AN UNPOPULAR MAN
Miss Driver stayed away longer than her words had led me to expect.
London and Paris--the names are in themselves explanation enough. The
big world was entirely new to Jenny; though she could not yet
take--shall I say storm?--her place in society, much instruction, and
more amusement, lay open to her grasp even in the days of her obligatory
mourning. On the other hand that same period could not but be very
tedious to her if passed at Breysgate. In regard to her father's memory
she felt a great curiosity and displayed a profound interest; for the
man himself she could have had little affection and could entertain no
real grief; in fact, though she professed and tried to forgive, she
never shook herself quite clear of resentment, even though she, if
anybody, ought to have come nearest to understanding his stern resolve.
That nobody should ever again come so near to him, or become so much to
him, as to be able sorely to wound him--that was how I read his
determination. Jenny ought to have been able to arrive at some
appreciation of that. I think she did--but she protested in her heart
that his daughter should have been the one exception. No good lay in
going back to the merits of that question. In the result they had
been--strangers: her mourning, then, was a matter of propriety, not the
true demand of her feelings. Viewed in this light, London and Paris,
surveyed from the decent obscurity of a tourist, offered a happy
compromise--and bridged a yawning gulf--between duty and the endurable.
Meanwhile the Great Seal was in Commission; Cartmell, Loft, and I
administered the Kingdom--Cartmell Foreign Affairs, Loft the Interior, I
the Royal Cabinet. Cartmell's sphere was the largest by far--all the
business both of the estate and of the various commercial interests;
Loft's territory was merely the house, but his sense of importance
magnified the weight of his functions; to me fell such of Miss Driver's
work as she did not choose to transact herself. In fact I was kept
pretty busy and was in constant communication with her. In reply to my
letters I received a few notes--very brief ones--and many
telegrams--very decisive ones. As I expected, it was not long before she
took the reins into her own hands. In matters of business she always
knew her mind--even if she did not always tell it; indecision was
reserved for another department. But neither in notes, nor in telegrams
did she disclose anything of her doings, except that she was well and
enjoying herself.
So time rolled on; we came to the month of June--and to the Flower Show.
The great annual festivity of the Catsford Horticultural and
Arboricultural Association had always, of recent years, been held in the
grounds of Breysgate Priory, and at the Mayor's request (Councillor
Bindlecombe was also President of the Association) I had obtained Miss
Driver's consent to the continuance of this good custom. In Jenny's
absence the Show was to be opened by Lady Sarah Lacey. I have mentioned
that no open rupture had taken place between Fillingford and
Breysgate--there was only a very chilly feeling. Lady Sarah came, with
her brother Lord Fillingford and his son. Sir John and Lady Aspenick
from Overington Grange, the Dormers from Hingston, Bertram Ware--our
M.P.--from Oxley Lodge, and many others--in fact all one side of the
county--graced the occasion, mingled affably with the elect of Catsford,
and made themselves distantly agreeable to the non-elect. (This
statement does not, for obvious reasons, apply in all its exactitude to
the M.P. If the bulk of the male guests were not elect, they were
electors.) Everybody was hospitably entertained, but there was a Special
Table, where, in years gone by, Mr. Driver himself had welcomed the most
distinguished guests. His death and his daughter's absence--I fear I
must add, Cartmell's also (he would have taken place of me, I
think)--elevated me to this august position. In fact I had to play host,
and so came for the first time into social relations with our august
neighbors. I was not without alarm.
Lady Sarah questioned me about Jenny with polite but hostile curiosity.
Her inquiries contrived to suggest that, with such a father and such a
childhood, it would be wonderful if Miss Driver had really turned out as
well as Lady Sarah hoped. I was not surprised, and set the attitude down
to a natural touch of jealousy: between the two ladies titular
precedence and solid power would very likely not coincide. Lord
Fillingford talked to the Mayor--who sat between him and me--with a
defensively dignified reserve. He was slightly built, and walked rather
stiffly; he wore small whiskers, and inclined to baldness. Indisputably
a gentleman, he seemed to be afflicted with an unreasonable idea that
other people would not remember what he was; a good man, no doubt, and
probably a sensible one, but with no gift for popularity. His handsome
son easily eclipsed him there. At this time young Lacey was bordering on
eighteen; he out-topped his father in stature as in grace. He was a
singularly attractive boy with a hearty gayety, a flow of talk, and an
engaging conviction that everybody wanted to listen. Childless old Mrs.
