Initial commit of ebook 78723 filesHEADmain

1 files changed, 7366 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/78723-0.txt b/78723-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4e6bc3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78723-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7366 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78723 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          [Cover Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+                       C A K E S   A N D   A L E
+
+
+
+                                   BY
+                         W.  SOMERSET  MAUGHAM
+
+
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                      T R I A N G L E   B O O K S
+                                NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                COPYRIGHT, 1930, BY W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
+
+                         _All rights reserved_
+
+             TRIANGLE BOOKS EDITION PUBLISHED JANUARY 1941
+                         REPRINTED JANUARY 1941
+
+
+
+              TRIANGLE BOOKS, 14 West Forty-ninth Street,
+                            New York, N. Y.
+
+           PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+                             CAKES AND ALE
+                 W .   S O M E R S E T   M A U G H A M
+
+
+
+
+                                   I
+
+
+I HAVE noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and,
+finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment
+you come in, and it’s important, the matter is more often important to
+him than to you. When it comes to making you a present or doing you a
+favour most people are able to hold their impatience within reasonable
+bounds. So when I got back to my lodgings with just enough time to have
+a drink, a cigarette, and to read my paper before dressing for dinner,
+and was told by Miss Fellows, my landlady, that Mr. Alroy Kear wished me
+to ring him up at once, I felt that I could safely ignore his request.
+
+“Is that the writer?” she asked me.
+
+“It is.”
+
+She gave the telephone a friendly glance.
+
+“Shall I get him?”
+
+“No, thank you.”
+
+“What shall I say if he rings again?”
+
+“Ask him to leave a message.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+She pursed her lips. She took the empty siphon, swept the room with a
+look to see that it was tidy, and went out. Miss Fellows was a great
+novel reader. I was sure that she had read all Roy’s books. Her
+disapproval of my casualness suggested that she had read them with
+admiration. When I got home again, I found a note in her bold, legible
+writing on the sideboard.
+
+    _Mr. Kear rang up twice. Can you lunch with him to-morrow? If
+    not what day will suit you?_
+
+I raised my eyebrows. I had not seen Roy for three months and then only
+for a few minutes at a party; he had been very friendly, he always was,
+and when we separated he had expressed his hearty regret that we met so
+seldom.
+
+“London’s awful,” he said. “One never has time to see any of the people
+one wants to. Let’s lunch together one day next week, shall we?”
+
+“I’d like to,” I replied.
+
+“I’ll look at my book when I get home and ring you up.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+I had not known Roy for twenty years without learning that he always
+kept in the upper left-hand pocket of his waistcoat the little book in
+which he put down his engagements; I was therefore not surprised when I
+heard from him no further. It was impossible for me now to persuade
+myself that this urgent desire of his to dispense hospitality was
+disinterested. As I smoked a pipe before going to bed I turned over in
+my mind the possible reasons for which Roy might want me to lunch with
+him. It might be that an admirer of his had pestered him to introduce me
+to her or that an American editor, in London for a few days, had desired
+Roy to put me in touch with him; but I could not do my old friend the
+injustice of supposing him so barren of devices as not to be able to
+cope with such a situation. Besides, he told me to choose my own day, so
+it could hardly be that he wished me to meet anyone else.
+
+Than Roy no one could show a more genuine cordiality to a fellow
+novelist whose name was on everybody’s lips, but no one could more
+genially turn a cold shoulder on him when idleness, failure, or someone
+else’s success had cast a shade on his notoriety. The writer has his ups
+and downs, and I was but too conscious that at the moment I was not in
+the public eye. It was obvious that I might have found excuses without
+affront to refuse Roy’s invitation, though he was a determined fellow
+and if he was resolved for purposes of his own to see me, I well knew
+that nothing short of a downright “go to hell” would check his
+persistence; but I was beset by curiosity. I had also a considerable
+affection for Roy.
+
+I had watched with admiration his rise in the world of letters. His
+career might well have served as a model for any young man entering upon
+the pursuit of literature. I could think of no one among my
+contemporaries who had achieved so considerable a position on so little
+talent. This, like the wise man’s daily dose of Bemax, might have gone
+into a heaped-up tablespoon. He was perfectly aware of it, and it must
+have seemed to him sometimes little short of a miracle that he had been
+able with it to compose already some thirty books. I cannot but think
+that he saw the white light of revelation when first he read that
+Charles Dickens in an after-dinner speech had stated that genius was an
+infinite capacity for taking pains. He pondered the saying. If that was
+all, he must have told himself, he could be a genius like the rest; and
+when the excited reviewer of a lady’s paper, writing a notice of one of
+his works, used the word (and of late the critics have been doing it
+with agreeable frequency) he must have sighed with the satisfaction of
+one who after long hours of toil has completed a cross-word puzzle. No
+one who for years had observed his indefatigable industry could deny
+that at all events he deserved to be a genius.
+
+Roy started with certain advantages. He was the only son of a civil
+servant who after being Colonial Secretary for many years in Hong-Kong
+ended his career as Governor of Jamaica. When you looked up Alroy Kear
+in the serried pages of _Who’s Who_ you saw _o. s._ of Sir Raymond Kear,
+K. C. M. G., K.C.V.O. _q.v._ and of Emily, _y.d._ of the late Major
+General Percy Camperdown, Indian Army. He was educated at Winchester and
+at New College, Oxford. He was president of the Union and but for an
+unfortunate attack of measles might very well have got his rowing blue.
+His academic career was respectable rather than showy, and he left the
+university without a debt in the world. Roy was even then of a thrifty
+habit, without any inclination to unprofitable expense, and he was a
+good son. He knew that it had been a sacrifice to his parents to give
+him so costly an education. His father, having retired, lived in an
+unpretentious, but not mean, house near Stroud in Gloucestershire, but
+at intervals went to London to attend official dinners connected with
+the colonies he had administered, and on these occasions was in the
+habit of visiting the Athenæum, of which he was a member. It was through
+an old crony at this club that he was able to get his son, when he came
+down from Oxford, appointed private secretary to a politician who, after
+having made a fool of himself as Secretary of State in two Conservative
+administrations, had been rewarded with a peerage. This gave Roy a
+chance to become acquainted at an early age with the great world. He
+made good use of his opportunities. You will never find in his works any
+of the solecisms that disfigure the productions of those who have
+studied the upper circles of society only in the pages of the
+illustrated papers. He knew exactly how dukes spoke to one another, and
+the proper way they should be addressed respectively by a member of
+Parliament, an attorney, a book-maker, and a valet. There is something
+captivating in the jauntiness with which in his early novels he handles
+viceroys, ambassadors, prime ministers, royalties, and great ladies. He
+is friendly without being patronizing and familiar without being
+impertinent. He does not let you forget their rank, but shares with you
+his comfortable feeling that they are of the same flesh as you and I. I
+always think it a pity that, fashion having decided that the doings of
+the aristocracy are no longer a proper subject for serious fiction, Roy,
+always keenly sensitive to the tendency of the age, should in his later
+novels have confined himself to the spiritual conflicts of solicitors,
+chartered accountants, and produce brokers. He does not move in these
+circles with his old assurance.
+
+I knew him first soon after he resigned his secretaryship to devote
+himself exclusively to literature, and he was then a fine, upstanding
+young man, six feet high in his stockinged feet and of an athletic
+build, with broad shoulders and a confident carriage. He was not
+handsome, but in a manly way agreeable to look at, with wide blue frank
+eyes and curly hair of a lightish brown; his nose was rather short and
+broad, his chin square. He looked honest, clean, and healthy. He was
+something of an athlete. No one who has read in his early books the
+descriptions of a run with the hounds, so vivid, and so accurate, can
+doubt that he wrote from personal experience; and until quite lately he
+was willing now and then to desert his desk for a day’s hunting. He
+published his first novel at the period when men of letters, to show
+their virility, drank beer and played cricket, and for some years there
+was seldom a literary eleven in which his name did not figure. This
+particular school, I hardly know why, has lost its bravery, their books
+are neglected, and cricketers though they have remained, they find
+difficulty in placing their articles. Roy ceased playing cricket a good
+many years ago and he has developed a fine taste for claret.
+
+Roy was very modest about his first novel. It was short, neatly written,
+and, as is everything he has produced since, in perfect taste. He sent
+it with a pleasant letter to all the leading writers of the day, and in
+this he told each one how greatly he admired his works, how much he had
+learned from his study of them, and how ardently he aspired to follow,
+albeit at a humble distance, the trail his correspondent had blazed. He
+laid his book at the feet of a great artist as the tribute of a young
+man entering upon the profession of letters to one whom he would always
+look up to as his master. Deprecatingly, fully conscious of his audacity
+in asking so busy a man to waste his time on a neophyte’s puny effort,
+he begged for criticism and guidance. Few of the replies were
+perfunctory. The authors he wrote to, flattered by his praise, answered
+at length. They commended his book; many of them asked him to luncheon.
+They could not fail to be charmed by his frankness and warmed by his
+enthusiasm. He asked for their advice with a humility that was touching
+and promised to act upon it with a sincerity that was impressive. Here,
+they felt, was someone worth taking a little trouble over.
+
+His novel had a considerable success. It made him many friends in
+literary circles and in a very short while you could not go to a tea
+party in Bloomsbury, Campden Hill, or Westminster without finding him
+handing round bread and butter or disembarrassing an elderly lady of an
+empty cup. He was so young, so bluff, so gay, he laughed so merrily at
+other people’s jokes that no one could help liking him. He joined dining
+clubs where in the basement of a hotel in Victoria Street or Holborn men
+of letters, young barristers, and ladies in Liberty silks and strings of
+beads ate a three-and-sixpenny dinner and discussed art and literature.
+It was soon discovered that he had a pretty gift for after-dinner
+speaking. He was so pleasant that his fellow writers, his rivals and
+contemporaries, forgave him even the fact that he was a gentleman. He
+was generous in his praise of their fledgeling works, and when they sent
+him manuscripts to criticize could never find a thing amiss. They
+thought him not only a good sort, but a sound judge.
+
+He wrote a second novel. He took great pains with it and he profited by
+the advice his elders in the craft had given him. It was only just that
+more than one should at his request write a review for a paper with
+whose editor Roy had got into touch and only natural that the review
+should be flattering. His second novel was successful, but not so
+successful as to arouse the umbrageous susceptibilities of his
+competitors. In fact it confirmed them in their suspicions that he would
+never set the Thames on fire. He was a jolly good fellow; no side, or
+anything like that: they were quite content to give a leg up to a man
+who would never climb so high as to be an obstacle to themselves. I know
+some who smile bitterly now when they reflect on the mistake they made.
+
+But when they say that he is swollen-headed they err. Roy has never lost
+the modesty which in his youth was his most engaging trait.
+
+“I know I’m not a great novelist,” he will tell you. “When I compare
+myself with the giants I simply don’t exist. I used to think that one
+day I should write a really great novel, but I’ve long ceased even to
+hope for that. All I want people to say is that I do my best. I do work.
+I never let anything slipshod get past me. I think I can tell a good
+story and I can create characters that ring true. And after all the
+proof of the pudding is in the eating: _The Eye of the Needle_ sold
+thirty-five thousand in England and eighty thousand in America, and for
+the serial rights of my next book I’ve got the biggest terms I’ve ever
+had yet.”
+
+And what, after all, can it be other than modesty that makes him even
+now write to the reviewers of his books, thanking them for their praise,
+and ask them to luncheon? Nay, more: when someone has written a stinging
+criticism and Roy, especially since his reputation became so great, has
+had to put up with some very virulent abuse, he does not, like most of
+us, shrug his shoulders, fling a mental insult at the ruffian who does
+not like our work, and then forget about it; he writes a long letter to
+his critic, telling him that he is very sorry he thought his book bad,
+but his review was so interesting in itself, and if he might venture to
+say so, showed so much critical sense and so much feeling for words,
+that he felt bound to write to him. No one is more anxious to improve
+himself than he and he hopes he is still capable of learning. He does
+not want to be a bore, but if the critic has nothing to do on Wednesday
+or Friday will he come and lunch at the Savoy and tell him why exactly
+he thought his book so bad? No one can order a lunch better than Roy,
+and generally by the time the critic has eaten half a dozen oysters and
+a cut from a saddle of baby lamb, he has eaten his words too. It is only
+poetic justice that when Roy’s next novel comes out the critic should
+see in the new work a very great advance.
+
+One of the difficulties that a man has to cope with as he goes through
+life is what to do about the persons with whom he has once been intimate
+and whose interest for him has in due course subsided. If both parties
+remain in a modest station the break comes about naturally, and no ill
+feeling subsists, but if one of them achieves eminence the position is
+awkward. He makes a multitude of new friends, but the old ones are
+inexorable; he has a thousand claims on his time, but they feel that
+they have the first right to it. Unless he is at their beck and call
+they sigh and with a shrug of the shoulders say:
+
+“Ah, well, I suppose you’re like everyone else. I must expect to be
+dropped now that you’re a success.”
+
+That of course is what he would like to do if he had the courage. For
+the most part he hasn’t. He weakly accepts an invitation to supper on
+Sunday evening. The cold roast beef is frozen and comes from Australia
+and was over-cooked at middle day; and the burgundy—ah, why will they
+call it burgundy? Have they never been to Beaune and stayed at the Hôtel
+de la Poste? Of course it is grand to talk of the good old days when you
+shared a crust of bread in a garret together, but it is a little
+disconcerting when you reflect how near to a garret is the room you are
+sitting in. You feel ill at ease when your friend tells you that his
+books don’t sell and that he can’t place his short stories; the managers
+won’t even read his plays, and when he compares them with some of the
+stuff that’s put on (here he fixes you with an accusing eye) it really
+does seem a bit hard. You are embarrassed and you look away. You
+exaggerate the failures you have had in order that he may realize that
+life has its hardships for you too. You refer to your work in the most
+disparaging way you can and are a trifle taken aback to find that your
+host’s opinion of it is the same as yours. You speak of the fickleness
+of the public so that he may comfort himself by thinking that your
+popularity cannot last. He is a friendly but severe critic.
+
+“I haven’t read your last book,” he says, “but I read the one before.
+I’ve forgotten its name.”
+
+You tell him.
+
+“I was rather disappointed in it. I didn’t think it was quite so good as
+some of the things you’ve done. Of course you know which my favourite
+is.”
+
+And you, having suffered from other hands than his, answer at once with
+the name of the first book you ever wrote; you were twenty then, and it
+was crude and ingenuous, and on every page was written your
+inexperience.
+
+“You’ll never do anything so good as that,” he says heartily, and you
+feel that your whole career has been a long decadence from that one
+happy hit. “I always think you’ve never _quite_ fulfilled the promise
+you showed then.”
+
+The gas fire roasts your feet, but your hands are icy. You look at your
+wrist watch surreptitiously and wonder whether your old friend would
+think it offensive if you took your leave as early as ten. You have told
+your car to wait round the corner so that it should not stand outside
+the door and by its magnificence affront his poverty, but at the door he
+says:
+
+“You’ll find a bus at the bottom of the street. I’ll just walk down with
+you.”
+
+Panic seizes you and you confess that you have a car. He finds it very
+odd that the chauffeur should wait round the corner. You answer that
+this is one of his idiosyncrasies. When you reach it your friend looks
+at it with tolerant superiority. You nervously ask him to dinner with
+you one day. You promise to write to him and you drive away wondering
+whether when he comes he will think you are swanking if you ask him to
+Claridge’s or mean if you suggest Soho.
+
+Roy Kear suffered from none of these tribulations. It sounds a little
+brutal to say that when he had got all he could out of people he dropped
+them; but it would take so long to put the matter more delicately, and
+would need so subtle an adjustment of hints, half-tones, and allusions,
+playful or tender, that such being at bottom the fact, I think it as
+well to leave it at that. Most of us when we do a caddish thing harbour
+resentment against the person we have done it to, but Roy’s heart,
+always in the right place, never permitted him such pettiness. He could
+use a man very shabbily without afterward bearing him the slightest
+ill-will.
+
+“Poor old Smith,” he would say. “He is a dear; I’m so fond of him. Pity
+he’s growing so bitter. I wish one could do something for him. No, I
+haven t seen him for years. It’s no good trying to keep up old
+friendships. It’s painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of
+people, and the only thing is to face it.”
+
+But if he ran across Smith at some gathering like the private view of
+the Royal Academy no one could be more cordial. He wrung his hand and
+told him how delighted he was to see him. His face beamed. He shed good
+fellowship as the kindly sun its rays. Smith rejoiced in the glow of
+this wonderful vitality and it was damned decent of Roy to say he’d give
+his eye-teeth to have written a book half as good as Smith’s last. On
+the other hand, if Roy thought Smith had not seen him, he looked the
+other way; but Smith _had_ seen him, and Smith resented being cut. Smith
+was very acid. He said that in the old days Roy had been glad enough to
+share a steak with him in a shabby restaurant and spend a month’s
+holiday in a fisherman’s cottage at St. Ives. Smith said that Roy was a
+time server. He said he was a snob. He said he was a humbug.
+
+Smith was wrong here. The most shining characteristic of Alroy Kear was
+his sincerity. No one can be a humbug for five-and-twenty years.
+Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can
+pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit.
+It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it
+is a whole-time job. It needs also a cynical humour; although Roy
+laughed so much I never thought he had a very quick sense of humour, and
+I am quite sure that he was incapable of cynicism. Though I have
+finished few of his novels, I have begun a good many, and to my mind his
+sincerity is stamped on every one of their multitudinous pages. This is
+clearly the chief ground of his stable popularity. Roy has always
+sincerely believed what everyone else believed at the moment. When he
+wrote novels about the aristocracy he sincerely believed that its
+members were dissipated and immoral, and yet had a certain nobility and
+an innate aptitude for governing the British Empire; when later he wrote
+of the middle classes he sincerely believed that they were the backbone
+of the country. His villains have always been villainous, his heroes
+heroic, and his maidens chaste.
