The Great Miss Driver

The last sentence mollified him – and it was clever of her to know that it would. He had his primitive side, too. He was primitive enough to love a compliment to his muscles.

"I'd be out of the country before they came – with you under my arm," he said, with a laugh.

"That would be very forgiving – but hardly proper, would it, Chat? Unless we were – Oh, but what nonsense! Why don't you like my poor Institute?"

He relapsed into ill-humor, and it developed into downright rudeness.

"It's nothing to me how people make fools of themselves," he said.

Jenny did not always resent his rudeness. But she never compromised her right to resent it. She exercised the right now, rising with instantaneous dignity. "It's time for us to go, Chat. Mr. Austin, will you kindly look after Mr. Octon's comfort for the rest of the evening?" She swept out, Chat pattering after her in a hen-like flutter. Octon drank off his glass of wine with a muttered oath. Excellent as the port was, it seemed to do him no good. He leaned over to me – perfectly sober, be it understood (I never saw him affected by liquor), but desperately savage. "I won't stand that," he said. "If she sticks to that, I'll never come back to this house when I've walked out of it to-night."

I was learning how to deal with his tempests. "I shall hope to have the pleasure of encountering you elsewhere," I observed politely. "Meanwhile I have my orders. Pray help yourself to port."

He did that, but at the same moment hurled at me the order – "Take her that message."

"There's pen and ink behind you, Octon."

Temper is a terrible master – and needs looking after even as a servant. He jumped up, wrote something – what I could only guess – and rang the bell violently. I could imagine Jenny's smile – I did not ring like that.

"Take that to your mistress," he commanded. "It's the address she wanted." But he had carefully closed the envelope, and probably Loft had his private opinion.

We sat in silence till the answer came. "Miss Driver says she is much obliged, sir, for the address," said Loft as, with a wave of his hand, he introduced a footman with coffee, "and she needn't trouble you any more in the matter – as you have another engagement to-night."

Under Loft's eyes he had pulled himself together; he received the message with an appearance of indifference which quite supported the idea that it related to some trifle and that he really had to go away early; I had not given him credit for such a power of suddenly regaining self-control. He nodded, and said lightly to me, "Well, since Miss Driver is so kind, I'll be off in another ten minutes." The presence of servants must, in the long run, create a great deal of good manners.

When Loft was out of the room Octon dropped his disguise. He brought his big hand down on the table with a slap, saying, "There's an end of it!"

"Why shouldn't she build an Institute? If you take a lease for only seven years, how are you aggrieved by getting notice to quit at the end of the term?"

"Don't argue round the fringe of things. Don't be a humbug," he admonished me, scornfully enough, yet for once, as I fancied, with a touch of gentleness and liking. "You've damned sharp eyes, and I've something else to do than take the trouble to blind them."

"No extraordinary acuteness of vision is necessary," I ventured to remark.

He rose from his chair with a heavy sigh, leaving his coffee and brandy untouched. I felt inclined to tell him that in all likelihood he was taking the matter too seriously: he was assuming finality – a difficult thing to assume when Jenny was in the case. He came to me and laid his hand on my shoulder. "They manage 'em better in Africa," he said with a sardonic grin. "Of course I'd no business to say that to her – but hadn't she been trying to draw me all the time? She does it – then she makes a shindy!"

"I'll see you a bit on your way," I said. He accepted my offer by slipping his hand under my arm. I opened the door for us to pass out. There stood Chat on the threshold. Octon regarded her with an ill-subdued impatience. Chat was fluttering still.

"Oh, Mr. Octon, she's – she's so angry! Might I – oh, might I take a message to her room? She's gone upstairs and forbidden me to follow."

"Thank you, but there's no message to take."

"If you would just say something – !"

"There's no message to take." Again his tone was not rough – it was moody, almost absent: but, as he left Chat behind in her useless agitation, he leaned on my arm very heavily. Though I counted his whole great body as for me less than her little finger, yet a subtle male freemasonry stirred in me. He had behaved very badly – for a man should bear a pretty woman's pin-pricks – yet he was hard hit; all against him as I was, I knew that he was hard hit. Moreover, he had summed up Jenny's procedure pretty accurately.

We put on our coats – it was now September – undid the big door, and went out, down the steps, into a clear frosty night. We had walked many yards along the drive before he spoke. At last he said, very quietly —

"You're a good chap, Austin, and I'm sorry I've made a row to-night. Yes, I'm sorry for that. But whether I'm sorry I've been kicked out or not – well, that's a difficult question. My temper – well, sometimes I'm a bit afraid of it."

