The Great Miss Driver

"This is my old friend Mr. Nelson Powers," said Jenny. "Mr. Powers – Mr. Austin." We bowed – neither of us cordially. The man's eyes were wary and very alert; he looked at me as though I might be a policeman in plain clothes; possibly my expression gave him some excuse.

Jenny rang the bell. "Mr. Powers is coming back to dinner. You'll come, of course? We shall have a pleasant little party of four!"

"I'm sorry, but I'm engaged to dinner to-night."

Jenny gave me a quick look, Chat gave me a long one. Loft appeared. "Au revoir, Mr. Powers!" With a pronounced bow over his hat Powers was out of the room. I made no effort to follow. Jenny's face told me that the battle was to be fought where we were.

She poured out a cup of tea and gave it to me. Then, as she sat down, she said, "I'm sorry you can't come to-night. Where are you going?"

I did not want Chat there – but I remembered what happened to Cartmell when he did not want me there.

"I'm not going anywhere," I said.

Her pallid face flushed a little, but she smiled. Chat looked at her and got up; no, Chat was not altogether a fool! "Yes, please, Chat," said Jenny very quietly. Chat left us. I finished my tea – it was cold, and easy to gulp down – and waited for the storm.

"You've nothing to add to your polite excuses?" she inquired.

"Does that gentleman come from Cheltenham?"

"Yes, from Cheltenham, Mr. Austin. But how did you come to know that? Did my father mention him?" She was not embarrassed – only very angry.

"No."

"It was Mr. Cartmell?"

"Yes. He had no right, I daresay, but I'm glad he did – and so will he be."

"If both my solicitor and my secretary are glad – !" She broke off with a scornful laugh. "I'm not going to discuss the matter with you, but I like people who are about me to receive my invitations with politeness."

"This isn't easy for me, Miss Driver, but – that man oughtn't to come to this house. He oughtn't to be allowed to see you."

She rose from her chair, her eyes set unmovingly on my face. Her voice was low. "How dare you say that? How dare you? Am I to take orders from you – my secretary – my servant?"

"You called me your friend the other day."

"I seem to have been hasty. A kind friend indeed to listen to stories against me!"

"The story is against the man – not against you."

"Are you dining with any other friends to-night?"

"I've told you that I'm not."

"Then I request – I desire – that you will make it convenient to give me the pleasure of your company – to meet my friend, Mr. Powers."

My temper went suddenly. "I won't sit at meat with the blackguard – above all, not in your company."

I saw her fist clench itself by her side. "I repeat my request," she said.

"I repeat my refusal, but I can do no less than offer you my resignation."

"You won't accept my offer – but I accept yours very gladly."

"It will be kind of you to relieve me from my duties as soon as possible."

"To-morrow." She turned her back on me and walked off to the window. I stood there a minute, and then went to the door. She turned round, and our eyes met. I waited for a moment, but she faced round to the window again, and I went out.

I walked quickly down the hill. I was very unhappy, but I was not remorseful. I knew that another man could have done the thing much better, but it had been the right thing to do and I had done it as well as I could. She had made no attempt to defend Powers, nor to deny what she must have known that Cartmell had said about him. Yet, while tacitly admitting that he was a most obnoxious description of blackguard, she asked him to dinner – and ordered me to sit by and see them together. If her service entailed that sort of thing, then indeed there must be an end to service with her. But grieved as I was that this must be so – and the blow to me was heavy on all grounds, whether of interest or of feeling – I grieved more that she should sit with him herself than that she bade me witness what seemed in my eyes her degradation. What was the meaning of it? I was at that time nowhere near understanding her.

My home was no more than a cottage, built against the south wall of the Old Priory. The front door opened straight into my parlor, without hall or vestibule; a steep little stair ran up from the corner of the room itself and led to my bedroom on the floor above. Behind my parlor lay the kitchen and two other rooms, occupied by my housekeeper, Mrs. Field, and her husband, who was one of the gardeners. It was all very small, but it was warm, snug, and homely. The walls were covered almost completely with my books, which overflowed on to chairs and tables, too. When fire and lamp were going in the evening, the little room seemed to glow with a studious cheerfulness, and my old leather arm-chair wooed me with affectionate welcome. In four years I had taken good root in my little home. I had to uproot myself – to-morrow.

With this pang, there came suddenly one deeper. I was about to lose – perforce – what was now revealed to me as a great, though a very new, interest in my life. From the first both Cartmell and I had been keenly interested in the heiress – the lonely girl who came to reign over Breysgate and to dispose of those millions of money. We had both, I think, been touched with a certain romantic, or pathetic, element in the situation. We had not talked about it, much less had we talked about what we felt ourselves or about what we meant to do; but it had grown into a tacit understanding between us that more than our mere paid services were due from us to Jenny Driver. No man had been very near her father, but we had been nearest; we did not mean that his daughter should be without friends if she would accept friendship. Nay, I think we meant a little more than that. She was young and ignorant; Nick Driver's daughter might well be willful and imperious. We meant that she should not easily escape our service and our friendship; they should be more than offered; they should be pressed; if need be, they should be secretly given. It had been an honest idea of ours – but it seemed hard to work in practice. Such service as I could give was ended well-nigh before it had begun. I thought it only too likely that Cartmell's also would soon end, save, at least, for strictly professional purposes. And I could not see how this end was to be avoided in his case any more than it had been found possible to avoid it in mine. With the best will in the world, there were limits. "Some things are impossible to some men," old Mr. Driver had said in that letter; it had been impossible to me – as it would, I think, have been to most men – to see Powers welcomed by her as a gentleman and a friend.