+
+When Roy asked the author of a flattering review to lunch it was because
+he was sincerely grateful to him for his good opinion, and when he asked
+the author of an unflattering one it was because he was sincerely
+concerned to improve himself. When unknown admirers from Texas or
+western Australia came to London it was not only to cultivate his public
+that he took them to the National Gallery, it was because he was
+sincerely anxious to observe their reactions to art. You had only to
+hear him lecture to be convinced of his sincerity.
+
+When he stood on the platform, in evening dress admirably worn, or in a
+loose, much used but perfectly cut, lounge suit if it better fitted the
+occasion, and faced his audience seriously, frankly, but with an
+engaging diffidence you could not but realize that he was giving himself
+up to his task with complete earnestness. Though now and then he
+pretended to be at a loss for a word, it was only to make it more
+effective when he uttered it. His voice was full and manly. He told a
+story well. He was never dull. He was fond of lecturing upon the younger
+writers of England and America, and he explained their merits to his
+audience with an enthusiasm that attested his generosity. Perhaps he
+told almost too much, for when you had heard his lecture you felt that
+you really knew all you wanted to about them and it was quite
+unnecessary to read their books. I suppose that is why when Roy had
+lectured in some provincial town not a single copy of the books of the
+authors he had spoken of was ever asked for, but there was always a run
+on his own. His energy was prodigious. Not only did he make successful
+tours of the United States, but he lectured up and down Great Britain.
+No club was so small, no society for the self-improvement of its members
+so insignificant, that Roy disdained to give it an hour of his time. Now
+and then he revised his lectures and issued them in neat little books.
+Most people who are interested in these things have at least looked
+through the works entitled _Modern Novelists_, _Russian Fiction_, and
+_Some Writers_; and few can deny that they exhibit a real feeling for
+literature and a charming personality.
+
+But this by no means exhausted his activities. He was an active member
+of the organizations that have been founded to further the interests of
+authors or to alleviate their hard lot when sickness or old age has
+brought them to penury. He was always willing to give his help when
+matters of copyright were the subject of legislation and he was never
+unprepared to take his place in those missions to a foreign country
+which are devised to establish amicable relations between writers of
+different nationalities. He could be counted on to reply for literature
+at a public dinner and he was invariably on the reception committee
+formed to give a proper welcome to a literary celebrity from overseas.
+No bazaar lacked an autographed copy of at least one of his books. He
+never refused to grant an interview. He justly said that no one knew
+better than he the hardships of the author’s trade and if he could help
+a struggling journalist to earn a few guineas by having a pleasant chat
+with him he had not the inhumanity to refuse. He generally asked his
+interviewer to luncheon and seldom failed to make a good impression on
+him. The only stipulation he made was that he should see the article
+before it was published. He was never impatient with the persons who
+call up the celebrated on the telephone at inconvenient moments to ask
+them for the information of newspaper readers whether they believe in
+God or what they eat for breakfast. He figured in every symposium and
+the public knew what he thought of prohibition, vegetarianism, jazz,
+garlic, exercise, marriage, politics, and the place of women in the
+home.
+
+His views on marriage were abstract, for he had successfully evaded the
+state which so many artists have found difficult to reconcile with the
+arduous pursuit of their calling. It was generally known that he had for
+some years cherished a hopeless passion for a married woman of rank, and
+though he never spoke of her but with chivalrous admiration, it was
+understood that she had treated him with harshness. The novels of his
+middle period reflected in their unwonted bitterness the strain to which
+he had been put. The anguish of spirit he had passed through then
+enabled him without offense to elude the advances of ladies of little
+reputation, frayed ornaments of a hectic circle, who were willing to
+exchange an uncertain present for the security of marriage with a
+successful novelist. When he saw in their bright eyes the shadow of the
+registry office he told them that the memory of his one great love would
+always prevent him from forming any permanent tie. His quixotry might
+exasperate, but could not affront them. He sighed a little when he
+reflected that he must be for ever denied the joys of domesticity and
+the satisfaction of parenthood, but it was a sacrifice that he was
+prepared to make not only to his ideal, but also to the possible partner
+of his joys. He had noticed that people really do not want to be
+bothered with the wives of authors and painters. The artist who insisted
+on taking his wife wherever he went only made himself a nuisance and
+indeed was in consequence often not asked to places he would have liked
+to go to; and if he left his wife at home, he was on his return exposed
+to recriminations that shattered the repose so essential for him to do
+the best that was in him. Alroy Kear was a bachelor and now at fifty was
+likely to remain one.
+
+He was an example of what an author can do, and to what heights he can
+rise, by industry, common-sense, honesty, and the efficient combination
+of means and ends. He was a good fellow and none but a cross-grained
+carper could grudge him his success. I felt that to fall asleep with his
+image in my mind would insure me a good night. I scribbled a note to
+Miss Fellows, knocked the ashes out of my pipe, put out the light in my
+sitting room, and went to bed.
+
+
+
+
+                                   II
+
+
+WHEN I rang for my letters and the papers next morning a message was
+delivered to me, in answer to my note to Miss Fellows, that Mr. Alroy
+Kear expected me at one-fifteen at his club in St. James’s Street; so a
+little before one I strolled round to my own and had the cocktail, which
+I was pretty sure Roy would not offer me. Then I walked down St. James’s
+Street, looking idly at the shop windows, and since I had still a few
+minutes to spare (I did not want to keep my appointment too punctually)
+I went into Christie’s to see if there was anything I liked the look of.
+The auction had already begun and a group of dark, small men were
+passing round to one another pieces of Victorian silver, while the
+auctioneer, following their gestures with bored eyes, muttered in a
+drone: “Ten shillings offered, eleven, eleven and six” . . . It was a
+fine day, early in June, and the air in King Street was bright. It made
+the pictures on the walls of Christie’s look very dingy. I went out. The
+people in the street walked with a kind of nonchalance, as though the
+ease of the day had entered into their souls and in the midst of their
+affairs they had a sudden and surprised inclination to stop and look at
+the picture of life.
+
+Roy’s club was sedate. In the ante-chamber were only an ancient porter
+and a page; and I had a sudden and melancholy feeling that the members
+were all attending the funeral of the head waiter. The page, when I had
+uttered Roy’s name, led me into an empty passage to leave my hat and
+stick and then into an empty hall hung with life-sized portraits of
+Victorian statesmen. Roy got up from a leather sofa and warmly greeted
+me.
+
+“Shall we go straight up?” he said.
+
+I was right in thinking that he would not offer me a cocktail and I
+commended my prudence. He led me up a noble flight of heavily carpeted
+stairs, and we passed nobody on the way; we entered the strangers’
+dining room, and we were its only occupants. It was a room of some size,
+very clean and white, with an Adam window. We sat down by it and a
+demure waiter handed us the bill of fare. Beef, mutton and lamb, cold
+salmon, apple tart, rhubarb tart, gooseberry tart. As my eye travelled
+down the inevitable list I sighed as I thought of the restaurants round
+the corner where there was French cooking, the clatter of life, and
+pretty painted women in summer frocks.
+
+“I can recommend the veal-and-ham pie,” said Roy.
+
+“All right.”
+
+“I’ll mix the salad myself,” he told the waiter in an off-hand and yet
+commanding way, and then, casting his eye once more on the bill of fare,
+generously: “And what about some asparagus to follow?”
+
+“That would be very nice.”
+
+His manner grew a trifle grander.
+
+“Asparagus for two and tell the chef to choose them himself. Now what
+would you like to drink? What do you say to a bottle of hock? We rather
+fancy our hock here.”
+
+When I had agreed to this he told the waiter to call the wine steward. I
+could not but admire the authoritative and yet perfectly polite manner
+in which he gave his orders. You felt that thus would a well-bred king
+send for one of his field marshals. The wine steward, portly in black,
+with the silver chain of his office round his neck, bustled in with the
+wine list in his hand. Roy nodded to him with curt familiarity.
+
+“Hulloa, Armstrong, we want some of the Liebfraumilch, the ’21.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+“How’s it holding up? Pretty well? We shan’t be able to get any more of
+it, you know.”
+
+“I’m afraid not, sir.”
+
+“Well, it’s no good meeting trouble halfway, is it, Armstrong?”
+
+Roy smiled at the steward with breezy cordiality. The steward saw from
+his long experience of members that the remark needed an answer.
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+Roy laughed and his eye sought mine. Quite a character, Armstrong.
+
+“Well, chill it, Armstrong; not too much, you know, but just right. I
+want my guest to see that we know what’s what here.” He turned to me.
+“Armstrong’s been with us for eight and forty years.” And when the wine
+steward had left us: “I hope you don’t mind coming here. It’s quiet and
+we can have a good talk. It’s ages since we did. You’re looking very
+fit.”
+
+This drew my attention to Roy’s appearance.
+
+“Not half so fit as you,” I answered.
+
+“The result of an upright, sober, and godly life,” he laughed. “Plenty
+of work. Plenty of exercise. How’s the golf? We must have a game one of
+these days.”
+
+I knew that Roy was scratch and that nothing would please him less than
+to waste a day with so indifferent a player as myself. But I felt I was
+quite safe in accepting so vague an invitation. He looked the picture of
+health. His curly hair was getting very gray, but it suited him and made
+his frank, sunburned face look younger. His eyes, which looked upon the
+world with such a hearty candour, were bright and clear. He was not so
+slim as in his youth and I was not surprised that when the waiter
+offered us rolls he asked for Rye-Vita. His slight corpulence only added
+to his dignity. It gave weight to his observations. Because his
+movements were a little more deliberate than they had been you had a
+comfortable feeling of confidence in him; he filled his chair with so
+much solidity that you had almost the impression that he sat upon a
+monument.
+
+I do not know whether, as I wished, I have indicated by my report of his
+dialogue with the waiter that his conversation was not as a rule
+brilliant or witty, but it was easy and he laughed so much that you
+sometimes had the illusion that what he said was funny. He was never at
+a loss for a remark and he could discourse on the topics of the day with
+an ease that prevented his hearers from experiencing any sense of
+strain.
+
+Many authors from their preoccupation with words have the bad habit of
+choosing those they use in conversation too carefully. They form their
+sentences with unconscious care and say neither more nor less than they
+mean. It makes intercourse with them somewhat formidable to persons in
+the upper ranks of society whose vocabulary is limited by their simple
+spiritual needs, and their company consequently is sought only with
+hesitation. No constraint of this sort was ever felt with Roy. He could
+talk with a dancing guardee in terms that were perfectly comprehensible
+to him and with a racing countess in the language of her stable boys.
+They said of him with enthusiasm and relief that he was not a bit like
+an author. No compliment pleased him better. The wise always use a
+number of ready-made phrases (at the moment I write “nobody’s business”
+is the most common), popular adjectives (like “divine” or “shy-making”),
+verbs that you only know the meaning of if you live in the right set
+(like “dunch”), which give ease and a homely sparkle to small talk and
+avoid the necessity of thought. The Americans, who are the most
+efficient people on the earth, have carried this device to such a height
+of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed
+phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation
+without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so
+leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big
+business and fornication. Roy’s repertory was extensive and his scent
+for the word of the minute unerring; it peppered his speech, but aptly,
+and he used it each time with a sort of bright eagerness, as though his
+fertile brain had just minted it.
+
+Now he talked of this and that, of our common friends and the latest
+books, of the opera. He was very breezy. He was always cordial, but
+to-day his cordiality took my breath away. He lamented that we saw one
+another so seldom and told me with the frankness that was one of his
+pleasantest characteristics how much he liked me and what a high opinion
+he had of me. I felt I must not fail to meet this friendliness halfway.
+He asked me about the book I was writing, I asked him about the book he
+was writing. We told one another that neither of us had had the success
+he deserved. We ate the veal-and-ham pie and Roy told me how he mixed a
+salad. We drank the hock and smacked appreciative lips.
+
+And I wondered when he was coming to the point.
+
+I could not bring myself to believe that at the height of the London
+season Alroy Kear would waste an hour on a fellow writer who was not a
+reviewer and had no influence in any quarter whatever in order to talk
+of Matisse, the Russian Ballet and Marcel Proust. Besides, at the back
+of his gaiety I vaguely felt a slight apprehension. Had I not known that
+he was in a prosperous state I should have suspected that he was going
+to borrow a hundred pounds from me. It began to look as though luncheon
+would end without his finding the opportunity to say what he had in
+mind. I knew he was cautious. Perhaps he thought that this meeting, the
+first after so long a separation, had better be employed in establishing
+friendly relations, and was prepared to look upon the pleasant,
+substantial meal merely as ground bait.
+
+“Shall we go and have our coffee in the next room?” he said.
+
+“If you like.”
+
+“I think it’s more comfortable.”
+
+I followed him into another room, much more spacious, with great leather
+armchairs and huge sofas; there were papers and magazines on the tables.
+Two old gentlemen in a corner were talking in undertones. They gave us a
+hostile glance, but this did not deter Roy from offering them a cordial
+greeting.
+
+“Hullo, General,” he cried, nodding breezily.
+
+I stood for a moment at the window, looking at the gaiety of the day,
+and wished I knew more of the historical associations of St. James’s
+Street. I was ashamed that I did not even know the name of the club
+across the way and was afraid to ask Roy lest he should despise me for
+not knowing what every decent person knew. He called me back by asking
+me whether I would have a brandy with my coffee, and when I refused,
+insisted. The club’s brandy was famous. We sat side by side on a sofa by
+the elegant fireplace and lit cigars.
+
+“The last time Edward Driffield ever came to London he lunched with me
+here,” said Roy casually. “I made the old man try our brandy and he was
+delighted with it. I was staying with his widow over last week-end.”
+
+“Were you?”
+
+“She sent you all sorts of messages.”
+
+“That’s very kind of her. I shouldn’t have thought she remembered me.”
+
+“Oh, yes, she does. You lunched there about six years ago, didn’t you?
+She says the old man was so glad to see you.”
+
+“I didn’t think _she_ was.”
+
+“Oh, you’re quite wrong. Of course she had to be very careful. The old
+man was pestered with people who wanted to see him and she had to
+husband his strength. She was always afraid he’d do too much. It’s a
+wonderful thing if you come to think of it that she should have kept him
+alive and in possession of all his faculties to the age of eighty-four.
+I’ve been seeing a good deal of her since he died. She’s awfully lonely.
+After all, she devoted herself to looking after him for twenty-five
+years. Othello’s occupation, you know. I really feel sorry for her.”
+
+“She’s still comparatively young. I dare say she’ll marry again.”
+
+“Oh, no, she couldn’t do that. That would be dreadful.”
+
+There was a slight pause while we sipped our brandy.
+
+“You must be one of the few persons still alive who knew Driffield when
+he was unknown. You saw quite a lot of him at one time, didn’t you?”
+
+“A certain amount. I was almost a small boy and he was a middle-aged
+man. We weren’t boon companions, you know.”
+
+“Perhaps not, but you must know a great deal about him that other people
+don’t.”
+
+“I suppose I do.”
+
+“Have you ever thought of writing your recollections of him?”
+
+“Good heavens, no!”
+
+“Don’t you think you ought to? He was one of the greatest novelists of
+our day. The last of the Victorians. He was an enormous figure. His
+novels have as good a chance of surviving as any that have been written
+in the last hundred years.”
+
+“I wonder. I’ve always thought them rather boring.”
+
+Roy looked at me with eyes twinkling with laughter.
+
+“How like you that is! Anyhow you must admit that you’re in the
+minority. I don’t mind telling you that I’ve read his novels not once or
+twice, but half a dozen times, and every time I read them I think
+they’re finer. Did you read the articles that were written about him at
+his death?”
+
+“Some of them.”
+
+“The consensus of opinion was absolutely amazing. I read every one.”
+
+“If they all said the same thing, wasn’t that rather unnecessary?”
+
+Roy shrugged his massive shoulders good-humouredly, but did not answer
+my question.
+
+“I thought the _Times Lit. Sup._ was splendid. It would have done the
+old man good to read it. I hear that the quarterlies are going to have
+articles in their next numbers.”
+
+“I still think his novels rather boring.”
+
+Roy smiled indulgently.
+
+“Doesn’t it make you slightly uneasy to think that you disagree with
+everyone whose opinion matters?”
+
+“Not particularly. I’ve been writing for thirty-five years now, and you
+can’t think how many geniuses I’ve seen acclaimed, enjoy their hour or
+two of glory, and vanish into obscurity. I wonder what’s happened to
+them. Are they dead, are they shut up in madhouses, are they hidden away
+in offices? I wonder if they furtively lend their books to the doctor
+and the maiden lady in some obscure village. I wonder if they are still
+great men in some Italian pension.”
+
+“Oh, yes, they’re the flash in the pans. I’ve known them.”
+
+“You’ve even lectured about them.”
+
+“One has to. One wants to give them a leg up if one can and one knows
+they won’t amount to anything. Hang it all, one can afford to be
+generous. But after all, Driffield wasn’t anything like that. The
+collected edition of his works is in thirty-seven volumes and the last
+set that came up at Sotheby’s sold for seventy-eight pounds. That speaks
+for itself. His sales have increased steadily every year and last year
+was the best he ever had. You can take my word for that. Mrs. Driffield
+showed me his accounts last time I was down there. Driffield has come to
+stay all right.”
+
+“Who can tell?”
+
+“Well, you think you can,” replied Roy acidly.
+
+I was not put out. I knew I was irritating him and it gave me a pleasant
+sensation.
+
+“I think the instinctive judgments I formed when I was a boy were right.
