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!"
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!"
"Brave? But not very----?"
"Let's leave it where it is. What about Cartmell's letter?"
"That'll do to-morrow." (Of course it would--it had been only an
instrument of dismissal.) "I'm tired to-night." Her face grew grave: she
experienced another mood--or touched another note. "My friend, you must
believe that I always listen to what you say. I mayn't see things just
as you seem to, sometimes, but what you say always makes me think. By
the bye, are you very busy, or could you ride to-morrow?"
"Of course!" I cried eagerly. "Seven-thirty, as usual?"
"A quarter to eight sharp. Good night." She gave me a contented friendly
smile, with just a hint of triumph about it, and went upstairs.
It shows what a good thing life is that I, too, in spite of my
questionings and apprehension, repaired home forgetful of them for the
time and full of exultation. I loved riding; and Jenny on horseback was
a companion for a god.
On reflection it might have occurred to me that it was easier for her to
invite me to ride than to listen too exactly to my counsels--quite as
easy and really as well calculated to keep me content. Happily the youth
in me found in her more than the subject of fears or the source of
questionings. She could also delight.