Elopement -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Private secretaries -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
She led me into the room where once I had waited for her--where, another
time, I had found her holding Powers's head, where Fillingford had come
upon us in the very instant when I had hailed safety as in sight. The
room was just as Octon had left it--his heavy dining table, his ugly
dining chairs, the two old leather ones on each side of the fireplace,
his spears and knives on the wall. And there, too, on the mantelpiece,
was the picture of the beautiful child which I had marked as missing
when I reached the house that night.
"You've been here before," I said to Jenny, pointing at the picture.
"I found it among his papers after he was at peace," she answered,
sitting down in one of the old leather chairs. "I knew this was its
place; it has returned to it. And there it will stay, so long as I or
Margaret have a voice here. Yes, I have been here before--and I shall be
here often. This is to be my room--sacred to me. From here I shall pull
the wires!" She smiled at me in a humorous sadness.
"Not the wires of memory too often!" I suggested.
"Two men have made me and my life--made me what I am and my life what it
is and is to be. Here--in this place--they meet. This room is
Leonard's--all the great thing that's coming into being outside is my
father's. They appreciated one another, you've told me--and so has
Leonard. They won't mind meeting here, Austin."
"They neither of them did justice to you!" I cried. "Was the Smalls and
the Simpsons justice? And was what he--the other--let you do justice
either?"
"I don't know--and I don't care," said Jenny. "They were both big men.
They had their work, their views, their plans, their occupations. They
had their big lives, their big selves, to look after. They couldn't
spend all the time thinking whether they were doing justice to a woman!"
"That's a nice bit of special pleading!" I said. "But there, I'm not a
great man--as both of your big men have, on occasion, plainly told me."
She smiled at me affectionately. "But one of them gave me--in the
end--all he had, and for the other I--in the end--would have given all I
had. Oh, yes, it's 'in the end' with us Drivers--because we must try to
get everything first--before we are ready to give! But in the end all
was given or ready to be given, and here they shall stay together. I
have no pedigree, Austin, and I shall have no biography. Here stand
both. At Hatcham Ford read my pedigree and my biography."
The room grew dark, but her pale face stood out against the gloom. She
rose from her chair and came up to me.
"My big ghosts are very gentle to me now--gentler than one would have
been in life, I think--gentler than the other was. You see, they're at
rest--their warfare is accomplished. I think mine's accomplished, too,
Austin, and I will rest."
"Not you! Rest indeed!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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