+They told me Carlyle was a great writer and I was ashamed that I found
+the _French Revolution_ and _Sartor Resartus_ unreadable. Can anyone
+read them now? I thought the opinions of others must be better than mine
+and I persuaded myself that I thought George Meredith magnificent. In my
+heart I found him affected, verbose, and insincere. A good many people
+think so too now. Because they told me that to admire Walter Pater was
+to prove myself a cultured young man, I admired Walter Pater, but
+heavens how Marius bored me!”
+
+“Oh, well, I don’t suppose anyone reads Pater now, and of course
+Meredith has gone all to pot and Carlyle was a pretentious windbag.”
+
+“You don’t know how secure of immortality they all looked thirty years
+ago.”
+
+“And have you never made mistakes?”
+
+“One or two. I didn’t think half as much of Newman as I do now, and I
+thought a great deal more of the tinkling quatrains of Fitzgerald. I
+could not read Goethe’s _Wilhelm Meister_; now I think it his
+masterpiece.”
+
+“And what did you think much of then that you think much of still?”
+
+“Well, _Tristram Shandy_ and _Amelia_ and _Vanity Fair_. _Madame
+Bovary_, _La Chartreuse de Parme_, and _Anna Karenina_. And Wordsworth
+and Keats and Verlaine.”
+
+“If you don’t mind my saying so, I don’t think that’s particularly
+original.”
+
+“I don’t mind your saying so at all. I don’t think it is. But you asked
+me why I believed in my own judgment, and I was trying to explain to you
+that, whatever I said out of timidity and in deference to the cultured
+opinion of the day, I didn’t really admire certain authors who were then
+thought admirable and the event seems to show that I was right. And what
+I honestly and instinctively liked then has stood the test of time with
+me and with critical opinion in general.”
+
+Roy was silent for a moment. He looked in the bottom of his cup, but
+whether to see if there were any more coffee in it or to find something
+to say, I did not know. I gave the clock on the chimney-piece a glance.
+In a minute it would be fitting for me to take my leave. Perhaps I had
+been wrong and Roy had invited me only that we might idly chat of
+Shakespeare and the musical glasses. I chid myself for the uncharitable
+thoughts I had had of him. I looked at him with concern. If that was his
+only object it must be that he was feeling tired or discouraged. If he
+was disinterested it could only be that for the moment at least the
+world was too much for him. But he caught my look at the clock and
+spoke.
+
+“I don’t see how you can deny that there must be something in a man
+who’s able to carry on for sixty years, writing book after book, and
+who’s able to hold an ever-increasing public. After all, at Ferne Court
+there are shelves filled with the translations of Driffield’s books into
+every language of civilized people. Of course I’m willing to admit that
+a lot he wrote seems a bit old-fashioned nowadays. He flourished in a
+bad period and he was inclined to be long-winded. Most of his plots are
+melodramatic; but there’s one quality you must allow him: beauty.”
+
+“Yes?” I said.
+
+“When all’s said and done, that’s the only thing that counts and
+Driffield never wrote a page that wasn’t instinct with beauty.”
+
+“Yes?” I said.
+
+“I wish you’d been there when we went down to present him with his
+portrait on his eightieth birthday. It really was a memorable occasion.”
+
+“I read about it in the papers.”
+
+“It wasn’t only writers, you know, it was a thoroughly representative
+gathering—science, politics, business, art, the world; I think you’d
+have to go a long way to find gathered together such a collection of
+distinguished people as got out from that train at Blackstable. It was
+awfully moving when the P.M. presented the old man with the Order of
+Merit. He made a charming speech. I don’t mind telling you there were
+tears in a good many eyes that day.”
+
+“Did Driffield cry?”
+
+“No, he was singularly calm. He was like he always was, rather shy, you
+know, and quiet, very well-mannered, grateful, of course, but a little
+dry. Mrs. Driffield didn’t want him to get overtired and when we went
+into lunch he stayed in his study, and she sent him something in on a
+tray. I slipped away while the others were having their coffee. He was
+smoking his pipe and looking at the portrait. I asked him what he
+thought of it. He wouldn’t tell me, he just smiled a little. He asked me
+if I thought he could take his teeth out and I said, No, the deputation
+would be coming in presently to say good-bye to him. Then I asked him if
+he didn’t think it was a wonderful moment. ‘Rum,’ he said, ‘very rum.’
+The fact is, I suppose, he was shattered. He was a messy eater in his
+later days and a messy smoker—he scattered the tobacco all over himself
+when he filled his pipe; Mrs. Driffield didn’t like people to see him
+when he was like that, but of course she didn’t mind me; I tidied him up
+a bit and then they all came in and shook hands with him, and we went
+back to town.”
+
+I got up.
+
+“Well, I really must be going. It’s been awfully nice seeing you.”
+
+“I’m just going along to the private view at the Leicester Galleries. I
+know the people there. I’ll take you in if you like.”
+
+“It’s very kind of you, but they sent me a card. No, I don’t think I’ll
+come.”
+
+We walked down the stairs and I got my hat. When we came out into the
+street and I turned to ward Piccadilly, Roy said:
+
+“I’ll just walk up to the top with you.” He got into step with me. “You
+knew his first wife, didn’t you?”
+
+“Whose?”
+
+“Driffield’s.”
+
+“Oh!” I had forgotten him. “Yes.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Fairly.”
+
+“I suppose she was awful.”
+
+“I don’t recollect that.”
+
+“She must have been dreadfully common. She was a barmaid, wasn’t she?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I wonder why the devil he married her. I’ve always been given to
+understand that she was extremely unfaithful to him.”
+
+“Extremely.”
+
+“Do you remember at all what she was like?”
+
+“Yes, very distinctly,” I smiled. “She was sweet.”
+
+Roy gave a short laugh.
+
+“That’s not the general impression.”
+
+I did not answer. We had reached Piccadilly, and stopping I held out my
+hand to Roy. He shook it, but I fancied without his usual heartiness. I
+had the impression that he was disappointed with our meeting. I could
+not imagine why. Whatever he had wanted of me I had not been able to do,
+for the reason that he had given me no inkling of what it was, and as I
+strolled under the arcade of the Ritz Hotel and along the park railings
+till I came opposite Half Moon Street I wondered if my manner had been
+more than ordinarily forbidding. It was quite evident that Roy had felt
+the moment inopportune to ask me to grant him a favour.
+
+I walked up Half Moon Street. After the gay tumult of Piccadilly it had
+a pleasant silence. It was sedate and respectable. Most of the houses
+let apartments, but this was not advertised by the vulgarity of a card;
+some had a brightly polished brass plate, like a doctor’s, to announce
+the fact and others the word _Apartments_ neatly painted on the
+fanlight. One or two with an added discretion merely gave the name of
+the proprietor, so that if you were ignorant you might have thought it a
+tailor’s or a money lender’s. There was none of the congested traffic of
+Jermyn Street, where also they let rooms, but here and there a smart
+car, unattended, stood outside a door and occasionally at another a taxi
+deposited a middle-aged lady. You had the feeling that the people who
+lodged here were not gay and a trifle disreputable as in Jermyn Street,
+racing men who rose in the morning with headaches and asked for a hair
+of the dog that bit them, but respectable women from the country who
+came up for six weeks for the London season and elderly gentlemen who
+belonged to exclusive clubs. You felt that they came year after year to
+the same house and perhaps had known the proprietor when he was still in
+private service. My own Miss Fellows had been cook in some very good
+places, but you would never have guessed it had you seen her walking
+along to do her shopping in Shepherd’s Market. She was not stout,
+red-faced, and blousy as one expects a cook to be; she was spare and
+very upright, neatly but fashionably dressed, a woman of middle age,
+with determined features; her lips were rouged and she wore an eyeglass.
+She was businesslike, quiet, coolly cynical, and very expensive.
+
+The rooms I occupied were on the ground floor. The parlour was papered
+with an old marbled paper and on the walls were water colours of
+romantic scenes, cavaliers bidding good-bye to their ladies and knights
+of old banqueting in stately halls; there were large ferns in pots, and
+the armchairs were covered with faded leather. There was about the room
+an amusing air of the eighteen eighties, and when I looked out of the
+window I expected to see a private hansom rather than a Chrysler. The
+curtains were of a heavy red rep.
+
+
+
+
+                                  III
+
+
+I HAD a good deal to do that afternoon, but my conversation with Roy and
+the impression of the day before yesterday, the sense of a past that
+still dwelt in the minds of men not yet old, that my room, I could not
+tell why, had given me even more strongly than usual as I entered it,
+inveigled my thoughts to saunter down the road of memory. It was as
+though all the people who had at one time and another inhabited my
+lodging pressed upon me with their old-fashioned ways and odd clothes,
+men with muttonchop whiskers in frock coats and women in bustles and
+flounced skirts. The rumble of London, which I did not know if I
+imagined or heard (my house was at the top of Half Moon Street), and the
+beauty of the sunny June day (_le vierge, le vivace et le bel
+aujourd’hui_), gave my reverie a poignancy which was not quite painful.
+The past I looked at seemed to have lost its reality and I saw it as
+though it were a scene in a play and I a spectator in the back row of a
+dark gallery. But it was all very clear as far as it went. It was not
+misty like life as one leads it when the ceaseless throng of impressions
+seems to rob them of outline, but sharp and definite like a landscape
+painted in oils by a painstaking artist of the middle-Victorian era.
+
+I fancy that life is more amusing now than it was forty years ago and I
+have a notion that people are more amiable. They may have been worthier
+then, possessed of more solid virtue as, I am told, they were possessed
+of more substantial knowledge; I do not know. I know they were more
+cantankerous; they ate too much, many of them drank too much, they took
+too little exercise. Their livers were out of order and their digestions
+often impaired. They were irritable. I do not speak of London of which I
+knew nothing till I was grown up, nor of grand people who hunted and
+shot, but of the countryside and of the modest persons, gentlemen of
+small means, clergymen, retired officers, and such like who made up the
+local society. The dullness of their lives was almost incredible. There
+were no golf links; at a few houses was an ill-kept tennis court, but it
+was only the very young who played; there was a dance once a year in the
+Assembly Rooms; carriage folk went for a drive in the afternoon; the
+others went for a “constitutional!” You may say that they did not miss
+amusements they had never thought of, and that they created excitement
+for themselves from the small entertainment (tea when you were asked to
+bring your music and you sang the songs of Maude Valérie White and
+Tosti) which at infrequent intervals they offered one another; the days
+were very long; they were bored. People who were condemned to spend
+their lives within a mile of one another quarrelled bitterly, and seeing
+each other every day in the town cut one another for twenty years. They
+were vain, pig-headed, and odd. It was a life that perhaps formed queer
+characters; people were not so like one another as now and they acquired
+a small celebrity by their idiosyncrasies, but they were not easy to get
+on with. It may be that we are flippant and careless, but we accept one
+another without the old suspicion; our manners, rough and ready, are
+kindly; we are more prepared to give and take and we are not so crabbed.
+
+I lived with an uncle and aunt on the outskirts of a little Kentish town
+by the sea. It was called Blackstable and my uncle was the vicar. My
+aunt was a German. She came of a very noble but impoverished family, and
+the only portion she brought her husband was a marquetry writing desk,
+made for an ancestor in the Seventeenth Century, and a set of tumblers.
+Of these only a few remained when I entered upon the scene and they were
+used as ornaments in the drawing room. I liked the grand coat-of-arms
+with which they were heavily engraved. There were I don’t know how many
+quarterings, which my aunt used demurely to explain to me, and the
+supporters were fine and the crest emerging from a crown incredibly
+romantic. She was a simple old lady, of a meek and Christian
+disposition, but she had not, though married for more than thirty years
+to a modest parson with very little income beyond his stipend, forgotten
+that she was _hochwohlgeboren_. When a rich banker from London, with a
+name that in these days is famous in financial circles, took a
+neighbouring house for the summer holidays, though my uncle called on
+him (chiefly, I surmise, to get a subscription to the Additional Curates
+Society), she refused to do so because he was in trade. No one thought
+her a snob. It was accepted as perfectly reasonable. The banker had a
+little boy of my own age, and, I forget how, I became acquainted with
+him. I still remember the discussion that ensued when I asked if I might
+bring him to the vicarage; permission was reluctantly given me, but I
+was not allowed to go in return to his house. My aunt said I’d be
+wanting to go to the coal merchant’s next, and my uncle said:
+
+“Evil communications corrupt good manners.”
+
+The banker used to come to church every Sunday morning, and he always
+put half a sovereign in the plate, but if he thought his generosity made
+a good impression he was much mistaken. All Blackstable knew, but only
+thought him purse-proud.
+
+Blackstable consisted of a long winding street that led to the sea, with
+little two-story houses, many of them residential but with a good many
+shops; and from this ran a certain number of short streets, recently
+built, that ended on one side in the country and on the other in the
+marshes. Round about the harbour was a congeries of narrow winding
+alleys. Colliers brought coal from Newcastle to Blackstable and the
+harbour was animated. When I was old enough to be allowed out by myself
+I used to spend hours wandering about there looking at the rough grimy
+men in their jerseys and watching the coal being unloaded.
+
+It was at Blackstable that I first met Edward Driffield. I was fifteen
+and had just come back from school for the summer holidays. The morning
+after I got home I took a towel and bathing drawers and went down to the
+beach. The sky was unclouded and the air hot and bright, but the North
+Sea gave it a pleasant tang so that it was a delight just to live and
+breathe. In winter the natives of Blackstable walked down the empty
+street with a hurried gait, screwing themselves up in order to expose as
+little surface as possible to the bitterness of the east wind, but now
+they dawdled; they stood about in groups in the space between the Duke
+of Kent and the Bear and Key. You heard a hum of their East Anglian
+speech, drawling a little with an accent that may be ugly, but in which
+from old association I still find a leisurely charm. They were
+fresh-complexioned, with blue eyes and high cheek bones, and their hair
+was light. They had a clean, honest, and ingenuous look. I do not think
+they were very intelligent, but they were guileless. They looked
+healthy, and though not tall for the most part were strong and active.
+There was little wheeled traffic in Blackstable in those days and the
+groups that stood about the road chatting seldom had to move for
+anything but the doctor’s dogcart or the baker’s trap.
+
+Passing the bank, I called in to say how-do-you-do to the manager, who
+was my uncle’s churchwarden, and when I came out met my uncle’s curate.
+He stopped and shook hands with me. He was walking with a stranger. He
+did not introduce me to him. He was a smallish man with a beard and he
+was dressed rather loudly in a bright brown knickerbocker suit, the
+breeches very tight, with navy blue stockings, black boots, and a
+billycock hat. Knickerbockers were uncommon then, at least in
+Blackstable, and being young and fresh from school I immediately set the
+fellow down as a cad. But while I chatted with the curate he looked at
+me in a friendly way, with a smile in his pale blue eyes. I felt that
+for two pins he would have joined in the conversation and I assumed a
+haughty demeanour. I was not going to run the risk of being spoken to by
+a chap who wore knickerbockers like a gamekeeper and I resented the
+familiarity of his good-humoured expression. I was myself faultlessly
+dressed in white flannel trousers, a blue blazer with the arms of my
+school on the breast pocket, and a black-and-white straw hat with a very
+wide brim. The curate said that he must be getting on (fortunately, for
+I never knew how to break away from a meeting in the street and would
+endure agonies of shyness while I looked in vain for an opportunity),
+but said that he would be coming up to the vicarage that afternoon and
+would I tell my uncle. The stranger nodded and smiled as we parted, but
+I gave him a stony stare. I supposed he was a summer visitor and in
+Blackstable we did not mix with the summer visitors. We thought London
+people vulgar. We said it was horrid to have all that rag-tag and
+bobtail down from town every year, but of course it was all right for
+the tradespeople. Even they, however, gave a faint sigh of relief when
+September came to an end and Blackstable sank back into its usual peace.
+
+When I went home to dinner, my hair insufficiently dried and clinging
+lankily to my head, I remarked that I had met the curate and he was
+coming up that afternoon.
+
+“Old Mrs. Shepherd died last night,” said my uncle in explanation.
+
+The curate’s name was Galloway; he was a tall thin ungainly man with
+untidy black hair and a small sallow dark face. I suppose he was quite
+young, but to me he seemed middle-aged. He talked very quickly and
+gesticulated a great deal. This made people think him rather queer and
+my uncle would not have kept him but that he was very energetic, and my
+uncle, being extremely lazy, was glad to have someone to take so much
+work off his shoulders. After he had finished the business that had
+brought him to the vicarage Mr. Galloway came in to say how-do-you-do to
+my aunt and she asked him to stay to tea.
+
+“Who was that you were with this morning?” I asked him as he sat down.
+
+“Oh, that was Edward Driffield. I didn’t introduce him. I wasn’t sure if
+your uncle would wish you to know him.”
+
+“I think it would be most undesirable,” said my uncle.
+
+“Why, who is he? He’s not a Blackstable man, is he?”
+
+“He was born in the parish,” said my uncle. “His father was old Miss
+Wolfe’s bailiff at Ferne Court. But they were chapel people.”
+
+“He married a Blackstable girl,” said Mr. Galloway.
+
+“In church, I believe,” said my aunt. “Is it true that she was a barmaid
+at the Railway Arms?”
+
+“She looks as if she might have been something like that,” said Mr.
+Galloway, with a smile.
+
+“Are they going to stay long?”
+
+“Yes, I think so. They’ve taken one of those houses in that street where
+the Congregational chapel is,” said the curate.
+
+At that time in Blackstable, though the new streets doubtless had names,
+nobody knew or used them.
+
+“Is he coming to church?” asked my uncle.
+
+“I haven’t actually talked to him about it yet,” answered Mr. Galloway.
