accepting all it meant ­by being quite natural about it ­by saying, ’I’ve an instinct that you’ll absorb me; I yield to it ­only make it easy ­give it the best chance ­don’t keep me where all sorts of things compel me to struggle against it.  Struggling isn’t a possible life; perhaps surrender is.  Let’s try.’  All this was the underlying thing ­the real thing that was going on.  On the top we were doing all sorts of interesting outside things ­he was a wonderful companion ­but this was what we were battling out all the time ­how to make it work ­how we could give our lives a chance of working together.  We both wanted that ­and we both knew that it was horribly difficult.  The greatest thing about him is that he knew my side of the difficulty so extraordinarily well.  Isn’t that rather rare?”

“To his mind you were a great woman.  He called you so to me.  That accounts for it.”

“How difficult it all is!  The more the thing is worth while, the more difficult!  Well, we were to try ­to be married and go to Africa and try.  Leonard didn’t press marriage on me, but he admitted that he’d prefer it ­for a particular reason that I’ll tell you about presently.  And I agreed; but neither of us made a great thing of that.  Marriage may be a great thing, but I can’t think that marrying just to mend matters is anything very great and sacred, can you?  And that was all ours would have come to, of course.  It would have been by way of apology.”

She had a remorseless mind ­most remorseless for herself and her motives.  Yet a man might be a bit puzzled how to meet her reasoning.

“We’re getting into the sphere of those opinions,” I said.  “We shall be up against Alison and Mrs. Jepps in a moment!”

“I know, and I’m only trying to tell you what happened ­how we felt about the thing.  And then ­we needn’t have troubled!  A gay young gentleman, a little merry with wine ­a lady in a cafe ­a hot-tempered man particularly jealous to exact respect for her ­what a simple, obvious, silly way to bring everything to dust!”

“You said you were happy at last.”

“Our fight was done; our love was perfect.  Oh, but we managed a quarrel; I wanted to die, too, and that made him terribly angry.”  She laughed ­and the tears rolled down her cheeks.  “Dear, dear Leonard ­he said that, if he’d known I should talk such nonsense, he’d have thrown the Frenchman into the Loire and had no more trouble about it.  So he died ­his crossness with me just over!”

“Well over, I think,” I said gently.

“He gave just one turn of his great great body, laid his head on my breast, swore at a fly that settled on his nose ­oh, Austin! ­and went to sleep there like a little child.  It was above two hours before I could bear to call anybody.  Then ­they took him away.”

After a long pause, which I had no inclination to break, she went on:  “I daresay you wonder why I came back here?”

“I thought you’d come back.  Things never seem irremediable to you; you never like to let go finally.”

“That’s true, I suppose.  But I’ve a more special reason than that.  Leonard left me a legacy ­that brings me here ­but don’t let’s talk about that for a minute.  Is it true that Bertram Ware talks about selling Oxley.  Mr. Cartmell said something about it in one of his letters.”

“He’s understood to be open to a good offer, I fancy.”

“Then we’ll make him one.”

“You’re at work already!”

“A pretty place and a nice little estate ­just between Fillingford Manor and Overington!” Was the inherited liking for “driving wedges” still in force?  She had lost Fillingford Manor, but Oxley Lodge would make a useful wedge.  “I wonder if there’s any chance of that new man at Hingston selling!  I don’t want the house, but those farms round Hilton Heath would round us off nicely.”

“Buy the county and the town!  Isn’t that what you want?”

“I don’t want one single thing, Austin ­for myself.  But I have a little plan in my head.  Well, I must do something with my life, mustn’t I ­and with all this money?”

“Build the Institute!”

“I really think I shall be able to manage that.  Mr. Bindlecombe’s my friend still?”

“He has plucked up courage ­under the influence of Lady Aspenick.”

“Ah, yes,” said Jenny, “I must try not to lose Lady Aspenick.”  She looked thoughtful.  “Yes, I must try.”  She seemed to anticipate some difficulty.

Her plan of campaign was indicated, if not revealed.  She had come back; she was going to try to “get back.”  What had happened was to make a difference only just where, and in so far as, she herself decided that it must.  About that she had not been explicit, but it was evidently a great point with her ­a thing which profoundly affected her inner life.  But her outer life was not to be affected ­her external position was not in the end to suffer.  And this ambition, this plan, was somehow connected with her “legacy” from Leonard Octon.

Suddenly she spoke again.  “When a mask is on, you can’t see the face.  I shall wear a mask ­don’t judge my face by it.  I’ve taken it off for you to-day.  I have given you the means of judging.  But I shall wear it day by day ­against everybody; even against you generally, I expect, though I may sometimes lift a corner up for you.”

What had I seen while the mask was off?  A woman profoundly humiliated in herself but resolute not to accept outward humiliation?  It was hardly that, though that had an element of applicability in it.  A woman ready ­even determined ­to pay a great penalty for what she had done, but resolved to evade or to defy the obvious and usual penalties?  There was truth in that, too.  But more remained.  It seemed as though, with the hurricane of which she spoke, there had come an earthquake.  It had left her alive, and in touch with life; life was not done.  But it was different ­forever and irrevocably different.  Her relations to life had all been shifted.  That was the great penalty she accepted ­and she was prepared to accept its executions, its working-out, seeing in that, apparently, the logically proper, the inevitable outcome of her act.  The obvious penalties were not to her mind inevitable; she would admit that they were conventionally proper ­but that admission left her free to avoid them if she could.  The outward punishment she would dodge; before the inward she would bow her head.  And the sphere of the penalty must be the same as the sphere of the offense.  Her intellect had not offended, and that was left free to work, to expatiate, to enjoy.  On her heart fell the blows, as from her heart had come the crime.  There it was that the shifting of relations, the change of position, the transformation of feelings, had their place.

