The Great Miss Driver. Anthony Hope

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СКАЧАТЬ millions and driving wedges is—rather exhausting, Cartmell. You split the tree; don't you blunt the wedge in time, too?"

      "The end came easy, did it?"

      "Oh, yes, in his sleep. So the nurse tells me. I wasn't there myself."

      "I'm glad it was easy. After all, he was a very old friend of mine—and a very valuable client. Let's see, how long have you been with him?"

      "Four years."

      "Going to stay?"

      I rose and began to brush my hat. "If you come to that," said I, "are you going to stay either, Cartmell? I gather that she can do as she pleases about that?"

      "Every rod of ground and every farthing of money—bating decent charities! It's a great position."

      "It's a very unexplored one so far as we're concerned," I made bold to remark.

      "Have you seen him since—since the end, Austin?"

      "Yes. Would you like to?"

      "No, I shouldn't," he answered bluntly. "Perhaps it's brutal. I know it's cowardly. But I don't like death."

      "Nonsense! You make half your income out of it. I say, I suppose we might as well start?"

      "Yes," he assented absently. "I wonder how she's turned out!"

      I looked at him with quickened interest. "Turned out? That sounds almost as if you'd seen her."

      "I have seen her. Come along. I'll tell you about it as we drive down."

      We traversed the long corridor which leads from my office to the hall. Loft was waiting for us, with an attendant footman. Loft addressed me in a muffled voice; his demeanor might always be relied on for perfection—he would not once unmuffle his voice till his master was buried.

      "The landau is waiting, sir. The omnibus for Miss Driver's maid and the luggage has gone on." Wonderful man! He spoke of "Miss Driver" as if she had lived for years in the house.

      Cartmell gave him a queer look and emitted a low chuckle as we got into the landau, behind the big grays. Mr. Driver always drove grays, and he liked them big, so that he could rattle up the hill to his house.

      "Maid! Luggage!" muttered Cartmell. "The bus'll hold 'em, I think, with a bit to spare! By his orders I sent her twenty pounds on Tuesday; that's all she's had as yet. I only had time to telegraph about—the rest."

      "Interesting wire to get! But about your seeing her, Cartmell?"

      In honor of the occasion Cartmell, like myself, had put on a black frock coat and a silk hat, properly equipped with a mourning band of respectful width. But he wore the coat with a jaunty air, and the hat slightly but effectively cocked on one side, so that the quiet yet ingrained horsiness of his aspect suffered little from the unwonted attire. The confidential wink with which he now turned his plump rubicund face toward me preserved his general harmony. With the mournful atmosphere of Breysgate Priory, however, I could not help feeling that my own lank jaws and more precisely poised head-gear consorted better.

      "You can hold your tongue, Austin?"

      "A very shrewd man has paid me four hundred a year for four years past on that understanding."

      "Then what happened at the Smalls, at Cheltenham?"

      "Isn't that beginning the story at the wrong end?" I asked.

      "That was where she was"—he searched for a word—"where she was planted. She lived at three or four different places altogether, you know."

      "And the mother?"

      "Mother died—vanished anyhow—early in the proceedings. Well, word came of trouble at Cheltenham. Small, though of my own profession, was an ass. He wrote a bleating letter—yes, he was more like a sheep, really—to old Nick. Nick told me I must go and put it to rights. So I went."

      "Why didn't he go himself?"

      "I think," said Cartmell cautiously, "that he had some kind of a feeling against seeing the girl. Really that's the only thing that accounts for his behavior all through."

      "Did he never see her?"

      "Never—since she was quite a child. So he told me. But let me finish the story—if you want to hear it. Being ordered, I went. They lived in a beastly villa and were, to speak generally, a disgrace to humanity by their utter flabbiness. But there was a flashy sort of a gentleman, by the name of Powers." He stopped and looked at me for a minute. "A married flashy gentleman named Nelson Powers. She was sixteen—and she wrote to Powers. A good many letters she'd written to Powers. Small was such a fool that Powers guessed there was money in it. And she, of course, had never thought of a Mrs. Powers. How should she? Sixteen and——"

      "Hopelessly innocent?"

      "I really think so," he answered with an air, rather odd, of advancing a paradox. "She let him worm out of her all that she knew about her father—which was that he paid the bills for her and that Small had told her that he was rich. She didn't know where he lived, but Powers got that out of Small without much trouble, and then it was blackmail on Mr. Driver, of course."

      "Did you get at Powers? Had to pay him something, I suppose?"

      "I got at Mrs. Powers—and paid her. Much better! We had the letters in twenty-four hours. Powers really repented that time, I think! But I had orders to take her away from the Smalls. The same man never failed Nick Driver twice! I sent her under escort to Dawlish—at least near there—to a clergyman's family, where she's been ever since. But it can't be denied that she left Cheltenham rather—well, rather under a cloud. If you ask me what I think about it——"

      I had been growing interested—yet not interested in precisely the point about which Mr. Cartmell conjectured that I might be about to inquire.

      "Did she say anything about it herself?" I interrupted.

      He stroked his chin. "She said rather a curious thing—she was only sixteen, you know. She said that we might have given her credit for being able to take just a little care of herself."

      "That sounds like underrating your diplomacy, Cartmell."

      "I thought myself that it reflected on the bill I proposed to send in! Funny, wasn't it? From a chit like that!"

      "What did you say?"

      "Asked her if she'd like a foot-warmer for the journey to Dawlish."

      "Capital! You were about to tell me what you thought about it?"

      "The folly of a young ignorant girl, no doubt. Powers was an insinuating rascal—and a girl doesn't know at that age the difference between a gentleman and a cad. He moved too soon, though. We were in lots of time to prevent real mischief—and Mrs. Powers came up to the scratch!" He drummed his fingers on the window of the landau, looking thoughtful and, as it seemed to me, retrospectively puzzled.

      "And did all go smoothly with the clergyman's family?"

      "She's been there ever since. I've heard СКАЧАТЬ