+“He’s quite an educated man, you know.”
+
+“I can hardly believe that,” said my uncle.
+
+“He was at Haversham School, I understand, and he got any number of
+scholarships and prizes. He got a scholarship at Wadham, but he ran away
+to sea instead.”
+
+“I’d heard he was rather a harum-scarum,” said my uncle.
+
+“He doesn’t look much like a sailor,” I remarked.
+
+“Oh, he gave up the sea many years ago. He’s been all sorts of things
+since then.”
+
+“Jack of all trades and master of none,” said my uncle.
+
+“Now, I understand, he’s a writer.”
+
+“That won’t last long,” said my uncle.
+
+I had never known a writer before; I was interested.
+
+“What does he write?” I asked. “Books?”
+
+“I believe so,” said the curate, “and articles. He had a novel published
+last spring. He’s promised to lend it me.”
+
+“I wouldn’t waste my time on rubbish in your place,” said my uncle, who
+never read anything but the _Times_ and the _Guardian_.
+
+“What’s it called?” I asked.
+
+“He told me the title, but I forget it.”
+
+“Anyhow, it’s quite unnecessary that you should know,” said my uncle. “I
+should very much object to your reading trashy novels. During your
+holidays the best thing you can do is to keep out in the open air. And
+you have a holiday task, I presume?”
+
+I had. It was _Ivanhoe_. I had read it when I was ten, and the notion of
+reading it again and writing an essay on it bored me to distraction.
+
+When I consider the greatness that Edward Driffield afterward achieved I
+cannot but smile as I remember the fashion in which he was discussed at
+my uncle’s table. When he died a little while ago and an agitation arose
+among his admirers to have him buried in Westminster Abbey the present
+incumbent at Blackstable, my uncle’s successor twice removed, wrote to
+the _Daily Mail_ pointing out that Driffield was born in the parish and
+not only had passed long years, especially the last twenty-five of his
+life, in the neighbourhood, but had laid there the scene of some of his
+most famous books; it was only becoming then that his bones should rest
+in the churchyard where under the Kentish elms his father and mother
+dwelt in peace. There was relief in Blackstable when, the Dean of
+Westminster having somewhat curtly refused the Abbey, Mrs. Driffield
+sent a dignified letter to the press in which she expressed her
+confidence that she was carrying out the dearest wishes of her dead
+husband in having him buried among the simple people he knew and loved
+so well. Unless the notabilities of Blackstable have very much changed
+since my day I do not believe they very much liked that phrase about
+“simple people,” but, as I afterward learnt, they had never been able to
+“abide” the second Mrs. Driffield.
+
+
+
+
+                                   IV
+
+
+TO MY surprise, two or three days after I lunched with Alroy Kear I
+received a letter from Edward Driffield’s widow. It ran as follows:
+
+    DEAR FRIEND,
+    _I hear that you had a long talk with Roy last week about Edward
+    Driffield and I am so glad to know that you spoke of him so
+    nicely. He often talked to me of you. He had the greatest
+    admiration for your talent and he was so very pleased to see you
+    when you came to lunch with us. I wonder if you have in your
+    possession any letters that he wrote to you and if so whether
+    you would let me have copies of them. I should be very pleased
+    if I could persuade you to come down for two or three days and
+    stay with me. I live very quietly now and have no one here, so
+    please choose your own time. I shall be delighted to see you
+    again and have a talk of old times. I have a particular service
+    I want you to do me and I am sure that for the sake of my dear
+    dead husband you will not refuse._
+
+                                           _Yours ever sincerely_,
+                                                     AMY DRIFFIELD.
+
+I had seen Mrs. Driffield only once and she but mildly interested me; I
+do not like being addressed as “dear friend”; that alone would have been
+enough to make me decline her invitation; and I was exasperated by its
+general character which, however ingenious an excuse I invented, made
+the reason I did not go quite obvious, namely, that I did not want to. I
+had no letters of Driffield’s. I suppose years ago he had written to me
+several times, brief notes, but he was then an obscure scribbler and
+even if I ever kept letters it would never have occurred to me to keep
+his. How was I to know that he was going to be acclaimed as the greatest
+novelist of our day? I hesitated only because Mrs. Driffield said she
+wanted me to do something for her. It would certainly be a nuisance, but
+it would be churlish not to do it if I could, and after all her husband
+was a very distinguished man.
+
+The letter came by the first post and after breakfast I rang up Roy. As
+soon as I mentioned my name I was put through to him by his secretary.
+If I were writing a detective story I should immediately have suspected
+that my call was awaited, and Roy’s virile voice calling hullo would
+have confirmed my suspicion. No one could naturally be quite so cheery
+so early in the morning.
+
+“I hope I didn’t wake you,” I said.
+
+“Good God, no.” His healthy laugh rippled along the wires. “I’ve been up
+since seven. I’ve been riding in the park. I’m just going to have
+breakfast. Come along and have it with me.”
+
+“I have a great affection for you, Roy,” I answered, “but I don’t think
+you’re the sort of person I’d care to have breakfast with. Besides, I’ve
+already had mine. Look here, I’ve just had a letter from Mrs. Driffield
+asking me to go down and stay.”
+
+“Yes, she told me she was going to ask you. We might go down together.
+She’s got quite a good grass court and she does one very well. I think
+you’d like it.”
+
+“What is it that she wants me to do?”
+
+“Ah, I think she’d like to tell you that herself.”
+
+There was a softness in Roy’s voice such as I imagined he would use if
+he were telling a prospective father that his wife was about to gratify
+his wishes. It cut no ice with me.
+
+“Come off it, Roy,” I said. “I’m too old a bird to be caught with chaff.
+Spit it out.”
+
+There was a moment’s pause at the other end of the telephone. I felt
+that Roy did not like my expression.
+
+“Are you busy this morning?” he asked suddenly. “I’d like to come and
+see you.”
+
+“All right, come on. I shall be in till one.”
+
+“I’ll be round in about an hour.”
+
+I replaced the receiver and relit my pipe. I gave Mrs. Driffield’s
+letter a second glance.
+
+I remembered vividly the luncheon to which she referred. I happened to
+be staying for a long week-end not far from Tercanbury with a certain
+Lady Hodmarsh, the clever and handsome American wife of a sporting
+baronet with no intelligence and charming manners. Perhaps to relieve
+the tedium of domestic life she was in the habit of entertaining persons
+connected with the arts. Her parties were mixed and gay. Members of the
+nobility and gentry mingled with astonishment and an uneasy awe with
+painters, writers, and actors. Lady Hodmarsh neither read the books nor
+looked at the pictures of the people to whom she offered hospitality,
+but she liked their company and enjoyed the feeling it gave her of being
+in the artistic know. When on this occasion the conversation happened to
+dwell for a moment on Edward Driffield, her most celebrated neighbour,
+and I mentioned that I had at one time known him very well she proposed
+that we should go over and lunch with him on Monday when a number of her
+guests were going back to London. I demurred, for I had not seen
+Driffield for five and thirty years and I could not believe that he
+would remember me; and if he did (though this I kept to myself) I could
+not believe that it would be with pleasure. But there was a young peer
+there, a certain Lord Scallion, with literary inclinations so violent
+that, instead of ruling this country as the laws of man and nature have
+decreed, he devoted his energy to the composition of detective novels.
+His curiosity to see Driffield was boundless and the moment Lady
+Hodmarsh made her suggestion he said it would be too divine. The star
+guest of the party was a big young fat duchess and it appeared that her
+admiration for the celebrated writer was so intense that she was
+prepared to cut an engagement in London and not go up till the
+afternoon.
+
+“That would make four of us,” said Lady Hodmarsh. “I don’t think they
+could manage more than that. I’ll wire to Mrs. Driffield at once.”
+
+I could not see myself going to see Driffield in that company and tried
+to throw cold water on the scheme.
+
+“It’ll only bore him to death,” I said. “He’ll hate having a lot of
+strangers barging in on him like this. He’s a very old man.”
+
+“That’s why if they want to see him they’d better see him now. He can’t
+last much longer. Mrs. Driffield says he likes to meet people. They
+never see anybody but the doctor and the parson and it’s a change for
+them. Mrs. Driffield said I could always bring anyone interesting. Of
+course she has to be very careful. He’s pestered by all sorts of people
+who want to see him just out of idle curiosity, and interviewers and
+authors who want him to read their books, and silly hysterical women.
+But Mrs. Driffield is wonderful. She keeps everyone away from him but
+those she thinks he ought to see. I mean, he’d be dead in a week if he
+saw everyone who wants to see him. She has to think of his strength.
+Naturally we’re different.”
+
+Of course I thought I was; but as I looked at them I perceived that the
+duchess and Lord Scallion thought they were too; so it seemed best to
+say no more.
+
+We drove over in a bright yellow Rolls. Ferne Court was three miles from
+Blackstable. It was a stucco house built, I suppose, about 1840, plain
+and unpretentious, but substantial; it was the same back and front, two
+large bows on each side of a flat piece in which was the front door, and
+there were two large bows on the first floor. A plain parapet hid the
+low roof. It stood in about an acre of garden, somewhat overgrown with
+trees, but neatly tended, and from the drawing room window you had a
+pleasant view of woods and green downland. The drawing room was
+furnished so exactly as you felt a drawing room in a country house of
+modest size should be furnished that it was slightly disconcerting.
+Clean bright chintzes covered the comfortable chairs and the large sofa,
+and the curtains were of the same bright clean chintz. On little
+Chippendale tables stood large Oriental bowls filled with pot-pourri. On
+the cream-coloured walls were pleasant water colours by painters well
+known at the beginning of this century. There were great masses of
+flowers charmingly arranged, and on the grand piano in silver frames
+photographs of celebrated actresses, deceased authors, and minor
+royalties.
+
+It was no wonder that the duchess cried out that it was a lovely room.
+It was just the kind of room in which a distinguished writer should
+spend the evening of his days. Mrs. Driffield received us with modest
+assurance. She was a woman of about five and forty, I judged, with a
+small sallow face and neat, sharp features. She had a black cloche hat
+pressed tight down on her head and wore a gray coat and skirt. Her
+figure was slight and she was neither tall nor short, and she looked
+trim, competent, and alert. She might have been the squire’s widowed
+daughter, who ran the parish and had a peculiar gift for organization.
+She introduced us to a clergyman and a lady, who got up as we were shown
+in. They were the Vicar of Blackstable and his wife. Lady Hodmarsh and
+the duchess immediately assumed that cringing affability that persons of
+rank assume with their inferiors in order to show them that they are not
+for a moment aware that there is any difference of station between them.
+
+Then Edward Driffield came in. I had seen portraits of him from time to
+time in the illustrated papers but it was with dismay that I saw him in
+the flesh. He was smaller than I remembered and very thin, his head was
+barely covered with fine silvery hair, he was clean-shaven, and his skin
+was almost transparent. His blue eyes were very pale and the rims of his
+eyelids red. He looked an old, old man, hanging on to mortality by a
+thread; he wore very white false teeth and they made his smile seem
+forced and stiff. I had never seen him but bearded and his lips were
+thin and pallid. He was dressed in a new, well-cut suit of blue serge
+and his low collar, two or three sizes too large for him, showed a
+wrinkled, scraggy neck. He wore a neat black tie with a pearl in it. He
+looked a little like a dean in mufti on his summer holiday in
+Switzerland.
+
+Mrs. Driffield gave him a quick glance as he came in and smiled
+encouragingly; she must have been satisfied with the neatness of his
+appearance. He shook hands with his guests and to each one said
+something civil. When he came to me he said:
+
+“It’s very good of a busy and successful man like you to come all this
+way to see an old fogey.”
+
+I was a trifle taken aback, for he spoke as though he had never seen me
+before, and I was afraid my friends would think I had been boasting when
+I claimed at one time to have known him intimately. I wondered if he had
+completely forgotten me.
+
+“I don’t know how many years it is since we last met,” I said, trying to
+be hearty.
+
+He looked at me for what I suppose was no more than a few seconds, but
+for what seemed to me quite a long time, and then I had a sudden shock;
+he gave me a little wink. It was so quick that nobody but I could have
+caught it, and so unexpected in that distinguished old face that I could
+hardly believe my eyes. In a moment his face was once more composed,
+intelligently benign, and quietly observant. Luncheon was announced and
+we trooped into the dining room.
+
+This also was in what can only be described as the acme of good taste.
+On the Chippendale sideboard were silver candlesticks. We sat on
+Chippendale chairs and ate off a Chippendale table. In a silver bowl in
+the middle were roses and round this were silver dishes with chocolates
+in them and peppermint creams; the silver salt cellars were brightly
+polished and evidently Georgian. On the cream-coloured walls were
+mezzotints of ladies painted by Sir Peter Lely and on the chimney-piece
+a garniture of blue delft. The service was conducted by two maids in
+brown uniform and Mrs. Driffield in the midst of her fluent conversation
+kept a wary eye on them. I wondered how she had managed to train these
+buxom Kentish girls (their healthy colour and high cheek bones betrayed
+the fact that they were “local”) to such a pitch of efficiency. The
+lunch was just right for the occasion, smart but not showy, fillets of
+sole rolled up and covered with a white sauce, roast chicken, with new
+potatoes and green peas, asparagus and gooseberry fool. It was the
+dining room and the lunch and the manner which you felt exactly fitted a
+literary gent of great celebrity but moderate wealth.
+
+Mrs. Driffield, like the wives of most men of letters, was a great
+talker and she did not let the conversation at her end of the table
+flag; so that, however much we might have wanted to hear what her
+husband was saying at the other, we had no opportunity. She was gay and
+sprightly. Though Edward Driffield’s indifferent health and great age
+obliged her to live most of the year in the country, she managed
+notwithstanding to run up to town often enough to keep abreast of what
+was going on and she was soon engaged with Lord Scallion in an animated
+discussion of the plays in the London theatres and the terrible crowd at
+the Royal Academy. It had taken her two visits to look at all the
+pictures and even then she had not had time to see the water colours.
+She liked water colours so much; they were unpretentious; she hated
+things to be pretentious.
+
+So that host and hostess should sit at the head and foot of the table,
+the vicar sat next to Lord Scallion and his wife next to the duchess.
+The duchess engaged her in conversation on the subject of working-class
+dwellings, a subject on which she seemed to be much more at home than
+the parson’s lady, and my attention being thus set free I watched Edward
+Driffield. He was talking to Lady Hodmarsh. She was apparently telling
+him how to write a novel and giving him a list of a few that he really
+ought to read. He listened to her with what looked like polite interest,
+putting in now and then a remark in a voice too low for me to catch, and
+when she made a jest (she made them frequently and often good ones) he
+gave a little chuckle and shot her a quick look that seemed to say: this
+woman isn’t such a damned fool after all. Remembering the past, I asked
+myself curiously what he thought of this grand company, his neatly
+turned out wife, so competent and discreetly managing, and the elegant
+surroundings in which he lived. I wondered if he regretted his early
+days of adventure. I wondered if all this amused him or if the amiable
+civility of his manner masked a hideous boredom. Perhaps he felt my eyes
+upon him, for he raised his. They rested on me for a while with a
+meditative look, mild and yet oddly scrutinizing, and then suddenly,
+unmistakably this time, he gave me another wink. The frivolous gesture
+in that old, withered face was more than startling, it was embarrassing;
+I did not know what to do. My lips outlined a dubious smile.
+
+But the duchess joining in the conversation at the head of the table,
+the vicar’s wife turned to me.
+
+“You knew him many years ago, didn’t you?” she asked me in a low tone.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She gave the company a glance to see that no one was attending to us.
+
+“His wife is anxious that you shouldn’t call up old memories that might
+be painful to him. He’s very frail, you know, and the least thing upsets
+him.”
+
+“I’ll be very careful.”
+
+“The way she looks after him is simply wonderful. Her devotion is a
+lesson to all of us. She realizes what a precious charge it is. Her
+unselfishness is beyond words.” She lowered her voice a little more. “Of
+course he’s a very old man and old men sometimes are a little trying;
+I’ve never seen her out of patience. In her way she’s just as wonderful
+as he is.”
+
+These were the sort of remarks to which it was difficult to find a
+reply, but I felt that one was expected of me.
+
+“Considering everything I think he looks very well,” I murmured.
+
+“He owes it all to her.”
+
+At the end of luncheon we went back into the drawing room and after we
+had been standing about for two or three minutes Edward Driffield came
+up to me. I was talking with the vicar and for want of anything better
+to say was admiring the charming view. I turned to my host.
+
+“I was just saying how picturesque that little row of cottages is down
+there.”
+
+“From here.” Driffield looked at their broken outline and an ironic
+smile curled his thin lips. “I was born in one of them. Rum, isn’t it?”
+
+But Mrs. Driffield came up to us with bustling geniality. Her voice was
+brisk and melodious.
+
+“Oh, Edward, I’m sure the duchess would like to see your writing room.
+She has to go almost immediately.”
+
+“I’m so sorry, but I must catch the three-eighteen from Tercanbury,”
+said the duchess.
+
+We filed into Driffield’s study. It was a large room on the other side
+of the house, looking out on the same view as the dining room, with a
+bow window. It was the sort of room that a devoted wife would evidently
+arrange for her literary husband. It was scrupulously tidy and large
+bowls of flowers gave it a feminine touch.
+
+“This is the desk at which he’s written all his later works,” said Mrs.
+Driffield, closing a book that was open face downward on it. “It’s the
+frontispiece in the third volume of the _edition de luxe_. It’s a period
+piece.”
+
+We all admired the writing table and Lady Hodmarsh, when she thought no
+one was looking, ran her fingers along its under edge to see if it was
+genuine. Mrs. Driffield gave us a quick, bright smile.
+
+“Would you like to see one of his manuscripts?”