Dormer was delighted to listen, to feast her eyes on his comeliness, and
to pet him to any extent he desired.
As a whole the company was a little stiff, and the joints of
conversation rather in want of oiling, until they struck on that most
fruitful and sympathetic subject--a common dislike. The victim was our
neighbor and tenant at Hatcham Ford, Leonard Octon. I knew him, for he
had been something of a friend of old Mr. Driver's, and had been
accorded free leave to walk as he pleased in the park; I had
understood--and could well understand--that he was not generally liked,
but never before had I realized the sum of his enormities. He had, it
seemed, offended everybody. Charitable young Lacey did indeed qualify
the assertion that he was a "bounder" by the admission that he was
afraid of nobody and could shoot. All the other voices spoke utter
condemnation. He had got at odds with town, county, and church. His
opinions were considered detestable, his manners aggressive. On various
occasions of controversy he had pointed out to the Rector of Catsford
that the pulpit was not of necessity a well of truth, to the Mayor that
a gilt chain round his neck had no effect on the stuff inside a man's
head, to Sir John Aspenick that one might understand horses and fail to
understand anything else, to a large political meeting that of all laws
mob-law was the worst, to Lord Fillingford that the rule of intelligence
(to which Octon wished to revert) was no more the rule of country
gentlemen than of their gardeners--perhaps not so much--and so on. These
outrages were not narrated by the victims of them: they were recalled by
sympathetic questions and reminders, each man tickling the other's
wound. It could not be denied that they made up a sad catalogue of
social crimes.
"The fellow may think what he likes, but he needn't tread on all our
toes," Sir John complained.
"A vulgar man!" observed Lady Sarah with an acid finality.
Here, somewhat to my surprise, Fillingford opposed. He was a dry man,
but a just one, and not even against an enemy should more than truth be
said.
"No, I don't think he's that. His incivility is aggressive, even rough
sometimes, but I shouldn't call it vulgar. I don't know what you think,
Mr. Mayor, but it seems to me that vulgarity can hardly exist without
either affectation in the man himself or cringing to others. Now Octon
isn't affected and he never cringes."
Bindlecombe was a sensible man, and himself--if Fillingford's definition
stood--not vulgar.
"You know better than I do, Lord Fillingford," he said. "But I should
call him a gentleman spoiled--and perhaps that's a bit different."
"Meant for a gentleman, perhaps?" suggested Lady Aspenick, a pretty thin
woman of five-and-thirty, who looked studious and wore double glasses,
yet was a mighty horsewoman and whip withal.
I liked her suggestion. "Really, I believe that's about it," I made bold
to remark. "He is meant for a gentleman, but he's rather perverse about
it."
Lady Sarah looked at me with just an involuntary touch of surprise. I do
not think that, in the bottom of her heart, she expected me to
speak--unless, of course, spoken to.
"I intensely dislike both his manners and his opinions--and what I hear
of his character," she observed.
"I mean," Lady Aspenick pursued, "that he's been to so many queer
places, and must have seen such queer things----"
"And done 'em, if you ask my opinion," interposed her husband.
"That he may have got--what? Rusty? Well, something like that. I
mean--forgotten how to treat people. He seems to put everybody down as
an enemy at first sight! Well, I'm irritable myself!"
Bertram Ware joined in for the first time. "At the clubs they say he's
really a slave-driver in Central Africa, and comes over here when the
scent gets too hot after him."
"Really," said Lady Sarah, "it sounds exceedingly likely. But if he
teaches his slaves to copy his manners, they'll get some good
floggings."
"That's what the fellow wants himself," growled unappeasable Sir John.
"You take it on, Johnny," counseled young Lacey. "He's only a foot
taller and four stone heavier than you are. You take it on! It'd be a
very sporting event."
This extract--it is no more--from our conversation will show that it was
going on swimmingly. In the pursuit of a common prey we were developing
a sense of comradeship which leveled barriers and put us at our ease
with one another. No doubt our nascent cordiality would have sprung to
fuller life--but it suffered a sudden check.
"Well, how have you all got on without me?" said a voice behind my
chair.
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 Caesarean. "Having taken the city and
killed the citizens"--Caesar invaded another tribe!--That was the style.
Only Octon's tribes were insects, Caesar'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 Caesar'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 employe--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.