An intelligible attitude ­but a proud, indeed a very arrogant, one.  Only Jenny should punish Jenny ­that was pretty well what it said.  She herself had decreed her penalty.  It might be adequate ­perhaps she alone could know the truth of that ­but it was open to the objection that it was quite unauthorized.  Neither in what it included nor in what it excluded did it conform to any code of religious or social obligation.  It was Jenny’s sentence on Jenny ­and Jenny proposed to carry it out.  Centralization of power seemed to shake hands with anarchy.

Jenny’s mood grew lighter on her last words.  “To-night we’ll send a paragraph to the Catsford paper to announce my return,” she said, smiling.  “I’m not skulking back!”

“It will occasion interest and surprise.”

“It’s not the only surprise I’ve got for them,” laughed Jenny.  Then, suddenly, she held up her hand for silence.  From the terrace outside the window I heard a merry sweet-toned laugh.  Jenny rose and went to the window, and I followed her.

Old Chat was on the terrace, and beside her stood a girl, not tall, very slender.  Her arm was through Chat’s, her back toward us, her face in profile as she turned to talk ­and she was talking briskly and in excited interest ­to her companion.  The profile was small, regular, refined; I could not see the eyes; the hair was a golden brown, very plentiful.

“Who’s that pretty girl?” I cried.

Jenny copied the attitude of the pair on the terrace; she put her arm through mine and said with a laugh, “She is pretty, then?” The laugh sounded triumphant.  “Why, as pretty a little thing as a man could find in a lifetime!” I cried in honest enthusiasm.

“Oh, come, you’re not such a hopeless old bachelor after all,” said Jenny.  “Not that I in the least want you to fall in love with her ­not you, Austin.”

“I think I am ­half!”

“Keep just the other half for me.  Half’s as much as I want, you know.”  Her voice sounded sad again, yet whimsically sad.  “But I do want that from you, I think.”  She pressed my arm; then, waiting for no answer, she went on gayly, “I think I shall surprise Catsford with that!”

“She’s going to pay you a visit?” I asked.

“She’s going to live here,” Jenny answered.  “That’s my legacy, Austin.”

I smote my free arm against my thigh.  “By Heaven, the girl on the mantelpiece at Hatcham Ford!” I cried.

At the moment the girl on the terrace turned round, saw us, and waved her hand merrily to Jenny.  Certainly the prettiest little creature you ever saw ­in the small, dainty, delicate, roguishly appealing way:  and most indubitably the original of that picture which I had seen at Hatcham Ford, which vanished on the night when Octon went forth alone ­little thinking that Jenny would follow him.

I turned from her to Jenny in astonishment.  “But I’d made up my mind that it was his wife.”

“I’m glad he told you he was married.  He told you the dreadful thing about it, too, didn’t he?  It wasn’t a thing one could talk about ­he’d never have allowed that for a minute ­but I wish everybody could have known.  It seems a sort of excuse for what they all quarreled with in him.  He’d been made to feel the world his enemy when he was young; that must tell on a man, mustn’t it?”

“This is a daughter?  He never said anything about a daughter.”

“Well, I suppose you didn’t happen to get on that ­and you didn’t ask.  A woman would have asked, of course, whether there were any children ­and how old they were, and what was the color of their hair.”

“Upon my soul, it never occurred to me!”

“It wouldn’t,” she remarked, smiling.  “But this is Margaret.”

“Where’s she been all the while?”

“Oh, only at school ­there’s no mystery.  He was only at Hatcham Ford four years ­just her school years.  He didn’t bring her there in the holidays, because that would have meant a chaperon ­he couldn’t have looked after a girl ­and he hated the idea of that.  And I think he was afraid, too, that the people wouldn’t be nice to her.  He was very sensitive for her, though he wasn’t at all for himself.”  She paused a moment.  “Does that explain anything else I’ve said?”

I thought, for a moment, over our talk.  “About the marriage?”

“Yes,” said Jenny.  “It didn’t seem fair to her without that.  That weighed with him more than anything else ­and with me, too, a good deal.  I don’t think I need be ashamed of that.”

“Certainly you needn’t ­quite the contrary in fact.”

“We should have wanted her to be with us ­to pay us visits anyhow ­at least until she married.  Yes, it wouldn’t have been just.”  She frowned impatiently; still more than anything else, Margaret Octon seemed to bring home to her the difficult side ­the side most hard to defend ­of what she had done and contemplated.  She passed away from it without more words.

“When he was dying he gave her to me.  That put an end to the quarrel I told you about.  It gave me back some of him and gave me something to live for.  ‘I know you’ll do the handsome thing by her, Jenny,’ he said.  I mean to try, Austin.”

“I’m sure you do, but” ­I could not help blurting it out ­“won’t her being here make matters worse?”

“Worse or better, better or worse, here she’s going to be,” said Jenny.  “She’s been with me nearly a year already.  She’s one of the two things he’s left behind him ­to stay with me.”

I did not ask what the other thing was.

“Is she to bear his name?”

“Of course she is.  She’s my friend and ward ­and Leonard Octon’s daughter.”

“Rather a pill for Catsford!  Dear me, what a pretty little thing it is!”

“I’m very glad she’s like that.  It makes so much more possible.  This is a good gift that Leonard has left me.  She’s my joy ­you must be my consolation.  I can’t give you anything in return, but there’s something I can give her ­and I’ll give it full measure, for Leonard’s sake.”  She laughed, rather reluctantly, squeezing my arm again.  “Oh, yes, and I’m afraid a little bit because Jenny Driver still likes her own way!  And, above all, her own way with Catsford!  Shall we see if she can get it?”