+
+“I’d love to,” said the duchess, “and then I simply must bolt.”
+
+Mrs. Driffield took from a shelf a manuscript bound in blue morocco, and
+while the rest of the party reverently examined it I had a look at the
+books with which the room was lined. As authors will, I ran my eye round
+quickly to see if there were any of mine, but could not find one; I saw,
+however, a complete set of Alroy Kear’s and a great many novels in
+bright bindings, which looked suspiciously unread; I guessed that they
+were the works of authors who had sent them to the master in homage to
+his talent and perhaps the hope of a few words of eulogy that could be
+used in the publisher’s advertisements. But all the books were so neatly
+arranged, they were so clean, that I had the impression they were very
+seldom read. There was the Oxford Dictionary and there were standard
+editions in grand bindings of most of the English classics, Fielding,
+Boswell, Hazlitt, and so on, and there were a great many books on the
+sea; I recognized the variously coloured, untidy volumes of the sailing
+directions issued by the Admiralty, and there were a number of works on
+gardening. The room had the look not of a writer’s workshop, but of a
+memorial to a great name, and you could almost see already the desultory
+tripper wandering in for want of something better to do and smell the
+rather musty, close smell of a museum that few visited. I had a
+suspicion that nowadays if Driffield read anything at all it was the
+_Gardener’s Chronicle_ or the _Shipping Gazette_, of which I saw a
+bundle on a table in the corner.
+
+When the ladies had seen all they wanted we bade our hosts farewell. But
+Lady Hodmarsh was a woman of tact and it must have occurred to her that
+I, the excuse for the party, had scarcely had a word with Edward
+Driffield, for at the door, enveloping me with a friendly smile, she
+said to him:
+
+“I was so interested to hear that you and Mr. Ashenden had known one
+another years and years ago. Was he a nice little boy?”
+
+Driffield looked at me for a moment with that level, ironic gaze of his.
+I had the impression that if there had been nobody there he would have
+put his tongue out at me.
+
+“Shy,” he replied. “I taught him to ride a bicycle.”
+
+We got once more into the huge yellow Rolls and drove off.
+
+“He’s too sweet,” said the duchess. “I’m so glad we went.”
+
+“He has such nice manners, hasn’t he?” said Lady Hodmarsh.
+
+“You didn’t really expect him to eat his peas with a knife, did you?” I
+asked.
+
+“I wish he had,” said Scallion. “It would have been so picturesque.”
+
+“I believe it’s very difficult,” said the duchess. “I’ve tried over and
+over again and I can never get them to stay on.”
+
+“You have to spear them,” said Scallion.
+
+“Not at all,” retorted the duchess. “You have to balance them on the
+flat, and they roll like the devil.”
+
+“What did you think of Mrs. Driffield?” asked Lady Hodmarsh.
+
+“I suppose she serves her purpose,” said the duchess.
+
+“He’s so old, poor darling, he must have someone to look after him. You
+know she was a hospital nurse?”
+
+“Oh, was she?” said the duchess. “I thought perhaps she’d been his
+secretary or typist or something.”
+
+“She’s quite nice,” said Lady Hodmarsh, warmly defending a friend.
+
+“Oh, quite.”
+
+“He had a long illness about twenty years ago, and she was his nurse
+then, and after he got well he married her.”
+
+“Funny how men will do that. She must have been years younger than him.
+She can’t be more than—what?—forty or forty-five.”
+
+“No, I shouldn’t think so. Forty-seven, say. I’m told she’s done a great
+deal for him. I mean, she’s made him quite presentable. Alroy Kear told
+me that before that he was almost too bohemian.”
+
+“As a rule authors’ wives are odious.”
+
+“It’s such a bore having to have them, isn’t it?”
+
+“Crushing. I wonder they don’t see that themselves.”
+
+“Poor wretches, they often suffer from the delusion that people find
+them interesting,” I murmured.
+
+We reached Tercanbury, dropped the duchess at the station, and drove on.
+
+
+
+
+                                   V
+
+
+IT WAS true that Edward Driffield had taught me to bicycle. That was
+indeed how I first made his acquaintance. I do not know how long the
+safety bicycle had been invented, but I know that it was not common in
+the remote part of Kent in which I lived and when you saw someone
+speeding along on solid tires you turned round and looked till he was
+out of sight. It was still a matter for jocularity on the part of
+middle-aged gentlemen who said Shank’s pony was good enough for them,
+and for trepidation on the part of elderly ladies who made a dash for
+the side of the road when they saw one coming. I had been for some time
+filled with envy of the boys whom I saw riding into the school grounds
+on their bicycles, and it gave a pretty opportunity for showing off when
+you entered the gateway without holding on to the handles. I had
+persuaded my uncle to let me have one at the beginning of the summer
+holidays, and though my aunt was against it, since she said I should
+only break my neck, he had yielded to my pertinacity more willingly
+because I was of course paying for it out of my own money. I ordered it
+before school broke up and a few days later the carrier brought it over
+from Tercanbury.
+
+I was determined to learn to ride it by myself and chaps at school had
+told me that they had learned in half an hour. I tried and tried and at
+last came to the conclusion that I was abnormally stupid (I am inclined
+now to think that I was exaggerating), but even after my pride was
+sufficiently humbled for me to allow the gardener to hold me up I seemed
+at the end of the first morning no nearer to being able to get on by
+myself than at the beginning. Next day, however, thinking that the
+carriage drive at the vicarage was too winding to give a fellow a proper
+chance, I wheeled the bicycle to a road not far away which I knew was
+perfectly flat and straight and so solitary that no one would see me
+making a fool of myself. I tried several times to mount, but fell off
+each time. I barked my shins against the pedals and got very hot and
+bothered. After I had been doing this for about an hour, though I began
+to think that God did not intend me to ride a bicycle, but was
+determined (unable to bear the thought of the sarcasms of my uncle, his
+representative at Blackstable) to do so all the same, to my disgust I
+saw two people on bicycles coming along the deserted road. I immediately
+wheeled my machine to the side and sat down on a stile, looking out to
+sea in a nonchalant way as though I had been for a ride and were just
+sitting there wrapped in contemplation of the vasty ocean. I kept my
+eyes dreamily averted from the two persons who were advancing toward me,
+but I felt that they were coming nearer, and through the corner of my
+eye I saw that they were a man and a woman. As they passed me the woman
+swerved violently to my side of the road and, crashing against me, fell
+to the ground.
+
+“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I knew I should fall off the moment I saw
+you.”
+
+It was impossible under the circumstances to preserve my appearance of
+abstraction and, blushing furiously, I said that it didn’t matter at
+all.
+
+The man had got off as she fell.
+
+“You haven’t hurt yourself?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, no.”
+
+I recognized him then as Edward Driffield, the author I had seen walking
+with the curate a few days before.
+
+“I’m just learning to ride,” said his companion. “And I fall off
+whenever I see anything in the road.”
+
+“Aren’t you the vicar’s nephew?” said Driffield. “I saw you the other
+day. Galloway told me who you were. This is my wife.”
+
+She held out her hand with an oddly frank gesture and when I took it
+gave mine a warm and hearty pressure. She smiled with her lips and with
+her eyes and there was in her smile something that even then I
+recognized as singularly pleasant. I was confused. People I did not know
+made me dreadfully self-conscious, and I could not take in any of the
+details of her appearance. I just had an impression of a rather large
+blond woman. I do not know if I noticed then or only remembered
+afterward that she wore a full skirt of blue serge, a pink shirt with a
+starched front and a starched collar, and a straw hat, called in those
+days, I think, a boater, perched on the top of a lot of golden hair.
+
+“I think bicycling’s lovely, don’t you?” she said, looking at my
+beautiful new machine which leaned against the stile. “It must be
+wonderful to be able to ride well.”
+
+I felt that this inferred an admiration for my proficiency.
+
+“It’s only a matter of practice,” I said.
+
+“This is only my third lesson. Mr. Driffield says I’m coming on
+wonderful, but I feel so stupid I could kick myself. How long did it
+take you before you could ride?”
+
+I blushed to the roots of my hair. I could hardly utter the shameful
+words.
+
+“I can’t ride,” I said. “I’ve only just got this bike and this is the
+first time I’ve tried.”
+
+I equivocated a trifle there, but I made it all right with my conscience
+by adding the mental reservation: except yesterday at home in the
+garden.
+
+“I’ll give you a lesson if you like,” said Driffield in his
+good-humoured way. “Come on.”
+
+“Oh, no,” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
+
+“Why not?” asked his wife, her blue eyes still pleasantly smiling. “Mr.
+Driffield would like to and it’ll give me a chance to rest.”
+
+Driffield took my bicycle, and I, reluctant but unable to withstand his
+friendly violence, clumsily mounted. I swayed from side to side, but he
+held me with a firm hand.
+
+“Faster,” he said.
+
+I pedalled and he ran by me as I wobbled from side to side. We were both
+very hot when, notwithstanding his struggles, I at last fell off. It was
+very hard under such circumstances to preserve the standoffishness
+befitting the vicar’s nephew with the son of Miss Wolfe’s bailiff, and
+when I started back again and for thirty or forty thrilling yards
+actually rode by myself and Mrs. Driffield ran into the middle of the
+road with her arms akimbo shouting, “Go it, go it, two to one on the
+favourite,” I was laughing so much that I positively forgot all about my
+social status. I got off of my own accord, my face no doubt wearing an
+air of immodest triumph, and received without embarrassment the
+Driffields’ congratulation on my cleverness in riding a bicycle the very
+first day I tried.
+
+“I want to see if I can get on by myself,” said Mrs. Driffield, and I
+sat down again on the stile while her husband and I watched her
+unavailing struggles.
+
+Then, wanting to rest again, disappointed but cheerful, she sat down
+beside me. Driffield lit his pipe. We chatted. I did not of course
+realize it then, but I know now that there was a disarming frankness in
+her manner that put one at one’s ease. She talked with a kind of
+eagerness, like a child bubbling over with the zest of life, and her
+eyes were lit all the time by her engaging smile. I did not know why I
+liked it. I should say it was a little sly, if slyness were not a
+displeasing quality; it was too innocent to be sly. It was mischievous
+rather, like that of a child who has done something that he thinks
+funny, but is quite well aware that you will think rather naughty; he
+knows all the same that you won’t be really cross and if you don’t find
+out about it quickly he’ll come and tell you himself. But of course then
+I only knew that her smile made me feel at home.
+
+Presently Driffield, looking at his watch, said that they must be going
+and suggested that we should all ride back together in style. It was
+just the time that my aunt and uncle would be coming home from their
+daily walk down the town and I did not like to run the risk of being
+seen with people whom they would not at all approve of; so I asked them
+to go on first, as they would go more quickly than I. Mrs. Driffield
+would not hear of it, but Driffield gave me a funny, amused little look,
+which made me think that he saw through my excuse so that I blushed
+scarlet, and he said:
+
+“Let him go by himself, Rosie. He can manage better alone.”
+
+“All right. Shall you be here to-morrow? We’re coming.”
+
+“I’ll try to,” I answered.
+
+They rode off, and in a few minutes I followed. Feeling very much
+pleased with myself, I rode all the way to the vicarage gates without
+falling. I think I boasted a good deal at dinner, but I did not say that
+I had met the Driffields.
+
+Next day at about eleven I got my bicycle out of the coachhouse. It was
+so called though it held not even a pony trap and was used by the
+gardener to keep the mower and the roller, and by Mary-Ann for her sack
+of meal for the chickens. I wheeled it down to the gate and, mounting
+none too easily, rode along the Tercanbury Road till I came to the old
+turnpike and turned into Joy Lane.
+
+The sky was blue and the air, warm and yet fresh, crackled, as it were,
+with the heat. The light was brilliant without harshness. The sun’s
+beams seemed to hit the white road with a directed energy and bounce
+back like a rubber ball.
+
+I rode backward and forward, waiting for the Driffields, and presently
+saw them come. I waved to them and turned round (getting off to do so)
+and we pedalled along together. Mrs. Driffield and I complimented one
+another on our progress. We rode anxiously, clinging like grim death to
+the handle-bars, but exultant, and Driffield said that as soon as we
+felt sure of ourselves we must go for rides all over the country.
+
+“I want to get rubbings of one or two brasses in the neighbourhood,” he
+said.
+
+I did not know what he meant, but he would not explain.
+
+“Wait and I’ll show you,” he said. “Do you think you could ride fourteen
+miles to-morrow, seven there and seven back?”
+
+“Rather,” I said.
+
+“I’ll bring a sheet of paper for you and some wax and you can make a
+rubbing. But you’d better ask your uncle if you can come.”
+
+“I needn’t do that.”
+
+“I think you’d better all the same.”
+
+Mrs. Driffield gave me that peculiar look of hers, mischievous and yet
+friendly, and I blushed scarlet. I knew that if I asked my uncle he
+would say no. It would be much better to say nothing about it. But as we
+rode along I saw coming toward us the doctor in his dogcart. I looked
+straight in front of me as he passed in the vain hope that if I did not
+look at him he would not look at me. I was uneasy. If he had seen me the
+fact would quickly reach the ears of my uncle or my aunt and I
+considered whether it would not be safer to disclose myself a secret
+that could no longer be concealed. When we parted at the vicarage gates
+(I had not been able to avoid riding as far as this in their company)
+Driffield said that if I found I could come with them next day I had
+better call for them as early as I could.
+
+“You know where we live, don’t you? Next door to the Congregational
+Church. It’s called Lime Cottage.”
+
+When I sat down to dinner I looked for an opportunity to slip in
+casually the information that I had by accident run across the
+Driffields; but news travelled fast in Blackstable.
+
+“Who were those people you were bicycling with this morning?” asked my
+aunt. “We met Dr. Anstey in the town and he said he’d seen you.”
+
+My uncle, chewing his roast beef with an air of disapproval, looked
+sullenly at his plate.
+
+“The Driffields,” I said with nonchalance. “You know, the author. Mr.
+Galloway knows them.”
+
+“They’re most disreputable people,” said my uncle. “I don’t wish you to
+associate with them.”
+
+“Why not?” I asked.
+
+“I’m not going to give you my reasons. It’s enough that I don’t wish
+it.”
+
+“How did you ever get to know them?” asked my aunt.
+
+“I was just riding along and they were riding along, and they asked me
+if I’d like to ride with them,” I said, distorting the truth a little.
+
+“I call it very pushing,” said my uncle.
+
+I began to sulk. And to show my indignation when the sweet was put on
+the table, though it was raspberry tart which I was extremely fond of, I
+refused to have any. My aunt asked me if I was not feeling very well.
+
+“Yes,” I said, as haughtily as I could, “I’m feeling all right.”
+
+“Have a little bit,” said my aunt.
+
+“I’m not hungry,” I answered.
+
+“Just to please me.”
+
+“He must know when he’s had enough,” said my uncle.
+
+I gave him a bitter look.
+
+“I don’t mind having a small piece,” I said.
+
+My aunt gave me a generous helping, which I ate with the air of one who,
+impelled by a stern sense of duty, performs an act that is deeply
+distasteful to him. It was a beautiful raspberry tart. Mary-Ann made
+short pastry that melted in the mouth. But when my aunt asked me whether
+I could not manage a little more I refused with cold dignity. She did
+not insist. My uncle said grace and I carried my outraged feelings into
+the drawing room.
+
+But when I reckoned that the servants had finished their dinner I went
+into the kitchen. Emily was cleaning the silver in the pantry. Mary-Ann
+was washing up.
+
+“I say, what’s wrong with the Driffields?” I asked her.
+
+Mary-Ann had come to the vicarage when she was eighteen. She had bathed
+me when I was a small boy, given me powders in plum jam when I needed
+them, packed my box when I went to school, nursed me when I was ill,
+read to me when I was bored, and scolded me when I was naughty. Emily,
+the housemaid, was a flighty young thing, and Mary-Ann didn’t know
+whatever would become of me if _she_ had the looking after of me.
+Mary-Ann was a Blackstable girl. She had never been to London in her
+life and I do not think she had been to Tercanbury more than three or
+four times. She was never ill. She never had a holiday. She was paid
+twelve pounds a year. One evening a week she went down the town to see
+her mother, who did the vicarage washing; and on Sunday evenings she
+went to church. But Mary-Ann knew everything that went on in
+Blackstable. She knew who everybody was, who had married whom, what
+anyone’s father had died of, and how many children, and what they were
+called, any woman had had.
+
+I asked Mary-Ann my question and she slopped a wet clout noisily into
+the sink.
+
+“I don’t blame your uncle,” she said. “I wouldn’t let you go about with
+them, not if you was my nephew. Fancy their askin’ you to ride your
+bicycle with them! Some people will do anything.”
+
+I saw that the conversation in the dining room had been repeated to
+Mary-Ann.
+
+“I’m not a child,” I said.
+
+“That makes it all the worse. The impudence of their comin’ ’ere at
+all!” Mary-Ann dropped her aitches freely. “Takin’ a house and
+pretendin’ to be ladies and gentlemen. Now leave that pie alone.”
+
+The raspberry tart was standing on the kitchen table and I broke off a
+piece of crust with my fingers and put it in my mouth.
+
+“We’re goin’ to eat that for our supper. If you’d wanted a second
+’elpin’ why didn’t you ’ave one when you was ’avin’ your dinner? Ted
+Driffield never could stick to anything. He ’ad a good education, too.
+The one I’m sorry for is his mother. He’s been a trouble to ’er from the
+day he was born. And then to go an’ marry Rosie Gann. They tell me that
+when he told his mother what he was goin’ to do she took to ’er bed and
+stayed there for three weeks and wouldn’t talk to anybody.”
+
+“Was Mrs. Driffield Rosie Gann before she married? Which Ganns were
+those?”
