The Great Miss Driver. Anthony Hope

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СКАЧАТЬ mock sigh, "One's too old for me, and the other's too young—they must look somewhere else, I'm afraid! And then—how should I get on with the shrew? I'm rather a shrew myself—at least I've been told so."

      "You'd better let them alone," I counseled her with a smile.

      "Oh, no, I shan't do that," she rejoined with a decisiveness which I began to recognize as an occasional feature of her speech. "It'll be more amusing to see what they're like—presently. And what of the Dormers? My father mentioned them."

      "A very nice old couple—but I fear he's failing."

      A slight grimace dismissed the Dormers as not holding much interest for her.

      "Oh, you won't want for neighbors. There are plenty of them, and they'll all be tremendously excited about you and will flock to call as soon as you can receive them."

      "It must seem funny to them. I suppose they'd never heard of me?"

      "I don't believe any of them had. Your father had no intimates, unless Mr. Cartmell can be called one. Besides—well, I'd never heard of you myself!"

      "And here we are old friends!" she said graciously.

      "That's very kind—but you mustn't think yourself bound to take over the secretary with the rest of the furniture."

      She looked steadily in my face for several seconds, seeming to size me up—if I may be allowed the expression. Then she smiled—not gayly, yet again by no means sadly. It was the smile which I came to call later her mystery smile; and, as a general rule, it meant—in plain language—mischief. Of course, on this first day I did not attach these associations to it. It struck me as merely rather curious; as a man talks to himself, so she seemed to smile to herself, forgetting her interlocutor.

      "Oh, well—stay and see how you like me," she said.

CHAPTER III

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ON THE USE OF SCRAPES

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      We were settling down. It was a week since the funeral. The borough and the neighborhood had survived their first stupefaction at the apparition of Miss Driver; the local journals had achieved their articles, organs of wider circulation and greater dignity their paragraphs; the charities which received legacies had given thanks, those which did not were turning resigned but hopeful eyes to the future. The undertaker sent in his bill, and the Town Council discussed the project of a Driver Memorial Hall—with a hardly disguised anticipation of the quarter from which the bulk of the money was to come.

      There was really not much more to do till Miss Driver's first days of mourning were over, and the fascinating speculations as to her personal gifts and qualities could look to find some satisfaction from her appearances on public and private occasions. Only Cartmell still was—and would be for weeks—busy on the labors attendant on the transfer of a great estate, and the rearrangements necessitated by the loss of an able and experienced man—a masterly worker—and the succession of a girl ignorant of business. For the rest we were, as I say, settling down. Even Cartmell's activity caused us at Breysgate no sense of bustle, for it took him to London the day after the funeral and kept him there for above a fortnight.

      When I say that "we" were settling down I mean the trio formed by Miss Driver, myself—and Miss Emily Chatters. It is my duty to introduce Miss Chatters with proper formality, and I will introduce her presently—but let us take people in their order. Miss Driver had inspected her property (except the wine cellar which, to Loft's dismay, she declined to enter); she had chosen her own set of rooms and given orders for them to be entirely refurnished; she had announced her intention—and small blame to her—of extending the refurnishing process to all the sitting-rooms—at least to the sitting-rooms; she had chosen her own hack from the stables—and I have no doubt that she had done what was immediately requisite as regards her wardrobe. At any rate, an air of achievement dwelt about her. For my part I performed my duties, and began to find that I had less work to do—and more time occupied in doing it. In Mr. Driver's day we worked as few men except Mr. Driver understood work from ten to one; then, as a rule, I was free. Under the new régime we worked at a gentler pressure—a much gentler pressure—for the same morning hours; but I stayed to lunch always, I came back to tea frequently, and I returned to dinner two or three evenings in the week. My duties as secretary grew lighter, but I seemed to be assuming the functions of a companion. I may do myself the incidental justice of saying that I rather resented this tendency to transform my office; but it was not easy to resist. She was paying for my whole time as her father had paid for it; it was her right, within wide limits, to say to what uses it should be put. Or—I could go. The liberty—perhaps it is rather theoretical—of "chucking my job" remained to me as to every free-born Englishman—who sees his way to getting another whereby to live. Not that I wished to surrender mine; I was interested and—to tell the truth—I grew, within our jurisdiction, important. She approached the assumption of her power cautiously, and at first would return almost any answer to almost any letter at my suggestion. I did not expect this to last, but so it was for the moment. For instance it was I, in ultimate reality, who offered that ten thousand pounds toward the Memorial Hall. I had a great difficulty in fixing the proper figure. If I may judge from the language employed by the Mayor (Councillor Bindlecombe) in public, I exceeded all possible anticipations of munificence; in private, I am told, he confessed to having entertained a hope of fifteen thousand. I imagine that my figure was not, on a balancing of considerations, far wide of the mark. Cartmell thought five thousand would have served—but old Cartmell was a screw with other people's money. I remembered "Give handsomely when you give." So, I think, did Jenny Driver. All the same, Bindlecombe did, in my opinion, open his mouth a bit too wide.

      Miss Chatters came two days after the funeral—in the new black silk dress: it rustled powerfully. She was tall, had pale-brown hair with a broad parting in the middle, a very long inquiring nose, faded blue eyes, an absolutely flat chin, and—inconceivable gentility. If we others were settling she settled far quicker. She took the bedroom next to Jenny Driver's; she annexed a small sitting-room for her own—next but one to Jenny Driver's; she had a glass of the best port every day at eleven. ("She came down to the cellar and chose the bin herself, sir," Loft informed me with a wry smile of grudge for his dearest possessions.) Yet all these acts of proprietorship—for they pretty nearly came to that—were performed with a meekness, a deprecation, a ladylikeness (I can find no other word) that made opposition seem unkind and criticism ungenerous. It was only "Poor Chat!" She had a habit of talking to Jenny in a kind of baby-language, and used to refer to herself as "Poor Chat." "Poor Chat doesn't know!" "Poor Chat's not wise!" Also she did keep talking about her name and the respectability of her descent. In fact she was a woman of a number of silly affectations and one or two exasperating foibles, and Cartmell never varied from his impromptu judgment—expressed before he had seen her—that she was a fool. It is my deliberate opinion that she wished to be thought more of a fool than she was—partly from an idea that little sillinesses and affectations were genteel, partly with the notion that they were disarming. She seemed always bent on showing you that she was not the sort of person from whom any opposition need be feared, nor any undue exercise of influence apprehended. It could only be supposed that she had found this line of conduct useful in her relations toward her employers; by contrast it flattered both their superior brains and their superior positions. I allow for her natural taste, for her standards of gentility. But she was a snob, too, "Poor Chat," and a time-server.

      No harder words than those need be used about her—and they СКАЧАТЬ