"Oh, that's nothing. You've both got tempers. You'll make it up."

He spoke with a calm deliberation unusual with him. "I don't think I'd better," he said. "I don't quite trust myself: I might do something – queer."

In my opinion that possibility about him attracted Jenny; but it needed no artificial fostering, and I held my peace.

There were electric lights at intervals down the drive: at this moment I could see his face plainly. I thoroughly agreed with what he said and understood his judgment of himself. But it was hard to see him look like that about it. Suddenly – as I still looked – his expression changed. A look of apprehension came over him – but he smiled also, and gripped my arm tightly. A figure walked out of the darkness into the light of the lamp.

I recalled how I had found her sitting by my hearth one night – in time to make me recall my resignation. Was she here to make Octon unsay his determination?

She came up to us smiling – with no air of surprise, real or affected, and with no explanation of her own presence.

"Both of you! What luck! I didn't think you'd come away from the house yet."

"I've come away from the house, Miss Driver," said Octon – rather grimly.

"In fact you've – 'walked out of the house' – ?" asked Jenny, smiling. The dullest ears could not miss the fact that she was quoting.

"Yes," answered Octon briefly, leaving the next move with her. She had no hesitation over it.

"Let not the sun go down upon your wrath!" she cried gayly. "The sun is down, but the moon will be up soon, and if you won't quarrel any more I'll keep you company for a little bit of the way." She turned to me, "Do you mind waiting at the house a quarter of an hour? I've had a letter from Mr. Cartmell that I want to consult you about."

Octon had not replied to her invitation and did not now. As I said, "All right – I'll smoke a pipe outside and wait for you," she beckoned lightly and merrily to him. After an almost imperceptible pause he moved slowly after her. Gradually their figures receded from the area of lamplight and grew dim in the darkness. The moon peeped over the hill but gave no light yet by which they could be seen.

I had never believed in the permanence of that quarrel. Though it was a strong instance, yet it was hardly more than a typical instance of their quarrels – of the constant clashing of his way against hers – of the play between her rapier and his club. If their intimacy went on, they might have worse quarrels that. For me the significance of the evening lay not in another proof that Jenny, while saving her pride and scoring her formal victory, would still not let him go – and perhaps would go far to keep him; that was an old story, or, at least, a bit of discernment of her now months old; rather it lay in Octon's account of his own disposition toward her proceedings – in his puzzle whether he were glad or sorry to be "kicked out" – in that fear of himself and of his self-restraint which made him relieved to go, even while his face was wrung with the pain of going. In view of that, I felt that I also should have been relieved if he had really gone – gone not to return – not to submit himself again to the variety of Jenny's ways – to the quick flashing alternation of her weapons, natural, conventional, casual, or whatsoever they might be. He was right about himself – he was not the man for that treatment. He could not appreciate the artistic excellence of it; he felt, even if he deserved, its cruelty. Moreover, it might prove dangerous. What if he beat down the natural weapons – and ignored the rest? One thing at least was clear; he would not again tell me – or even pretend to me – that her power was "all flim-flam."

She came back in half an hour, at a leisurely pace, looking much pleased with herself.

I was smoking on the steps by the hall door.

"That's all right," she assured me with a cheerful smile. "We're quite friends, and he's not going to be such a bear any more – if he can help it, which, Mr. Austin, I doubt."

"How did you manage it?" I asked – not that there was much real need of inquiry.

"Of course I told him that the Institute was nothing but an idea, and that, even if it were built, its being at Hatcham Ford was the merest idea, and that, even if it had to be at Hatcham Ford – well, I pointed out that two years are two years – (You needn't take the trouble to nod about that – it was quite a sensible remark) – that two years are two years and that very likely he wouldn't want the house at all by then."

"I see."

"So, of course, he apologized for his rudeness and promised not to be so foolish again, and we said good night quite friends. What have you been thinking about?"

"I don't think I could possibly tell you."

I was just opening the door for her. She paused on the threshold, lifting her brows a little and smiling as she whispered, "Something uncomplimentary?"

"That depends what you want to be complimented on," I answered.

"Oh, as long as it's on anything!" she cried. "You'll admit my compliments to-night have been terribly left-handed?"

"I don't know that mine hasn't a touch of that. Well – I think it's very brave to play games in the crater of an active volcano – exceedingly brave it is!"