+
+Gann was one of the commonest names at Blackstable. The churchyard was
+thick with their graves.
+
+“Oh, you wouldn’t ’ave known them. Old Josiah Gann was her father. He
+was a wild one, too. He went for a soldier and when he come back he ’ad
+a wooden leg. He used to go out doing painting, but he was out of work
+more often than not. They lived in the next ’ouse to us in Rye Lane. Me
+an’ Rosie used to go to Sunday school together.”
+
+“But she’s not as old as you are,” I said with the bluntness of my age.
+
+“She’ll never see thirty again.”
+
+Mary-Ann was a little woman with a snub nose and decayed teeth, but
+fresh-coloured, and I do not suppose she could have been more than
+thirty-five.
+
+“Rosie ain’t more than four or five years younger than me, whatever she
+may pretend she is. They tell me you wouldn’t know her now all dressed
+up and everything.”
+
+“Is it true that she was a barmaid?” I asked.
+
+“Yes, at the Railway Arms and then at the Prince of Wales’s Feathers at
+Haversham. Mrs. Reeves ’ad her to ’elp in the bar at the Railway Arms,
+but it got so bad she had to get rid of her.”
+
+The Railway Arms was a very modest little public house just opposite the
+station of the London, Chatham & Dover Railway. It had a sort of
+sinister gaiety. On a winter’s night as you passed by you saw through
+the glass doors men lounging about the bar. My uncle very much
+disapproved of it, and had for years been trying to get its license
+taken away. It was frequented by the railway porters, colliers, and farm
+labourers. The respectable residents of Blackstable would have disdained
+to enter it and, when they wanted a glass of bitter, went to the Bear
+and Key or the Duke of Kent.
+
+“Why, what did she do?” I asked, my eyes popping out of my head.
+
+“What didn’t she do?” said Mary-Ann. “What d’you think your uncle would
+say if he caught me tellin’ you things like that? There wasn’t a man who
+come in to ’ave a drink that she didn’t carry on with. No matter who
+they was. She couldn’t stick to anybody, it was just one man after
+another. They tell me it was simply ’orrible. That was when it begun
+with Lord George. It wasn’t the sort of place he was likely to go to, he
+was too grand for that, but they say he went in accidental like one day
+when his train was late, and he saw her. And after that he was never out
+of the place, mixin’ with all them common rough people, and of course
+they all knew what he was there for, and him with a wife and three
+children. Oh, I was sorry for her! And the talk it made. Well, it got so
+Mrs. Reeves said she wasn’t going to put up with it another day and she
+gave her her wages and told her to pack her box and go. Good riddance to
+bad rubbish, that’s what I said.”
+
+I knew Lord George very well. His name was George Kemp and the title by
+which he was always known had been given him ironically owing to his
+grand manner. He was our coal merchant, but he also dabbled in house
+property, and he owned a share in one or two colliers. He lived in a new
+brick house that stood in its own grounds and he drove his own trap. He
+was a stoutish man with a pointed beard, florid, with a high colour and
+bold blue eyes. Remembering him, I think he must have looked like some
+jolly rubicund merchant in an old Dutch picture. He was always very
+flashily dressed and when you saw him driving at a smart pace down the
+middle of the High Street in a fawn-coloured covert-coat with large
+buttons, his brown bowler on the side of his head and a red rose in his
+buttonhole, you could not but look at him. On Sunday he used to come to
+church in a lustrous topper and a frock coat. Everyone knew that he
+wanted to be made churchwarden, and it was evident that his energy would
+have made him useful, but my uncle said not in his time, and though Lord
+George as a protest went to chapel for a year my uncle remained
+obdurate. He cut him dead when he met him in the town. A reconciliation
+was effected and Lord George came to church again, but my uncle only
+yielded so far as to appoint him sidesman. The gentry thought him
+extremely vulgar and I have no doubt that he was vain and boastful. They
+complained of his loud voice and his strident laugh—when he was talking
+to somebody on one side of the street you heard every word he said from
+the other—and they thought his manners dreadful. He was much too
+friendly; when he talked to them it was as though he were not in trade
+at all; they said he was very pushing. But if he thought his
+hail-fellow-well-met air, his activity in public works, his open purse
+when subscriptions were needed for the annual regatta or for the harvest
+festival, his willingness to do anyone a good turn were going to break
+the barriers at Blackstable he was mistaken. His efforts at sociability
+were met with blank hostility.
+
+I remember once that the doctor’s wife was calling on my aunt and Emily
+came in to tell my uncle that Mr. George Kemp would like to see him.
+
+“But I heard the front door ring, Emily,” said my aunt.
+
+“Yes’m, he came to the front door.”
+
+There was a moment’s awkwardness. Everyone was at a loss to know how to
+deal with such an unusual occurrence, and even Emily, who knew who
+should come to the front door, who should go to the side door, and who
+to the back, looked a trifle flustered. My aunt, who was a gentle soul,
+I think felt honestly embarrassed that anyone should put himself in such
+a false position; but the doctor’s wife gave a little sniff of contempt.
+At last my uncle collected himself.
+
+“Show him into the study, Emily,” he said. “I’ll come as soon as I’ve
+finished my tea.”
+
+But Lord George remained exuberant, flashy, loud, and boisterous. He
+said the town was dead and he was going to wake it up. He was going to
+get the company to run excursion trains. He didn’t see why it shouldn’t
+become another Margate. And why shouldn’t they have a mayor? Ferne Bay
+had one.
+
+“I suppose he thinks he’d be mayor himself,” said the people of
+Blackstable. They pursed their lips. “Pride goeth before a fall,” they
+said.
+
+And my uncle remarked that you could take a horse to the water but you
+couldn’t make him drink.
+
+I should add that I looked upon Lord George with the same scornful
+derision as everyone else. It outraged me that he should stop me in the
+street and call me by my Christian name and talk to me as though there
+were no social difference between us. He even suggested that I should
+play cricket with his sons, who were of about the same age as myself.
+But they went to the grammar school at Haversham and of course I
+couldn’t possibly have anything to do with them.
+
+I was shocked and thrilled by what Mary-Ann told me, but I had
+difficulty in believing it. I had read too many novels and had learnt
+too much at school not to know a good deal about love, but I thought it
+was a matter that only concerned young people. I could not conceive that
+a man with a beard, who had sons as old as I, could have any feelings of
+that sort. I thought when you married all that was finished. That people
+over thirty should be in love seemed to me rather disgusting.
+
+“You don’t mean to say they did anything?” I asked Mary-Ann.
+
+“From what I hear there’s very little that Rosie Gann didn’t do. And
+Lord George wasn’t the only one.”
+
+“But, look here, why didn’t she have a baby?”
+
+In the novels I had read whenever lovely woman stooped to folly she had
+a baby. The cause was put with infinite precaution, sometimes indeed
+suggested only by a row of asterisks, but the result was inevitable.
+
+“More by good luck than by good management, I lay,” said Mary-Ann. Then
+she recollected herself and stopped drying the plates she was busy with.
+“It seems to me you know a lot more than you ought to,” she said.
+
+“Of course I know,” I said importantly. “Hang it all, I’m practically
+grown up, aren’t I?”
+
+“All I can tell you,” said Mary-Ann, “is that when Mrs. Reeves gave her
+the sack Lord George got her a job at the Prince of Wales’s Feathers at
+Haversham and he was always poppin’ over there in his trap. You can’t
+tell me the ale’s any different over there from what it is here.”
+
+“Then why did Ted Driffield marry her?” I asked.
+
+“Ask me another,” said Mary-Ann. “It was at the Feathers he saw her. I
+suppose he couldn’t get anyone else to marry him. No respectable girl
+would ’ave ’ad ’im.”
+
+“Did he know about her?”
+
+“You’d better ask him.”
+
+I was silent. It was all very puzzling.
+
+“What does she look like now?” asked Mary-Ann. “I never seen her since
+she married. I never even speak to ’er after I ’eard what was goin’ on
+at the Railway Arms.”
+
+“She looks all right,” I said.
+
+“Well, you ask her if she remembers me and see what she says.”
+
+
+
+
+                                   VI
+
+
+I HAD quite made up my mind that I was going out with the Driffields
+next morning, but knew that it was no good asking my uncle if I might.
+If he found out that I had been and made a row it couldn’t be helped,
+and if Ted Driffield asked me whether I had got my uncle’s permission I
+was quite prepared to say I had. But I had after all no need to lie. In
+the afternoon, the tide being high, I walked down to the beach to bathe
+and my uncle, having something to do in the town, walked part of the way
+with me. Just as we were passing the Bear and Key, Ted Driffield stepped
+out of it. He saw us and came straight up to my uncle. I was startled at
+his coolness.
+
+“Good afternoon, Vicar,” he said. “I wonder if you remember me. I used
+to sing in the choir when I was a boy. Ted Driffield. My old governor
+was Miss Wolfe’s bailiff.”
+
+My uncle was a very timid man, and he was taken aback.
+
+“Oh, yes, how do you do? I was sorry to hear your father died.”
+
+“I’ve made the acquaintance of your young nephew. I was wondering if
+you’d let him come for a ride with me to-morrow. It’s rather dull for
+him riding alone, and I’m going to do a rubbing of one of the brasses at
+Ferne Church.”
+
+“It’s very kind of you, but——”
+
+My uncle was going to refuse, but Driffield interrupted him.
+
+“I’ll see he doesn’t get up to any mischief. I thought he might like to
+make a rubbing himself. It would be an interest for him. I’ll give him
+some paper and wax so that it won’t cost him anything.”
+
+My uncle had not a consecutive mind and the suggestion that Ted
+Driffield should pay for my paper and wax offended him so much that he
+quite forgot his intention to forbid me to go at all.
+
+“He can quite well get his own paper and wax,” he said. “He has plenty
+of pocket money, and he’d much better spend it on something like that
+than on sweets and make himself sick.”
+
+“Well, if he goes to Hayward, the stationer’s, and says he wants the
+same paper as I got and the wax they’ll let him have it.”
+
+“I’ll go now,” I said, and to prevent any change of mind on my uncle’s
+part dashed across the road.
+
+
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+
+I DO not know why the Driffields bothered about me unless it was from
+pure kindness of heart. I was a dull little boy, not very talkative, and
+if I amused Ted Driffield at all it must have been unconsciously.
+Perhaps he was tickled by my attitude of superiority. I was under the
+impression that it was condescension on my part to consort with the son
+of Miss Wolfe’s bailiff, and he what my uncle called a penny-a-liner;
+and when, perhaps with a trace of superciliousness, I asked him to lend
+me one of his books and he said it wouldn’t interest me I took him at
+his word and did not insist. After my uncle had once consented to my
+going out with the Driffields he made no further objection to my
+association with them. Sometimes we went for sails together, sometimes
+we went to some picturesque spot and Driffield painted a little water
+colour. I do not know if the English climate was better in those days or
+if it is only an illusion of youth, but I seem to remember that all
+through that summer the sunny days followed one another in an unbroken
+line. I began to feel a curious affection for the undulating, opulent,
+and gracious country. We went far afield, to one church after another,
+taking rubbings of brasses, knights in armour and ladies in stiff
+farthingales. Ted Driffield fired me with his own enthusiasm for this
+naïve pursuit and I rubbed with passion. I showed my uncle proudly the
+results of my industry, and I suppose he thought that whatever my
+company, I could not come to much harm when I was occupied in church.
+Mrs. Driffield used to remain in the churchyard while we were at work,
+not reading or sewing, but just mooning about; she seemed able to do
+nothing for an indefinite time without feeling bored. Sometimes I would
+go out and sit with her for a little on the grass. We chattered about my
+school, my friends there and my masters, about the people at
+Blackstable, and about nothing at all. She gratified me by calling me
+Mr. Ashenden. I think she was the first person who had ever done so and
+it made me feel grown up. I resented it vastly when people called me
+Master Willie. I thought it a ridiculous name for anyone to have. In
+fact I did not like either of my names and spent much time inventing
+others that would have suited me better. The ones I preferred were
+Roderic Ravensworth and I covered sheets of paper with this signature in
+a suitably dashing hand. I did not mind Ludovic Montgomery either.
+
+I could not get over what Mary-Ann had told me about Mrs. Driffield.
+Though I knew theoretically what people did when they were married, and
+was capable of putting the facts in the bluntest language, I did not
+really understand it. I thought it indeed rather disgusting and I did
+not quite, quite believe it. After all, I was aware that the earth was
+round, but I _knew_ it was flat. Mrs. Driffield seemed so frank, her
+laugh was so open and simple, there was in her demeanour something so
+young and childlike, that I could not see her “going with” sailors and
+above all anyone so gross and horrible as Lord George. She was not at
+all the type of the wicked woman I had read of in novels. Of course I
+knew she wasn’t “good form” and she spoke with the Blackstable accent,
+she dropped an aitch now and then, and sometimes her grammar gave me a
+shock, but I couldn’t help liking her. I came to the conclusion that
+what Mary-Ann had told me was a pack of lies.
+
+One day I happened to tell her that Mary-Ann was our cook.
+
+“She says she lived next door to you in Rye Lane,” I added, quite
+prepared to hear Mrs. Driffield say that she had never even heard of
+her.
+
+But she smiled and her blue eyes gleamed.
+
+“That’s right. She used to take me to Sunday school. She used to have a
+rare job keeping me quiet. I heard she’d gone to service at the
+vicarage. Fancy her being there still! I haven’t seen her for donkey’s
+years. I’d like to see her again and have a chat about old days.
+Remember me to her, will you, and ask her to look in on her evening out.
+I’ll give her a cup of tea.”
+
+I was taken aback at this. After all, the Driffields lived in a house
+that they were talking of buying and they had a “general.” It wouldn’t
+be at all the thing for them to have Mary-Ann to tea, and it would make
+it very awkward for me. They seemed to have no sense of the things one
+could do and the things one simply couldn’t. It never ceased to
+embarrass me, the way in which they talked of incidents in their past
+that I should have thought they would not dream of mentioning. I do not
+know that the people I lived among were pretentious in the sense of
+making themselves out to be richer or grander than they really were, but
+looking back it does seem to me that they lived a life full of
+pretences. They dwelt behind a mask of respectability. You never caught
+them in their shirt sleeves with their feet on the table. The ladies put
+on afternoon dresses and were not visible till then; they lived
+privately with rigid economy so that you could not drop in for a casual
+meal, but when they entertained their tables groaned with food. Though
+catastrophe overwhelmed the family, they held their heads high and
+ignored it. One of the sons might have married an actress, but they
+never referred to the calamity, and though the neighbours said it was
+dreadful, they took ostentatious care not to mention the theatre in the
+presence of the afflicted. We all knew that the wife of Major Greencourt
+who had taken the Three Gables was connected with trade, but neither she
+nor the major ever so much as hinted at the discreditable secret; and
+though we sniffed at them behind their backs, we were too polite even to
+mention crockery (the source of Mrs. Greencourt’s adequate income) in
+their presence. It was still not unheard of for an angry parent to cut
+off his son with a shilling or to tell his daughter (who like my own
+mother had married a solicitor) never to darken his doors again. I was
+used to all this and it seemed to me perfectly natural. What did shock
+me was to hear Ted Driffield speak of being a waiter in a restaurant in
+Holborn as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. I knew
+he had run away to sea, that was romantic; I knew that boys, in books at
+all events, often did this and had thrilling adventures before they
+married a fortune and an earl’s daughter; but Ted Driffield had driven a
+cab at Maidstone and had been clerk in a booking office at Birmingham.
+Once when we bicycled past the Railway Arms, Mrs. Driffield mentioned
+quite casually, as though it were something that anyone might have done,
+that she had worked there for three years.
+
+“It was my first place,” she said. “After that I went to the Feathers at
+Haversham. I only left there to get married.”
+
+She laughed as though she enjoyed the recollection. I did not know what
+to say; I did not know which way to look; I blushed scarlet. Another
+time when we were going through Ferne Bay on our way back from a long
+excursion, it being a hot day and all of us thirsty, she suggested that
+we should go into the Dolphin and have a glass of beer. She began
+talking to the girl behind the bar and I was horrified to hear her
+remark that she had been in the business herself for five years. The
+landlord joined us and Ted Driffield offered him a drink, and Mrs.
+Driffield said that the barmaid must have a glass of port, and for some
+time they all chatted amiably about trade and tied houses and how the
+price of everything was going up. Meanwhile, I stood, hot and cold all
+over, and not knowing what to do with myself. As we went out Mrs.
+Driffield remarked:
+
+“I took quite a fancy to that girl, Ted. She ought to do well for
+herself. As I said to her, it’s a hard life but a merry one. You do see
+a bit of what’s going on and if you play your cards right you ought to
+marry well. I noticed she had an engagement ring on, but she told me she
+just wore that because it gave the fellows a chance to tease her.”
+
+Driffield laughed. She turned to me.
+
+“I had a rare old time when I was a barmaid, but of course you can’t go
+on for ever. You have to think of your future.”
+
+But a greater jolt awaited me. It was halfway through September and my
+holidays were drawing to an end. I was very full of the Driffields, but
+my desire to talk about them at home was snubbed by my uncle.
+
+“We don’t want your friends pushed down our throats all day long,” said
+he. “There are other topics of conversation that are more suitable. But
+I do think that, as Ted Driffield was born in the parish and is seeing
+you almost every day, he might come to church occasionally.”
+
+One day I told Driffield: “My uncle wants you to come to church.”
+
+“All right. Let’s go to church next Sunday night, Rosie.”
+
+“I don’t mind,” she said.
+
+I told Mary-Ann they were going. I sat in the vicarage pew just behind
+the squire’s and I could not look round, but I was conscious by the
+behaviour of my neighbours on the other side of the aisle that they were
+there, and as soon as I had a chance next day I asked Mary-Ann if she
+had seen them.