Yet I began almost to be sorry – almost to ask why I had not swallowed Powers and accepted the invitation to dinner. Might I, in that way, have had a better chance of getting rid of Powers in the end? It would have been a wrong thing to do – I was still quite clear about that – wrong in every way, and very disgusting, to boot; quite fatal to my self-respect, and an acquiescence in a horrible want of self-respect in Jenny. But I might have been useful to her. Now I could be of no use. That evening I first set my feet on what I may perhaps call a moral slope. It looked a very gentle slope; there did not appear to be any danger in it; it did not look as though you could slip on it or as if it would be difficult to recover yourself if slip you did. But, in fact, at the bottom of that moral slope – which grew steeper as it descended – lay a moral precipice. Nothing less can I call the conclusion that anything which might be useful to Jenny Driver became, by the mere force of that possible utility, morally right – conduct, so to speak, becoming to an officer and a gentleman. I was not, of course, at all aware that my insidious doubt – or, rather, my puzzling discontent with myself – could lead to any such chasm as that.

I ate my chop and tried to settle down to my books. First I tried theology, the study of which I had by no means abandoned. But I was not theologically inclined that night. Then I took up a magazine; politics emphatically would not do! I fell back on anthropology, and got on there considerably better. Yet presently my attention wandered even from that. I sat with the book open before me, at a page where three members of the Warramunga tribe were represented in adornments that, on an ordinary evening, would have filled me with admiration. No, I was languid about it. The last thing I remembered was hearing the back door locked – which meant that the Fields were going to bed. After that I fail to trace events, but I imagine that I speedily fell sound asleep – with the book open before me and my pipe lying by it on the table.

I awoke with a little shiver, pretended to myself that I had never stopped reading, gave up the pretence, pushed back my chair from the table, rose, and turned to the fire behind me.

In my old leather arm-chair sat Jenny Driver.

She wore a black evening dress, with a cloak of brown fur thrown open in front – both, no doubt, new acquisitions. The fire had died down to a small heap of bright red embers. When first I saw her, she was crouching close over it – the night was chilly – and her face was red with its glow.

"Miss Driver! I – I'm afraid I've been asleep," I stammered. "Have you been here long?"

She glanced at the clock; it was half-past ten. "About twenty minutes. I've had a good look round – at your room, and your books, and that queer picture which seems to have sent you to sleep. Your room's very comfortable."

"Yes, it's a jolly little room," I agreed. "But what – ?"

"And I've had a good look at you, too," she continued. "Do you know, Mr. Austin, you're really rather handsome?"

"I daresay I look my best by lamplight," I suggested, smiling.

"No, really I think you are – in the thin ascetic style. I like that – anyhow for a change. Well, I wanted a word with you, so I waited till Chat went to bed, and then slipped down."

It was on the tip of my tongue to observe that it was rather late; but a smile on Jenny's lips somehow informed me that she expected just such an objection. So I said nothing.

"Chat and I are going to London to-morrow – to shop. Perhaps we may go on to Paris. I thought you might like to say good-by."

"That's very kind of you. I'm glad we're not to part in – well, as we parted this afternoon."

"If you regretted that, you might have done something to prevent it. Light your pipe again; you'll be able to think better – and I want you to think a little."

I obeyed her direction, she sitting for the moment silent. I came and stood opposite to her, leaning my elbow on the mantelpiece.

"When I first knew Mr. Powers, I was sixteen, and I'd been with the Smalls since I was eleven. You didn't get very discriminating, living with the Smalls. I met him at a subscription dance: I didn't know anything about his wife. He was clerk to an architect, or surveyor, or something of that sort. I met him a good many times afterwards – for walks. He was good-looking in his way, and he said he was in love with me. I fell in love with him and, when I couldn't get away to meet him, I wrote letters. Then I heard about the wife – and I wrote more letters. You know the sort – very miserable, and, I suppose, very silly – that I didn't know what to do, only the world was over for me – and so on. You can imagine the sort of letter. And I saw him – once or twice. He told me that he was in great trouble; he'd been racing and playing cards and couldn't pay; he'd be shown up, and lose his place – and what would become of his wife and child? I flared up and said that I was the last person who was likely to care about his wife and child. Then he suggested that I should get money from my father – he knew all about my father – by saying that I was in some trouble. I told him I couldn't possibly; I was never allowed to write and should only get an answer from a lawyer if I did – and certainly no money. He persisted – and I persisted. He threatened vaguely what he could do. I told him to do as he liked – that I'd done with him for good. I never wrote again – and I never saw him till to-day."

"When you asked him to dinner!"