The Great Miss Driver by Antonio Hope

Alison lost little time in making his promised attack on Jenny; he was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet. It might be improper to say that he chose the wrong moment -- for no moment could be wrong from his point of view, and the one most wrong from a worldly aspect might well be to his mind the supremely right. Yet according to that purely worldly standpoint the time was unfortunate. Jenny had a great many other things to think of -- very pressing things: as to many of us, so to her, her religious position perhaps seemed a matter which could wait. Moreover -- by a whimsical chance -- the Rector ran up against another difficulty: to Jenny it was a refuge, of which she availed herself with her usual dexterity. When one attack pressed her, I am convinced that she absolutely welcomed the advent of another from the opposite direction. Between the two she might slip out unhurt; at any rate, if one assailant called on her to surrender, she could bid him deal with the other first. The analogy is not exact -- but there was a family likeness between her balancing of Fillingford against Octon and the way in which, assailed by Alison, she interposed, as a shield, the views urged on her by Mrs. Jepps. Displayed in a less serious campaign -- less serious, I mean, to Jenny's thinking -- yet it was, in essence, the same strategy -- and it was a strategy pretty to watch. Be it remarked that Jenny was busy keeping friends with everybody during these anxious weeks.

Mrs. Jepps -- if I have said it before, it will bear repetition -- was a power in Catsford, in the town itself. She might be said to lead the distinctively town society. Age, wealth, character, and a certain incisiveness of speech combined to strengthen her position. She was a small old lady, with plentiful white hair; she had been pretty -- save for a nose too big; in her old age she bore a likeness to Cardinal Newman, but it would never have done to tell her so -- she would as soon have been compared to the Prince of Darkness himself. For she was a most pronounced Evangelical, and her feud with Alison was open and inveterate. She disapproved profoundly of "the parish clergyman"; she called him by that title, whereas he called himself "the priest in charge"; for his "assistant priests" she would know no name but "curates." There had been an Education Question lately; the fight had waxed abnormally hot over the souls -- almost over the bodies -- of Catsford urchins, male and female, themselves somewhat impervious to the bearings of the controversy. Into deeper differences it is not necessary to go. The Rector thought her one of the best women he knew, but one of the most wrong-headed. Put man for woman -- and she exactly reciprocated his opinion; and it is hard to deny, though sad to admit, that her zeal for Jenny's spiritual awakening was stirred to greater activity by the knowledge that Alison had put his hand to the alarm. To use a homely metaphor, they were each exceedingly anxious that the awakened sleeper should get out on what was, given their point of view, the right side of the bed.