+
+“I see ’er all right,” said Mary-Ann grimly.
+
+“Did you speak to her afterward?”
+
+“Me?” She suddenly burst into anger. “You get out of my kitchen. What
+d’you want to come bothering me all day long? How d’you expect me to do
+my work with you getting in my way all the time?”
+
+“All right,” I said. “Don’t get in a wax.”
+
+“I don’t know what your uncle’s about lettin’ you go all over the place
+with the likes of them. All them flowers in her ’at. I wonder she ain’t
+ashamed to show her face. Now run along, I’m busy.”
+
+I did not know why Mary-Ann was so cross. I did not mention Mrs.
+Driffield again. But two or three days later I happened to go into the
+kitchen to get something I wanted. There were two kitchens at the
+vicarage, a small one in which the cooking was done and a large one,
+built I suppose for a time when country clergymen had large families and
+gave grand dinners to the surrounding gentry, where Mary-Ann sat and
+sewed when her day’s work was over. We had cold supper at eight so that
+after tea she had little to do. It was getting on for seven and the day
+was drawing in. It was Emily’s evening out and I expected to find
+Mary-Ann alone, but as I went along the passage I heard voices and the
+sound of laughter. I supposed Mary-Ann had someone in to see her. The
+lamp was lit, but it had a thick green shade and the kitchen was almost
+in darkness. I saw a teapot and cups on the table. Mary-Ann was having a
+late cup of tea with her friend. The conversation stopped as I opened
+the door, then I heard a voice.
+
+“Good-evening.”
+
+With a start I saw that Mary-Ann’s friend was Mrs. Driffield. Mary-Ann
+laughed a little at my surprise.
+
+“Rosie Gann dropped in to have a cup of tea with me,” she said.
+
+“We’ve been having a talk about old times.”
+
+Mary-Ann was a little shy at my finding her thus, but not half so shy as
+I. Mrs. Driffield gave me that childlike, mischievous smile of hers; she
+was perfectly at her ease. For some reason I noticed her dress. I
+suppose because I had never seen her so grand before. It was of pale
+blue cloth, very tight at the waist, with high sleeves and a long skirt
+with a flounce at the bottom. She wore a large black straw hat with a
+great quantity of roses and leaves and bows on it. It was evidently the
+hat she had worn in church on Sunday.
+
+“I thought if I went on waiting till Mary-Ann came to see me I’d have to
+wait till doomsday, so I thought the best thing I could do was to come
+and see her myself.”
+
+Mary-Ann grinned self-consciously, but did not look displeased. I asked
+for whatever it was I wanted and as quickly as I could left them. I went
+out into the garden and wandered about aimlessly. I walked down to the
+road and looked over the gate. The night had fallen. Presently I saw a
+man strolling along. I paid no attention to him, but he passed backward
+and forward and it looked as though he were waiting for someone. At
+first I thought it might be Ted Driffield and I was on the point of
+going out when he stopped and lit a pipe; I saw it was Lord George. I
+wondered what he was doing there and at the same moment it struck me
+that he was waiting for Mrs. Driffield. My heart began to beat fast, and
+though I was hidden by the darkness I withdrew into the shade of the
+bushes. I waited a few minutes longer, then I saw the side door open and
+Mrs. Driffield let out by Mary-Ann. I heard her footsteps on the gravel.
+She came to the gate and opened it. It opened with a little click. At
+the sound Lord George stepped across the road and before she could come
+out slipped in. He took her in his arms and gave her a great hug. She
+gave a little laugh.
+
+“Take care of my hat,” she whispered.
+
+I was not more than three feet away from them and I was terrified lest
+they should notice me. I was so ashamed for them. I was trembling with
+agitation. For a minute he held her in his arms.
+
+“What about the garden?” he said, still in a whisper.
+
+“No, there’s that boy. Let’s go in the fields.”
+
+They went out by the gate, he with his arm round her waist, and were
+lost in the night. Now I felt my heart pounding against my chest so that
+I could hardly breathe. I was so astonished at what I had seen that I
+could not think sensibly. I would have given anything to be able to tell
+someone, but it was a secret and I must keep it. I was thrilled with the
+importance it gave me. I walked slowly up to the house and let myself in
+by the side door. Mary-Ann, hearing it open, called me.
+
+“Is that you, Master Willie?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+I looked in the kitchen. Mary-Ann was putting the supper on a tray to
+take it into the dining room.
+
+“I wouldn’t say anything to your uncle about Rosie Gann ’avin’ been
+here,” she said.
+
+“Oh, no.”
+
+“It was a surprisement to me. When I ’eared a knock at the side door and
+opened it and saw Rosie standing there, you could ’ave knocked me down
+with a feather. ‘Mary-Ann,’ she says, an’ before I knew what she was up
+to she was kissing me all over me face. I couldn’t but ask ’er in and
+when she was in I couldn’t but ask her to ’ave a nice cup of tea.”
+
+Mary-Ann was anxious to excuse herself. After all she had said of Mrs.
+Driffield it must seem strange to me that I should find them sitting
+there together chatting away and laughing. I did not want to crow.
+
+“She’s not so bad, is she?” I said.
+
+Mary-Ann smiled. Notwithstanding her black decayed teeth there was in
+her smile something sweet and touching.
+
+“I don’t ’ardly know what it is, but there’s somethin’ you can’t ’elp
+likin’ about her. She was ’ere the best part of an hour and I will say
+that for ’er, she never once give ’erself airs. And she told me with ’er
+own lips the material of that dress she ’ad on cost thirteen and eleven
+a yard and I believe it. She remembers everything, how I used to brush
+her ’air for her when she was a tiny tot and how I used to make her wash
+her little ’ands before tea. You see, sometimes her mother used to send
+’er in to ’ave her tea with us. She was as pretty as a picture in them
+days.”
+
+Mary-Ann looked back into the past and her funny crumpled face grew
+wistful.
+
+“Oh, well,” she said after a pause, “I dare say she’s been no worse than
+plenty of others if the truth was only known. She ’ad more temptation
+than most, and I dare say a lot of them as blame her would ’ave been no
+better than what she was if they’d ’ad the opportunity.”
+
+
+
+
+                                  VIII
+
+
+THE WEATHER broke suddenly; it grew chilly and heavy rain fell. It put
+an end to our excursions. I was not sorry, for I did not know how I
+could look Mrs. Driffield in the face now that I had seen her meeting
+with George Kemp. I was not so much shocked as astonished. I could not
+understand how it was possible for her to like being kissed by an old
+man, and the fantastic notion passed through my mind, filled with the
+novels I had read, that somehow Lord George held her in his power and
+forced her by his knowledge of some fearful secret to submit to his
+loathsome embraces. My imagination played with terrible possibilities.
+Bigamy, murder, and forgery. Very few villains in books failed to hold
+the threat of exposure of one of these crimes over some hapless female.
+Perhaps Mrs. Driffield had backed a bill; I never could quite understand
+what this meant, but I knew that the consequences were disastrous. I
+toyed with the fancy of her anguish (the long sleepless nights when she
+sat at her window in her nightdress, her long fair hair hanging to her
+knees, and watched hopelessly for the dawn) and saw myself (not a boy of
+fifteen with sixpence a week pocket money, but a tall man with a waxed
+moustache and muscles of steel in faultless evening dress) with a happy
+blend of heroism and dexterity rescuing her from the toils of the
+rascally blackmailer. On the other hand, it had not looked as though she
+had yielded quite unwillingly to Lord George’s fondling and I could not
+get out of my ears the sound of her laugh. It had a note that I had
+never heard before. It gave me a queer feeling of breathlessness.
+
+During the rest of my holidays I only saw the Driffields once more. I
+met them by chance in the town and they stopped and spoke to me. I
+suddenly felt very shy again, but when I looked at Mrs. Driffield I
+could not help blushing with embarrassment, for there was nothing in her
+countenance that indicated a guilty secret. She looked at me with those
+soft blue eyes of hers in which there was a child’s playful naughtiness.
+She often held her mouth a little open, as though it were just going to
+break into a smile, and her lips were full and red. There was honesty
+and innocence in her face and an ingenuous frankness and though then I
+could not have expressed this, I felt it quite strongly. If I had put it
+into words at all I think I should have said: She looks as straight as a
+die. It was impossible that she could be “carrying on” with Lord George.
+There must be an explanation; I did not believe what my eyes had seen.
+
+Then the day came when I had to go back to school. The carter had taken
+my trunk and I walked to the station by myself. I had refused to let my
+aunt see me off, thinking it more manly to go alone, but I felt rather
+low as I walked down the street. It was a small branch line to
+Tercanbury and the station was at the other end of the town near the
+beach. I took my ticket and settled myself in the corner of a
+third-class carriage. Suddenly I heard a voice: “There he is”; and Mr.
+and Mrs. Driffield bustled gaily up.
+
+“We thought we must come and see you off,” she said. “Are you feeling
+miserable?”
+
+“No, of course not.”
+
+“Oh, well, it won’t last long. We’ll have no end of a time when you come
+back for Christmas. Can you skate?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I can. I’ll teach you.”
+
+Her high spirits cheered me, and at the same time the thought that they
+had come to the station to say good-bye to me gave me a lump in my
+throat. I tried hard not to let the emotion I felt appear on my face.
+
+“I expect I shall be playing a lot of football this term,” I said. “I
+ought to get into the second fifteen.”
+
+She looked at me with kindly shining eyes, smiling with her full red
+lips. There was something in her smile I had always rather liked, and
+her voice seemed almost to tremble with a laugh or a tear. For one
+horrible moment I was afraid that she was going to kiss me. I was scared
+out of my wits. She talked on, she was mildly facetious as grown-up
+people are with schoolboys, and Driffield stood there without saying
+anything. He looked at me with a smile in his eyes and pulled his beard.
+Then the guard blew a cracked whistle and waved a red flag. Mrs.
+Driffield took my hand and shook it. Driffield came forward.
+
+“Good-bye,” he said. “Here’s something for you.”
+
+He pressed a tiny packet into my hand and the train steamed off. When I
+opened it I found that it was two half-crowns wrapped in a piece of
+toilet paper. I blushed to the roots of my hair. I was glad enough to
+have an extra five shillings, but the thought that Ted Driffield had
+dared to give me a tip filled me with rage and humiliation. I could not
+possibly accept anything from him. It was true that I had bicycled with
+him and sailed with him, but he wasn’t a sahib (I had got that from
+Major Greencourt) and it was an insult to me to give me five shillings.
+At first I thought of returning the money without a word, showing by my
+silence how outraged I was at the solecism he had committed, then I
+composed in my head a dignified and frigid letter in which I thanked him
+for his generosity, but said that he must see how impossible it was for
+a gentleman to accept a tip from someone who was practically a stranger.
+I thought it over for two or three days and every day it seemed more
+difficult to me to part with the two half-crowns. I felt sure that
+Driffield had meant it kindly, and of course he was very bad form and
+didn’t know about things; it would be rather hard to hurt his feelings
+by sending the money back, and finally I spent it. But I assuaged my
+wounded pride by not writing to thank Driffield for his gift.
+
+When Christmas came, however, and I went back to Blackstable for the
+holidays, it was the Driffields I was most eager to see. In that
+stagnant little place they alone seemed to have a connection with the
+outside world which already was beginning to touch my daydreams with
+anxious curiosity. But I could not overcome my shyness enough to go to
+their house and call, and I hoped that I should meet them in the town.
+But the weather was dreadful, a boisterous wind whistled down the
+street, piercing you to the bone, and the few women who had an errand
+were swept along by their full skirts like fishing boats in half a gale.
+The cold rain scudded in sudden squalls and the sky, which in summer had
+enclosed the friendly country so snugly, now was a great pall that
+pressed upon the earth with sullen menace. There was small hope of
+meeting the Driffields by chance and at last I took my courage in both
+hands and one day after tea slipped out. As far as the station the road
+was pitch dark, but there the street lamps, few and dim, made it easier
+to keep to the pavement. The Driffields lived in a little two-story
+house in a side street; it was of dingy yellow brick and had a bow
+window. I knocked and presently a little maid opened the door; I asked
+if Mrs. Driffield was in. She gave me an uncertain look and, saying she
+would go and see, left me standing in the passage. I had already heard
+voices in the next room, but they were stilled as she opened the door
+and, entering, shut it behind her. I had a faint impression of mystery;
+in the houses of my uncle’s friends, even if there was no fire and the
+gas had to be lit as you went in, you were shown into the drawing room
+when you called. But the door was opened and Driffield came out. There
+was only a speck of light in the passage and at first he could not see
+who it was; but in an instant he recognized me.
+
+“Oh, it’s you. We wondered when we were going to see you.” Then he
+called out: “Rosie, it’s young Ashenden.”
+
+There was a cry and before you could say knife Mrs. Driffield had come
+into the passage and was shaking my hands.
+
+“Come in, come in. Take off your coat. Isn’t it awful, the weather? You
+must be perishing.”
+
+She helped me with my coat and took off my muffler and snatched my cap
+out of my hand and drew me into the room. It was hot and stuffy, a tiny
+room full of furniture, with a fire burning in the grate; they had gas
+there, which we hadn’t at the vicarage, and the three burners in round
+globes of frosted glass filled the room with harsh light. The air was
+gray with tobacco smoke. At first, dazzled and then taken aback by my
+effusive welcome, I did not see who the two men were who got up as I
+came in. Then I saw they were the curate, Mr. Galloway, and Lord George
+Kemp. I fancied that the curate shook my hand with constraint.
+
+“How are you? I just came in to return some books that Mr. Driffield had
+lent me and Mrs. Driffield very kindly asked me to stay to tea.”
+
+I felt rather than saw the quizzical look that Driffield gave him. He
+said something about the mammon of unrighteousness, which I recognized
+as a quotation, but did not gather the sense of. Mr. Galloway laughed.
+
+“I don’t know about that,” he said. “What about the publicans and
+sinners?”
+
+I thought the remark in very bad taste, but I was immediately seized
+upon by Lord George. There was no constraint about him.
+
+“Well, young fellow, home for the holidays? My word, what a big chap
+you’re growing.”
+
+I shook hands with him rather coldly. I wished I had not come.
+
+“Let me give you a nice strong cup of tea,” said Mrs. Driffield.
+
+“I’ve already had tea.”
+
+“Have some more,” said Lord George, speaking as though he owned the
+place (that was just like him). “A big fellow like you can always tuck
+away another piece of bread and butter and jam and Mrs. D. will cut you
+a slice with her own fair hands.”
+
+The tea things were still on the table and they were sitting round it. A
+chair was brought up for me and Mrs. Driffield gave me a piece of cake.
+
+“We were just trying to persuade Ted to sing us a song,” said Lord
+George. “Come on, Ted.”
+
+“Sing, ‘All Through Stickin’ to a Soljer,’ Ted,” said Mrs. Driffield. “I
+love that.”
+
+“No, sing ‘First We Mopped the Floor with Him.’”
+
+“I’ll sing ’em both if you’re not careful,” said Driffield.
+
+He took his banjo, which was lying on the top of the cottage piano,
+tuned it, and began to sing. He had a rich baritone voice. I was quite
+used to people singing songs. When there was a tea party at the
+vicarage, or I went to one at the major’s or the doctor’s, people always
+brought their music with them. They left it in the hall, so that it
+should not seem that they wanted to be asked to play or sing; but after
+tea the hostess asked them if they had brought it. They shyly admitted
+that they had, and if it was at the vicarage I was sent to fetch it.
+Sometimes a young lady would say that she had quite given up playing and
+hadn’t brought anything with her, and then her mother would break in and
+say that _she_ had brought it. But when they sang it was not comic
+songs; it was “I’ll Sing Thee Songs of Araby,” or “Good-Night, Beloved,”
+or “Queen of My Heart.” Once at the annual concert at the Assembly
+Rooms, Smithson, the draper, had sung a comic song, and though the
+people at the back of the hall had applauded a great deal, the gentry
+had seen nothing funny in it. Perhaps there wasn’t. Anyhow, before the
+next concert he was asked to be a little more careful about what he sang
+(“Remember there are ladies present, Mr. Smithson”) and so gave “The
+Death of Nelson.” The next ditty that Driffield sang had a chorus and
+the curate and Lord George joined in lustily. I heard it a good many
+times afterward, but I can only remember four lines:
+
+               _First we mopped the floor with him;_
+               _Dragged him up and down the stairs;_
+               _Then we lugged him round the room,_
+               _Under tables, over chairs._
+
+When it was finished, assuming my best company manners, I turned to Mrs.
+Driffield.
+
+“Don’t you sing?” I asked.
+
+“I do, but it always turns the milk, so Ted doesn’t encourage me.”
+
+Driffield put down his banjo and lit a pipe.
+
+“Well, how’s the old book getting along, Ted?” said Lord George
+heartily.
+
+“Oh, all right. I’m working away, you know.”
+
+“Good old Ted and his books,” Lord George laughed. “Why don’t you settle
+down and do something respectable for a change? I’ll give you a job in
+my office.”
+
+“Oh, I’m all right.”
+
+“You let him be, George,” said Mrs. Driffield. “He likes writing, and
+what I say is, as long as it keeps him happy why shouldn’t he?”
+
+“Well, I don’t pretend to know anything about books,” began George Kemp.
+
+“Then don’t talk about them,” interrupted Driffield with a smile.
+
+“I don’t think anyone need be ashamed to have written _Fairhaven_,” said
+Mr. Galloway, “and I don’t care what the critics said.”
+
+“Well, Ted, I’ve known you since I was a boy and _I_ couldn’t read it,
+try as I would.”
