The Great Miss Driver Part 21

"She has three excellent reasons. You eclipse her, you threaten her, and you dislike her."

"How does she know I dislike her?"

"How do you know she dislikes you, if you come to that? You women always seem to me to have special antennae for finding out dislikes. I don't mean to say they're infallible."

"At any rate Lady Sarah and I seem to agree in this case," laughed Jenny. "She's right if she thinks I dislike her, and I'm certainly right in thinking she dislikes me. But how do I threaten her?"

"Come, come! Do you mean me to answer that? n.o.body likes the idea of being turned out--any more than they welcome playing second fiddle."

"I'm always very civil to her--oh, not only at Fillingford! I've taken pains to pay her all the proper honors about the Inst.i.tute. Very fussy she is there, too! She's always dropping in at Ivydene to ask something stupid. She quite worries poor Mr. Powers."

Jenny might resent Lady Sarah's excessive activity at Ivydene, but she gave no sign of being disquieted by it. To me, however, it seemed to be, under the circ.u.mstances, rather dangerous; but not being supposed to know, or to have guessed, the circ.u.mstances, I could say nothing.

Jenny's next remark perhaps explained her easiness of mind.

"We don't let her in if we don't want her. I must say that Mr. Powers is very good at keeping people out. Well, I must try to be more pleasant. I don't really dislike her so much; it's chiefly that family iciness which is so trying. It's a bore always to have to be setting to work to melt people, isn't it?"

I hold no brief against Lady Sarah, and do not regard her as the villain of the piece. She was a woman of a nature dry, yet despotic; she desired power and the popularity that gives power, but had not the temper or the arts to win them. Jenny's triumphs wounded her pride, Jenny's plans threatened her position in her own home at Fillingford Manor. Her dislike for Jenny was natural, and it is really impossible to blame very severely--perhaps, if family feeling is to count, one ought not to blame at all--her share in the events which were close at hand. It is, in fact, rather difficult to see what else she could have done. If she had a right to do it, it is perhaps setting up too high a standard to chide her for a supposed pleasure in the work.

When we got home, Cartmell was waiting for Jenny, his round face portentously lengthened by woe. He shook hands with sad gravity.

"What has happened?" she cried. "Not all my banks broken, Mr. Cartmell?"

"I'm very sorry to be troublesome, Miss Jenny, but I've come to make a formal complaint against Powers. The fellow is doing you a lot of harm and bringing discredit on the Inst.i.tute in its very beginnings. He neglects his work; that doesn't matter so much, there's not a great deal to do yet; he spends the best part of the mornings lounging about public-house bars, smoking and drinking and betting, and the best part of his evenings doing the same, and ogling and flirting with the factory girls into the bargain. He's a thorough bad lot."

Jenny's face had grown very serious. "I'm sorry. He's--he's an old friend of mine!"

"That was what you said before. On the strength of it you gave him this chance. Well, he's proved himself unworthy of it. You must get rid of him--for the sake of the Inst.i.tute and for your own sake, too."

"Get rid of him?" She looked oddly at Cartmell. "Isn't that rather severe? Wouldn't a good scolding from you----?"

"From me? He practically tells me to mind my own business. If there are any complaints, the fellow says, they'd better be addressed to you!" He paused for a moment. "He gives the impression that you'd back him up through thick and thin, and, what's more, he means to give it."

"What does he say to give that impression?" she asked quickly.

"He doesn't say much. It's a nod here, and a wink there--and a lot of vaporing, so I'm told, about having known you when you were a girl."

"That's silly, but not very bad. Is that all?"

"No. When one of my clerks--Harrison, a very steady man--gave him a friendly warning that he was going the right way about to lose his job, he said something very insolent."

"What?" She was sitting very still, very intent.

"He laughed and said he thought you knew better than that. Said in the way he said it, it--it came to claiming some sort of hold on you, Miss Jenny. That's a very dangerous idea to get about."

Cartmell was evidently thinking of the old story--of the episode of Cheltenham days. But had Powers been thinking of that? And was Jenny, with her bright eyes intent on Cartmell's face? She did not look alarmed--only rather expectant. She foresaw a fight with Powers, but had no doubt that she could beat him--if only the mischief had not gone too far.

