"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 of no trouble. The governess's reports of her were excellent, I remember Mr. Driver telling me once."
"Well then, we can forget all about Powers."
"Yes, yes," said Cartmell, drumming his fingers still.
"And what was she like?"
Cartmell looked at me, a smile slowly breaking across his broad face. "Here's the station. Suppose you see for yourself," he suggested.
We had ten minutes to wait before Miss Driver's train was due – we had been careful to run no risk of not being on the spot to receive her. Cartmell was at no loss to employ the time. I left him plunging into an animated discussion of the points of a handsome cob which stood outside the station: on the handsome cob's back was a boy, no less handsome, fresh of color and yellow-haired. I knew him to be young Lord Lacey, heir to the Fillingford earldom, but I had at that time no acquaintance with him, and passed on into the station, where I paced up and down among a crowd of loiterers and hasteners – for Catsford was by now a bustling center whence and whither men went and came at all hours of the day and most hours of the night. Driver had foreseen that this would come about! It had come about; he had grown rich; he lay dead. It went on happening still, and thereby adding to the piles of gold which he could no longer handle.
Instead of indulging in these trite reflections – to be excused only by the equal triteness of death, which tends to evoke them – I should have done well to consider my own position. A man bred for a parson but, for reasons of his own, averse from adopting the sacred calling, is commonly not too well fitted for other avocations – unless perhaps he would be a schoolmaster, and my taste did not lie that way. In default of private means, an easy berth at four hundred pounds a year may well seem a godsend. It had assumed some such celestial guise to me when, on the casual introduction of my uncle one day in London, Mr. Driver had offered it to me. As his private secretary, I drew the aforementioned very liberal salary, I had my "office" in the big house on the hill, I dwelt in the Old Priory (that is to say, in the little dwelling house built on to the ruinous remains of the ancient foundation), I was seldom asked for more than three hours' work a day, I had a horse to ride, and plenty of leisure for the books I loved. It would be very unfortunate to have to give up all that. Verily the question "What is she like?" had a practical, an economic, importance for me which raised it far above the sphere of mere curiosity or the nonsense of irrelevant romance. Was she a sensible young woman who would know a good secretary when she saw one? Or, on the other hand, was she not? A secretary of some sort she would certainly require.
Nay, perhaps, she wouldn't. The one utterance of hers which had been, so far, credibly reported to my ears was to the effect that she could take care – just a little care – of herself. This at sixteen! This on the top of circumstances which at first sight indicated that she had taken particularly bad care of herself! Letters to a man like Powers! My imagination, forsaking my own position and prospects, constructed a confident picture of Powers, proceeded to sketch Mrs. Powers – strong lights here! – and to outline the family of the Smalls of Cheltenham. It ended by rejoicing that she had been removed from the influence of Powers and the environment of the Smalls of Cheltenham. Because, look at the matter how one might or could, there was no denying that it was the sort of incident which might just as well – or even better – not have happened at all. At the best, it was not altogether pleasant. Surely that was the truth – and not merely the abortive parson talking again? Well, even the abortive parson was sometimes right.
Cartmell