The Great Miss Driver

"Have it your own way," said I meekly. "It's no affair of mine what you choose to think."

"Well, that's a more liberal sentiment than one generally hears in this neighborhood."

He rose and stretched himself, clenching his big fists in the air over his head. "At any rate she's told me I may take my walks about here as usual. I'll drop in and have a pipe with you some day."

Another guest proposed himself! I hoped that the company might always prove harmonious.

"As for Chat," he went on, "I don't want to boast of my conquests – but she's mine."

"My congratulations are untouched by envy."

"You may live to change your mind about that. Anyhow I hold her in my hand."

The truth about him was that, as he loved his strength, so, and no less, he loved the display of it. A common, doubtless not the highest, characteristic of the strong! Display is apt to pass into boast. He was not at all loath to hint to me – to force me to guess – that his encounters in Paris had set him thinking. (If they had set him feeling, he said nothing about that.) Hence – as I reasoned it – he went on, with a trifle more than his usual impudence, "Your goose will be cooked when she marries, though!"

After all, his impudence was good-humored. I retorted in kind. "Perhaps the husband won't let you walk in the park either!"

"If Fillingford were half a man – Lord, what a chance!"

"You gossip as badly as the women themselves. Why not say young Lacey at once?"

"The boy? I'd lay him over my knee – at the first word of it."

"He'd stab you under the fifth rib as you did it."

The big man laughed. "Then my one would be worse than his sound dozen! And what you say isn't at all impossible. He's a fine boy, that! After all, though, he's inherited his courage. The father's no coward, either."

We had become engrossed in our interchange of shots – hostile, friendly, or random. One speaks sometimes just for the repartee, especially when no more than feeling after the interpretation of a man.

Moreover Loft's approach was always noiseless. On Octon's last words, he was by my side.

"I beg pardon, sir, but Miss Driver has telephoned from London to say that she'll be down to-morrow and glad to see you at lunch. And I was to say, sir, would you be so kind as to send word to Mr. Octon that she would be very pleased if he would come, too, if his engagements permitted."

"Oh – yes – very good, Loft. This is Mr. Octon."

"Yes, sir," said Loft. The tone was noncommittal. He knew Octon – but declared no opinion.

I was taken aback, for I had received no word of her coming; I had been led not to expect her for four or five weeks. Octon's eye caught mine.

"Changed her mind and come back sooner? Well, I did just the same myself."

By themselves the words were nothing. In connection with our little duel – backed by the man's broad smile and the forceful assertion of his personality – they amounted to a yet plainer boast – "I've come – and I thought she would." That is too plain for speech – even for Octon's ill-restrained tongue – but not too plain for his bearing. But then I doubted whether his bearing were toward facts or merely toward me – were proof of force or effort after effect.

"Clearly Miss Chatters can't keep away from you!" I said.

"Clearly we're going to have a more amusing time than we'd been hoping," he answered and, with a casual and abrupt "Good-by," turned on his heel, taking out another great cigar as he went.

Perhaps we were – if amusing should prove to be the right word about it. So ran my instinct – with no express reason to be given for it. Why should not Jenny come home? Why should Octon's coming have anything to do with it? In truth I was affected, I was half dominated for the moment, by his confidence and his force. I had taken the impression he wanted to give – just as he accused me of taking the impression that Jenny sought to give. So I told myself consolingly. But I could not help remembering that in those countries which he frequented, where he got his insects and very probably his ideas, men were said as often to win or lose – to live or die – by the impression they imparted to friends, foes, and rivals as by the actual deeds they did. I could not judge how far that was true – but that or something like it was surely what they called prestige? If a man created prestige, you did not even try to oppose him. Nay, you hastened to range yourself on his side – and your real little power went to swell his asserted big power – his power big in assertion but in fact, as against the present foe, still unproved. Had the prestige been brought to bear on Chat – so that she was wholly his? Was it being brandished before my eyes, to gain me also – for what I was worth?

After all, it was flattering of him to think that I mattered. I mattered so very little. If he were minded to impress, if he were ready to fight, his display and his battle must be against another foe – or – if the evidence of that talk at the Flower Show went for anything – against several. If an attack on Breysgate Priory were really in his mind, he would find no ally – outside its walls.