"He seemed to refer to--Cheltenham?" she asked, smiling.

Cartmell was the embarra.s.sed party to the conversation. "I--I'm afraid so, Miss Jenny," he stammered, and his red face grew even redder.

"Oh, I'll settle that all right," Jenny a.s.sured him.

"You'll give him the sack?" Cartmell asked bluntly.

She had many good reasons to produce against that, just as she had produced many for bringing him to Catsford. "I'll reduce him to order, anyhow," she promised.

That was what she wanted--to bring him to heel, not to lose him. But surely it was no longer for his own sake, nor even to satisfy that instinct of hers which forbade the alienation of the least of her human possessions? There was more than that in it. He was part of the scheme--he fitted into that explanation which my brain had insisted on conceiving as I walked home from Ivydene. Of this aspect of the case Cartmell was entirely innocent.

By one of her calculated bits of audacity--concealing much, she would seem to have nothing to conceal--she took me with her when she went down to Ivydene the next morning, to haul Powers over the coals. She would have me present at the interview between them. Well, it may also have been that she did not want too much plain speaking--or, rather, preferred to do what was to be done in that line herself.

She attacked him roundly; he stood before her not daring to resist openly, yet covertly insolent, hinting at what he dared not say plainly--certainly not before me, for he had not yet decided what game to play. He waited to see what he could still get out of Jenny. She rehea.r.s.ed to him Cartmell's charges as to his conduct; its idleness, its unseemliness, the disrepute it brought on her and on the Inst.i.tute.

Somehow all this sounded a little bit unreal--or, if not unreal, shall I say preliminary? Powers confessed part, denied part, averred a prejudice in Cartmell--this last not without some reason. She rose to her gravest charge.

"And you seem to have the impertinence to hint that you can do what you like, and that I shall stand it all," she said.

"I never said that, Miss Driver. I may have said you had a kind heart and wouldn't be hard on an old friend." He had his cloth cap in his hands and kept twisting it about and fiddling with it as he talked. He smiled all the time, insinuatingly, yet rather uneasily, too.

"It's not your place to make any reference to me," she said haughtily.

"I'll thank you to leave me out of your conversation with these curious friends of yours, Mr. Powers."

He looked at her, licking his lips. I was a mere spectator, though I do not think either of them had for a moment, up to now, forgotten my presence; indeed, both were, in a sense, playing their parts before me.

"I don't know that my friends are more curious than other people's, Miss Driver. People choose friends as it suits them, I suppose."

She caught the insinuation--he must have meant that she should. Her eyes blazed with a sudden anger. I knew the signs of that; when it came, prudence was apt to be thrown to the winds. She rose from her chair and walked up to where he stood.

"What do you mean by that?" she demanded.

He was afraid; he cowered before her fury: "Nothing," he grumbled sullenly.

"Then don't say things like that. I don't like them. I won't have them said. It almost sounded as if you meant a reference to me."

Of course he had meant one. She saw the danger and faced it. She relied on her personal domination. He was threatening, she would terrify. She went on in a cool, hard voice--very bitter, very dangerous.

"Once before in your life you threatened me," she said. "I was a child then, and had no friends. You got off safe--you even got a little money--a little very dirty money." (He did not like that; he flushed red and picked at his cap furiously.) "Now I'm a woman and I've got friends.

You won't get any money, and you won't get off safe. Be sure of that.

Who'll employ you if I won't? What character have you except what I choose to give? I think, if I were a man, I'd thrash you where you stand, Mr. Powers."

This remark may perhaps have been unladylike--that would have been Chat's word for it. For my part I thoroughly appreciated and enjoyed it.

She was a fine sight in a royal rage like this.

"But though I'm not a man, I've friends who are. If you dare to use your tongue against me, look out!"

He could not stand against her nor face her. Indeed it would have been hard to fight her, unless by forgetting that she was a woman. He cringed before her, yet with an obstinately vicious look in his would-be humble eyes.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Driver--indeed I do. I--I've been wrong. Don't be hard on me. There's my poor wife and family! You shall have no further cause of complaint. As for threatening, why, how could I? What could I do against you, Miss Driver?"