The Great Miss Driver

I turned round with a start. The man himself stood there, his great height and breadth overshadowing me. His face was bronzed under his thick black hair; his mouth wore a wicked smile as his keen eyes ranged round the embarrassed table. He had heard the last part of Lacey's joking challenge to Aspenick.

"What's Sir John Aspenick got to take on? What's the event?"

The general embarrassment grew no less – but then it had never existed in young Lacey. He raised his fearless fresh blue eyes to the big man.

"To give you a thrashing," he said.

"Ah," said Octon, "I'm too old. I'm not like you." Lacey flushed suddenly. "And perhaps I'm a bit too big – and you're hardly that yet, are you?"

Perhaps he was too big! I noticed again his wonderful hands. They were large beyond reasonable limits of size, but full of muscle – no fat. They were restless too – always moving as if they wanted to be at work; if the work were to strangle a bull, I could imagine their being well pleased. He might need a thrashing – but, sturdy as the sons of Catsford were, there was none in the park that day who could have given him one.

Young Lacey was very red. I was a little uneasy as to what he would say or do; Fillingford saved the situation. He stood up and offered his hand to Octon, saying, "We're always glad to welcome a neighbor safely back. I hope your trip was prosperous?"

It was the right thing wrongly said – at least, inadequately said. It was civil, not cordial. They made a contrast, these men. Fillingford was too negative, Octon too positive. One defended where none attacked, the other attacked where no offense had been given. Unnecessary reserve against uncalled-for aggression! Fillingford was not popular – Octon was hated. Octon did not mind the hatred – did Fillingford feel the lack of liking? His reserve baffled me: I could not tell. With all Octon's faults, friendship with him seemed easier – and more attractive. The path might be rough – but the gate was not locked.

"Sure, Mr. Austin, it's time for the prizes?" said Lady Sarah.

It was not time, but I hastily said that it was, and with some relief escorted her to the platform. The rest followed, after, I suppose, a formal greeting to the unwelcome Prodigal; he himself did not come with us.

When Lady Sarah had distributed the prizes, I made a little speech on my chief's behalf – a speech of welcome to county and to town. Fillingford replied first, his speech was like himself – proper, cold, composed. Then Bindlecombe got up, mopping his forehead – the Mayor was apt to get hot – but making no mean appearance with his British solidity of figure, his shrewd face, and his sturdy respect for the office he exercised by the will of his fellow-citizens.

"My lords, ladies, and gentlemen – as Mayor of Catsford I have just one word to say on behalf of the borough. We thank the generous lady who has welcomed us here to-day. We look forward to welcoming her when she's ready for us. All Catsford men are proud of Nicholas Driver. He did a great deal for us – maybe we did something for him. He wasn't a man of words, but he was proud of the borough as the borough was proud of him. From what I hear, I think we shall be proud of Miss Driver, too – and I hope she'll be proud of the borough as her father was before her. We wish her long life and prosperity."

Bravo, Bindlecombe! But Lady Sarah looked astonishingly sour. There was something almost feudal in the relationship which the Mayor's words suggested. Jenny as Overlord of Catsford would not be to Lady Sarah's liking.

I got rid of them; I beg pardon – they civilly dismissed me. Only young Lacey had for me a word of more than formality. He did me the honor to ask my opinion – as from one gentleman to another.

"I say, do you think Octon had a right to say that?"

"The retort was justifiable – strictly."

"He need hardly – "

"No, he needn't."

"Well, good-by, Mr. Austin. I say – I'd like to come and see you. Are you ever at home in the evenings?"

"Always just now. I should be delighted to see you."

"Evenings at the Manor aren't very lively," he remarked ingenuously. "And I've left school for good, you know."

The last words seemed to refer – distantly – to Leonard Octon. Without returning to that disturbing subject I repeated my invitation and then, comparatively free from my responsibilities, repaired alone to the terrace.

Octon was still there – extended on three chairs, smoking and drinking a whisky and soda. I asked him about his travels – he was just back from the recesses of Africa (if there are, truly, any recesses left) – but gained small satisfaction. His predominant intellectual interest was – insects! He would hunt a beetle from latitude to latitude, and by no means despised the pursuit of a flea. My interest in the study of religion assorted ill with this: when I questioned on my subject, he replied on his. All other incidents of his journeys he passed over, both in talk and in writing (he had written two books eminent in their own line), with a brevity thoroughly Cæsarean. "Having taken the city and killed the citizens" – Cæsar invaded another tribe! – That was the style. Only Octon's tribes were insects, Cæsar's patriots. It was, however, rumored – as Bertram Ware had hinted in a jocose form – that Octon's summaries were, sometimes and in their degree, as eloquent as Cæsar's own.

"Hang my journeys!" he said, as I put one more of my futile questions. "I got six bugs – one indisputably new. But I didn't hurry up here – I only got home this morning – to talk about that. I hurried up here, Austin – "

"To annoy your neighbors – knowing they were assembled here?"

"That was a side-show," he assured me. "Though it was entertaining enough. And, after all, young Lacey began on me! No – I came to bring you news of your liege lady. I've been in Paris, too, Austin."

"And you met her?"

"I met her often – with her cat."

"Miss Chatters?"

"Precisely. And sometimes without her cat. How do you like the change from old Driver?"

"I hold no such position, either in county or borough, as need tempt you – to say nothing of entitling you – to ask impertinent questions, Octon."

He chuckled out a deep rumbling laugh of amusement. "Good!" he said. "Well-turned – almost witty! Austin, I've my own pursuits – but I'm inclined to wish I had your position."

"You're very flattering – but my position is that of an employé – at a salary which would hardly command your services."

"You can be eyes and ears and hands to her. If I had your position, I'd" – one of his great hands rose suddenly into the air – "crunch up this neighborhood. With her resources she could get all the power." His hand fell again, and he removed his body from two of the three chairs, shifting himself with easy indolent strength. "Then you'd have it all in your own control."

"She'd have it in her own control, you must mean," said I.

"Come, you're a man!" he mocked me. But he was looking at me closely, too – and rather inquisitively, I thought.

"Since you've met her often, I thought you might understand better than that." To answer him in his own coin, I infused into my tone a contempt which I hoped would annoy him.

He was not annoyed; he was amused. In the insolence of his strength he mocked at me – at Jenny through me – at me through Jenny. Yet, pervading it all, there was revealed an interest – a curiosity – about her that agreed ill with his assumed contemptuousness.

"She's given you her idea of herself – and you've absorbed it. She thinks she's another Nick Driver – and you're sure of it! It's all flim-flam, Austin."

"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.