CHAPTER V

RAPIER AND CLUB

Any account of Jenny Driver's doings is in danger of seeming to progress by jumps and jerks, and thereby of contradicting the truth about its subject. Cartmell, her principal man of business, scoffed at the idea that Jenny was impulsive at all; after six months' experience of her he said that he had never met a cooler, saner, more cautious judgment. That this was true of her in business matters I have no reason to doubt, but (I have noted this distinction already) if the remark is to be extended to her personal affairs it needs qualification – yet without admitting of contradiction. There she was undoubtedly impetuous and impulsive on occasion; a certain course would appeal to her fancy, and she made for it headlong, regardless, or seeming regardless, of its risks. But even here, though the impulses prevailed on her suddenly in the end, they were long in coming to a head, long in achieving mastery, and preceded by protracted periods either of inaction or of action so wary and tentative as not to commit her in any serious degree. She would advance toward the object, then retreat from it, then stand still and look at it, then walk round and regard it from another point of view. Next she was apt to turn her back on it and become, for a time, engrossingly interested in something else; it seemed essential to her ease of mind that there should be an alternative possible and a line of retreat open. All this circumspection and deliberation – or, if you like, this dawdling and shilly-shallying (for opinions of Jenny have differed very widely on this and on other matters) – had to happen before the rapid and imperious impulse came to set a limit to them; even then it is doubtful whether the impulse left her quite unmindful of the line of retreat.

These characteristics of hers were exhibited in her treatment of the question of the Institute. Although this was a public matter, it was (or she made it) closely connected with certain private affairs which inevitably had a profound interest for all of us who surrounded her. My own belief is that a lift of Lady Sarah Lacey's brows started the Institute. When she called – this necessary courtesy was punctually forthcoming from the Manor to the Priory – she heard from Jenny about the proposed Driver Memorial Hall, how it was to look, where it was to be, and so forth. She put a question as to funds; Jenny owned to the ten thousand pounds. All Lady Sarah said was, "Do you feel called upon to do as much as that?" But she also lifted her brows – conveying thereby (as Jenny confidently declared) that Miss Driver was taking an exaggerated view of her father's importance and of her own, and was assuming a position toward the borough of Catsford which properly belonged to her betters (perhaps Lady Sarah was recollecting the Mayor's feudal speech!) At any rate from that day forward Jenny began to hint at bigger things. The Memorial Hall by itself no longer sufficed. She made a great friend of Mr. Bindlecombe, and he often came up to Breysgate. Where his beloved borough was concerned, Bindlecombe was openly and avowedly unscrupulous; he meant to get all he could out of Miss Driver, and made no concealment about it. Jenny delighted in this attitude; it gave her endless opportunities of encouraging and discouraging, of setting up and putting down, the hopes of Bindlecombe. Between them they elaborated the idea – Jenny was great at elaborating it, but careful to insist that it was no more than an idea – of extending the Memorial Hall into a great Institute, which was to include a memorial hall but to comprise much besides. It was to be a Driver Literary, Scientific, and Technical Institute on the handsomest scale. Bindlecombes' patriotic and sanguine mind hardly hesitated to see in it the nucleus of a future University for the City of Catsford. (Catsford was in the future to be promoted to be a "city," though I did not see how Jenny could have anything to do with that!) The notion of this great Driver Institute pleased Jenny immensely. How high it would lift Lady Sarah's eyebrows! It made Cartmell apprehensive about the expense – and she liked to tease him by suggested extravagance. Finally, it would, she declared, provide me with a splendid post – as librarian, or principal, or something – which would give me a worthier scope for my abilities and yet (Jenny looked at me almost tenderly) let me stay in my dear little home – near Breysgate – "and near me, Mr. Austin." She played with the idea – as she played with us. Some gossip about it began to trickle through Catsford. There was much interest, and Jenny became quite a heroine. Meanwhile plans for the poor old Memorial Hall were suspended.

According to Bindlecombe the only possible site for the visible realization of this splendid idea – the only site which the congested condition of the center of the borough allowed, and also the only one worthy of the great Institute – was the garden and grounds of Hatcham Ford. The beautiful old house itself was to be preserved as the center of an imposing group of handsome buildings; the old gardens need not be materially spoiled – so Bindlecombe unplausibly maintained. The flavor of antiquity and aristocracy thus imparted to the Institute would, Bindlecombe declared, give it a charm and a dignity beyond those possessed by any other Institute the world over. I was there when he first made this suggestion to Jenny. She looked at him in silence, smiled, and glanced quickly at me. The look, though quick, was audacious – under the circumstances.

"But what will Mr. Octon say to that?"

Bindlecombe deferentially hinted that he understood that Mr. Octon's lease of Hatcham Ford expired, or could be broken, in two or three years. He understood – perhaps he was wrong – that Mr. Driver usually reserved a power to break leases at the end of seven years? Mr. Cartmell would, of course, know all about that.

"Oh, if that's so," said Jenny, "of course it would be quite simple. Wouldn't it, Mr. Austin?"

"As simple as drawing a badger," I replied – and Bindlecombe looked surprised to hear such a sporting simile pass my lips. It was by no means a bad one, though, and Jenny rewarded it with a merry little nod.

At this point, then, her public project touched her private relations – and her relations with Octon had been close ever since her return from Paris. He had been a constant visitor at Breysgate, and my belief was that within a very few weeks of her arrival he had made a direct attack – had confronted her with a downright proposal – demand is a word which suits his method better – for her hand. I did not think that she had refused, I was sure that she had not accepted. She was fond of referring, in his presence, to the recent date of her father's death, to her own immersion in business, to the "strangeness" of her new life and the necessity of "finding her feet" before doing much. These references – rather pathetic and almost apologetic – Octon would receive with a frown of impatience – sometimes even of incredulity; but he did not make them an occasion of quarrel. He continued to come constantly to the Priory – certainly three or four times a week. There is no doubt that he was, in his way, very much in love with Jenny. It was an overbearing sort of way – but it had two great merits: it was resolute and it was disinterested. He was quite clear that he wanted her; it was quite clear that he did not care about her money, though he might envy her power. And if he tried to dominate her, he had to submit to constant proofs of her domination also. She could, and did, make him furiously angry; he was often undisguisedly impatient of her coynesses and her hesitations: but he could not leave her nor the hopes he had of her. And she, on her side, could not – at least did not – send him away. For that matter she never liked sending anybody away – not even Powers; it seemed to make her kingdom less by one – a change in quite the wrong direction. Octon would have been a great loss, for he had, without doubt, a strong, and an increasingly strong, attraction for her. She liked at least to play at being subjugated by his masculine force; she did, in fact, to a great extent approve and admire his semi-barbaric way (for her often mitigated by a humor which he kept for the people he liked) of speaking of and dealing with women. Down in her heart she thought that attitude rather the right thing in a man, and liked to think of it as a power before which she might yield. At the theater she was always delighted when the rebellious maiden or the charming spitfire of a wife, at last, in the third act, hailed the hero as her "master." So far she was primitive amidst all her subtlety. But to Jenny's mind it was by no means the third act yet; even the plot of the play was not laid out so far ahead as that. If this masterful, quick, assertive way of wooing were proper to man, woman had her weapons; she had her natural weapons, she had the weapons a civilized state of society gave her, and she had those which casual chance might add to her arsenal. Under the last of these three categories fell the project of the Driver Institute, to be established at Mr. Octon's present residence, Hatcham Ford.

It was a great chance for Jenny. Institutes as such, and all similar works, Octon hated – why educate people who ought to be driven? The insolence not of rank but of intellect spoke in him with a strong voice. Bindlecombe he hated, and it was mainly Bindlecombe's idea. Catsford he hated, because it was gradually but surely spreading to the gates of his beautiful old house. Deeper than this, he hated being under anybody's power; it was bitter to him that, when his mind was to stay, anybody – whether Jenny or another – should be able to tell him to go. Finally, his special position toward Jenny made the mere raising of the question of his future residence a rare chance for her – a chance of teasing and vexing, of coaxing and soothing, or of artful pretense that there was no underlying question at all.

She told him about the project – it was nothing more, she was careful to remark – after dinner one evening, in her most artless manner.

"It's a perfect idea – only I hope you wouldn't mind turning out?"

He had listened sullenly, pulling hard at his cigar. Chat was watching him with alarmed eyes; he had cast his spell on Chat, that was certain; there his boast did not go beyond truth.

"Being turned out, you mean, I imagine! I'd never willingly turn out to make room for any such nonsense. Of all the humbugs – "

"It's my duty to do something for the town," she urged – very grave.

"Let them do their work by day and drink their beer by night. Fancy those fellows in my house!"

"I'm sorry you feel like that. I thought you'd be interested – and – and I'd try to find you a house somewhere else. There must be some other houses, Mr. Austin?"

"One or two round about, I fancy," said I.

"Nice little ones – to suit a single man?" she asked, her bright eyes now seeking, now eluding, a meeting with his.

"I suppose I can choose the size of my house for myself," Octon growled. "I don't want Austin's advice about it."

"Oh, it wasn't poor Mr. Austin who – who spoke about the size of the house." A sudden thought seemed to strike her. "You might stay on and be something in the Institute!"

"I'd burn the house over my head sooner."

"Burn my pretty house! Oh, Mr. Octon! I should be so hurt – and you'd be sent to prison! What a lot of police it would need to take you there!"