+
+“Oh, come on, we don’t want to start talking about books,” said Mrs.
+Driffield. “Sing us another song, Ted.”
+
+“I must be going,” said the curate. He turned to me. “We might walk
+along together. Have you got anything for me to read, Driffield?”
+
+Driffield pointed to a pile of new books that were heaped up on a table
+in the corner.
+
+“Take your pick.”
+
+“By Jove, what a lot!” I said, looking at them greedily.
+
+“Oh, it’s all rubbish. They’re sent down for review.”
+
+“What d’you do with them?”
+
+“Take ’em into Tercanbury and sell ’em for what they’ll fetch. It all
+helps to pay the butcher.”
+
+When we left, the curate and I, he with three or four books under his
+arm, he asked me:
+
+“Did you tell your uncle you were coming to see the Driffields?”
+
+“No, I just went out for a walk and it suddenly occurred to me that I
+might look in.”
+
+This of course was some way from the truth, but I did not care to tell
+Mr. Galloway that, though I was practically grown up, my uncle realized
+the fact so little that he was quite capable of trying to prevent me
+from seeing people he objected to.
+
+“Unless you have to I wouldn’t say anything about it in your place. The
+Driffields are perfectly all right, but your uncle doesn’t quite approve
+of them.”
+
+“I know,” I said. “It’s such rot.”
+
+“Of course they’re rather common, but he doesn’t write half badly, and
+when you think what he came from it’s wonderful that he writes at all.”
+
+I was glad to know how the land lay. Mr. Galloway did not wish my uncle
+to know that he was on friendly terms with the Driffields. I could feel
+sure at all events that he would not give me away.
+
+The patronizing manner in which my uncle’s curate spoke of one who has
+been now so long recognized as one of the greatest of the later
+Victorian novelists must arouse a smile; but it was the manner in which
+he was generally spoken of at Blackstable. One day we went to tea at
+Mrs. Greencourt’s, who had staying with her a cousin, the wife of an
+Oxford don, and we had been told that she was very cultivated. She was a
+Mrs. Encombe, a little woman with an eager wrinkled face; she surprised
+us very much because she wore her gray hair short and a black serge
+skirt that only just came down below the tops of her square-toed boots.
+She was the first example of the New Woman that had even been seen in
+Blackstable. We were staggered and immediately on the defensive, for she
+looked intellectual and it made us feel shy. (Afterward we all scoffed
+at her, and my uncle said to my aunt: “Well, my dear, I’m thankful
+you’re not clever, at least I’ve been spared that”; and my aunt in a
+playful mood put my uncle’s slippers which were warming for him by the
+fire over her boots and said: “Look, I’m the new woman.” And then we all
+said: “Mrs. Greencourt is very funny; you never know what she’ll do
+next. But of course she isn’t quite quite.” We could hardly forget that
+her father made china and that her grandfather had been a factory hand.)
+
+But we all found it very interesting to hear Mrs. Encombe talk of the
+people she knew. My uncle had been at Oxford, but everyone he asked
+about seemed to be dead. Mrs. Encombe knew Mrs. Humphry Ward and admired
+_Robert Elsmere_. My uncle considered it a scandalous work, and he was
+surprised that Mr. Gladstone, who at least called himself a Christian,
+had found a good word to say for it. They had quite an argument about
+it. My uncle said he thought it would unsettle people’s opinions and
+give them all sorts of ideas that they were much better without. Mrs.
+Encombe answered that he wouldn’t think that if he knew Mrs. Humphry
+Ward. She was a woman of the very highest character, a niece of Mr.
+Matthew Arnold, and whatever you might think of the book itself (and
+she, Mrs. Encombe, was quite willing to admit that there were parts
+which had better have been omitted) it was quite certain that she had
+written it from the very highest motives. Mrs. Encombe knew Miss
+Broughton too. She was of very good family and it was strange that she
+wrote the books she did.
+
+“I don’t see any harm in them,” said Mrs. Hayforth, the doctor’s wife.
+“I enjoy them, especially _Red as a Rose is She_.”
+
+“Would you like your girls to read them?” asked Mrs. Encombe.
+
+“Not just yet perhaps,” said Mrs. Hayforth. “But when they’re married I
+should have no objection.”
+
+“Then it might interest you to know,” said Mrs. Encombe, “that when I
+was in Florence last Easter I was introduced to Ouida.”
+
+“That’s quite another matter,” returned Mrs. Hayforth. “I can’t believe
+that any lady would read a book by Ouida.”
+
+“I read one out of curiosity,” said Mrs. Encombe. “I must say, it’s more
+what you’d expect from a Frenchman than from an English gentlewoman.”
+
+“Oh, but I understand she isn’t really English. I’ve always heard her
+real name is Mademoiselle de la Ramée.”
+
+It was then that Mr. Galloway mentioned Edward Driffield.
+
+“You know we have an author living here,” he said.
+
+“We’re not very proud of him,” said the major. “He’s the son of old Miss
+Wolfe’s bailiff and he married a barmaid.”
+
+“Can he write?” asked Mrs. Encombe.
+
+“You can tell at once that he’s not a gentleman,” said the curate, “but
+when you consider the disadvantages he’s had to struggle against it’s
+rather remarkable that he should write as well as he does.”
+
+“He’s a friend of Willie’s,” said my uncle.
+
+Everyone looked at me, and I felt very uncomfortable.
+
+“They bicycled together last summer, and after Willie had gone back to
+school I got one of his books from the library to see what it was like.
+I read the first volume and then I sent it back. I wrote a pretty stiff
+letter to the librarian and I was glad to hear that he’d withdrawn it
+from circulation. If it had been my own property I should have put it
+promptly in the kitchen stove.”
+
+“I looked through one of his books myself,” said the doctor. “It
+interested me because it was set in this neighbourhood and I recognized
+some of the people. But I can’t say I liked it; I thought it
+unnecessarily coarse.”
+
+“I mentioned that to him,” said Mr. Galloway, “and he said the men in
+the colliers that run up to Newcastle and the fishermen and farm hands
+don’t behave like ladies and gentlemen and don’t talk like them.”
+
+“But why write about people of that character?” said my uncle.
+
+“That’s what I say,” said Mrs. Hayforth. “We all know that there are
+coarse and wicked and vicious people in the world, but I don’t see what
+good it does to write about them.”
+
+“I’m not defending him,” said Mr. Galloway. “I’m only telling you what
+explanation he gives himself. And then of course he brought up Dickens.”
+
+“Dickens is quite different,” said my uncle. “I don’t see how anyone can
+object to the _Pickwick Papers_.”
+
+“I suppose it’s a matter of taste,” said my aunt. “I always found
+Dickens very coarse. I don’t want to read about people who drop their
+aitches. I must say I’m very glad the weather’s so bad now and Willie
+can’t take any more rides with Mr. Driffield. I don’t think he’s quite
+the sort of person he ought to associate with.”
+
+Both Mr. Galloway and I looked down our noses.
+
+
+
+
+                                   IX
+
+
+AS OFTEN as the mild Christmas gaieties of Blackstable allowed me I went
+to the Driffields’ little house next door to the Congregational chapel.
+I always found Lord George and often Mr. Galloway. Our conspiracy of
+silence had made us friends and when we met at the vicarage or in the
+vestry after church we looked at one another archly. We did not talk
+about our secret, but we enjoyed it; I think it gave us both a good deal
+of satisfaction to know that we were making a fool of my uncle. But once
+it occurred to me that George Kemp, meeting my uncle in the street,
+might remark casually that he had been seeing a lot of me at the
+Driffields’.
+
+“What about Lord George?” I said to Mr. Galloway.
+
+“Oh, I made that all right.”
+
+We chuckled. I began to like Lord George. At first I was very cold with
+him and scrupulously polite, but he seemed so unconscious of the social
+difference between us that I was forced to conclude that my haughty
+courtesy failed to put him in his place. He was always cordial, breezy,
+even boisterous; he chaffed me in his common way and I answered him back
+with schoolboy wit; we made the others laugh and this disposed me kindly
+toward him. He was for ever bragging about the great schemes he had in
+mind, but he took in good part my jokes at the expense of his grandiose
+imaginations. It amused me to hear him tell stories about the swells of
+Blackstable that made them look foolish and when he mimicked their
+oddities I roared with laughter. He was blatant and vulgar and the way
+he dressed was always a shock to me (I had never been to Newmarket nor
+seen a trainer, but that was my idea of how a Newmarket trainer dressed)
+and his table manners were offensive, but I found myself less and less
+affronted by him. He gave me the _Pink ’Un_ every week and I took it
+home, carefully tucked away in my great-coat pocket, and read it in my
+bedroom.
+
+I never went to the Driffields’ till after tea at the vicarage, but I
+always managed to make a second tea when I got there. Afterward Ted
+Driffield sang comic songs, accompanying himself sometimes on the banjo
+and sometimes on the piano. He would sing, peering at the music with his
+rather short-sighted eyes, for an hour at a time; there was a smile on
+his lips and he liked us all to join in the chorus. We played whist. I
+had learned the game when I was a child and my uncle and aunt and I used
+to play at the vicarage during the long winter evenings. My uncle always
+took dummy, and though of course we played for love, when my aunt and I
+lost I used to retire under the dining room table and cry. Ted Driffield
+did not play cards, he said he had no head for them, and when we started
+a game he would sit down by the fire and, pencil in hand, read one of
+the books that had been sent down to him from London to review. I had
+never played with three people before and of course I did not play well,
+but Mrs. Driffield had a natural card sense. Her movements as a rule
+were rather deliberate, but when it came to playing cards she was quick
+and alert. She played the rest of us right off our heads. Ordinarily she
+did not speak very much and then slowly, but when, after a hand was
+played, she took the trouble good-humouredly to point out to me my
+mistakes, she was not only lucid but voluble. Lord George chaffed her as
+he chaffed everybody; she would smile at his banter, for she very seldom
+laughed, and sometimes make a neat retort. They did not behave like
+lovers, but like familiar friends, and I should have quite forgotten
+what I had heard about them and what I had seen but that now and then
+she gave him a look that embarrassed me. Her eyes rested on him quietly,
+as though he were not a man but a chair or a table, and in them was a
+mischievous, childlike smile. Then I would notice that his face seemed
+suddenly to swell and he moved uneasily in his chair. I looked quickly
+at the curate, afraid that he would notice something, but he was intent
+on the cards or else was lighting his pipe.
+
+The hour or two I spent nearly every day in that hot, poky, smoke-laden
+room passed like lightning, and as the holidays drew nearer to their end
+I was seized with dismay at the thought that I must spend the next three
+months dully at school.
+
+“I don’t know what we shall do without you,” said Mrs. Driffield. “We
+shall have to play dummy.”
+
+I was glad that my going would break up the game. While I was doing prep
+I did not want to think that they were sitting in that little room and
+enjoying themselves just as if I did not exist.
+
+“How long do you get at Easter?” asked Mr. Galloway.
+
+“About three weeks.”
+
+“We’ll have a lovely time then,” said Mrs. Driffield. “The weather ought
+to be all right. We can ride in the mornings and then after tea we’ll
+play whist. You’ve improved a lot. If we play three or four times a week
+during your Easter holidays you won’t need to be afraid to play with
+anybody.”
+
+
+
+
+                                   X
+
+
+BUT THE term came to an end at last. I was in high spirits when once
+more I got out of the train at Blackstable. I had grown a little and I
+had had a new suit made at Tercanbury, blue serge and very smart, and I
+had bought a new tie. I meant to go and see the Driffields immediately I
+had swallowed my tea and I was full of hope that the carrier would have
+brought my box in time for me to put the new suit on. It made me look
+quite grown up. I had already begun putting vaseline on my upper lip
+every night to make my moustache grow. On my way through the town I
+looked down the street in which the Driffields lived in the hope of
+seeing them. I should have liked to go in and say how-do-you-do, but I
+knew that Driffield wrote in the morning and Mrs. Driffield was not
+“presentable.” I had all sorts of exciting things to tell them. I had
+won the hundred-yard race in the sports and I had been second in the
+hurdles. I meant to have a shot for the history prize in the summer and
+I was going to swot up my English history during the holidays. Though
+there was an east wind blowing, the sky was blue and there was a feeling
+of spring in the air. The High Street, with its colours washed clean by
+the wind and its lines sharp as though drawn with a new pen, looked like
+a picture by Samuel Scott, quiet and naïve and cosy: now, looking back;
+then it looked like nothing but High Street, Blackstable. When I came to
+the railway bridge I noticed that two or three houses were being built.
+
+“By Jove,” I said, “Lord George _is_ going it.”
+
+In the fields beyond little white lambs were gambolling. The elm trees
+were just beginning to turn green. I let myself in by the side door. My
+uncle was sitting in his armchair by the fire reading the _Times_. I
+shouted to my aunt and she came downstairs, a pink spot from the
+excitement of seeing me on each of her withered cheeks, and threw her
+thin old arms round my neck. She said all the right things.
+
+“How you’ve grown!” and “Good gracious me, you’ll be getting a moustache
+soon!”
+
+I kissed my uncle on his bald forehead and I stood in front of the fire,
+with my legs well apart and my back to it, and was extremely grown up
+and rather condescending. Then I went upstairs to say how-do-you-do to
+Emily, and into the kitchen to shake hands with Mary-Ann, and out into
+the garden to see the gardener.
+
+When I sat down hungrily to dinner and my uncle carved the leg of mutton
+I asked my aunt:
+
+“Well, what’s happened at Blackstable since I was here?”
+
+“Nothing very much. Mrs. Greencourt went down to Mentone for six weeks,
+but she came back a few days ago. The major had an attack of gout.”
+
+“And your friends the Driffields have bolted,” added my uncle.
+
+“They’ve done what?” I cried.
+
+“Bolted. They took their luggage away one night and just went up to
+London. They’ve left bills all over the place. They hadn’t paid their
+rent and they hadn’t paid for their furniture. They owed Harris the
+butcher the best part of thirty pounds.”
+
+“How awful,” I said.
+
+“That’s bad enough,” said my aunt, “but it appears they hadn’t even paid
+the wages of the maid they had for three months.”
+
+I was flabbergasted. I thought I felt a little sick.
+
+“I think in future,” said my uncle, “you would be wiser not to consort
+with people whom your aunt and I don’t think proper associates for you.”
+
+“One can’t help feeling sorry for all those tradesmen they cheated,”
+said my aunt.
+
+“It serves them right,” said my uncle. “Fancy giving credit to people
+like that! I should have thought anyone could see they were nothing but
+adventurers.”
+
+“I always wonder why they came down here at all.”
+
+“They just wanted to show off, and I suppose they thought as people knew
+who they were here it would be easier to get things on credit.”
+
+I did not think this quite reasonable, but was too much crushed to
+argue.
+
+As soon as I had the chance I asked Mary-Ann what she knew of the
+incident. To my surprise she did not take it at all in the same way as
+my uncle and aunt. She giggled.
+
+“They let everyone in proper,” she said. “They was as free as you like
+with their money and everyone though they ’ad plenty. It was always the
+best end of the neck for them at the butcher’s and when they wanted a
+steak nothing would do but the undercut. Asparagus and grapes and I
+don’t know what all. They ran up bills in every shop in the town. I
+don’t know ’ow people can be such fools.”
+
+But it was evidently of the tradesmen she was speaking and not of the
+Driffields.
+
+“But how did they manage to bunk without anyone knowing?” I asked.
+
+“Well, that’s what everybody’s askin’. They do say it was Lord George
+’elped them. How did they get their boxes to the station, I ask you, if
+’e didn’t take them in that there trap of ’is?”
+
+“What does he say about it?”
+
+“He says ’e knows no more about it than the man in the moon. There was a
+rare to-do all over the town when they found out the Driffields had shot
+the moon. It made me laugh. Lord George says ’e never knew they was
+broke, and ’e makes out ’e was as surprised as anybody. But I for one
+don’t believe a word of it. We all knew about ’im and Rosie before she
+was married, and between you and me and the gatepost I don’t know that
+it ended there. They do say they was seen walkin’ about the fields
+together last summer and ’e was in and out of the ’ouse pretty near
+every day.”
+
+“How did people find out?”
+
+“Well, it’s like this. They ’ad a girl there and they told ’er she could
+go ’ome and spend the night with her mother, but she wasn’t to be back
+later than eight o’clock in the morning. Well, when she come back she
+couldn’t get in. She knocked and she rung but nobody answered, and so
+she went in next door and asked the lady there what she’d better do, and
+the lady said she’d better go to the police station. The sergeant come
+back with ’er and ’e knocked and ’e rung, but ’_e_ couldn’t get no
+answer. Then he asked the girl ’ad they paid ’er ’er wages, and she said
+no, not for three months, and then ’e said, you take my word for it,
+they’ve shot the moon, that’s what they’ve done. An’ when they come to
+get inside they found they’d took all their clothes, an’ their
+books—they say as Ted Driffield ’ad a rare lot of books—an’ every
+blessed thing that belonged to them.”
+
+“And has nothing been heard of them since?”
+
+“Well, not exactly, but when they’d been gone about a week the girl got
+a letter from London, and when she opened it there was no letter or
+anything, but just a postal order for ’er wages. An’ if you ask me, I
+call that very ’andsome not to do a poor girl out of her wages.”
+
+I was much more shocked than Mary-Ann. I was a very respectable youth.
+The reader cannot have failed to observe that I accepted the conventions
+of my class as if they were the laws of Nature, and though debts on the
+grand scale in books had seemed to me romantic, and duns and money
+lenders were familiar figures to my fancy, I could not but think it mean
+and paltry not to pay the tradesmen’s books. I listened with confusion
+when people talked in my presence of the Driffields, and when they spoke
+of them as my friends I said: “Hang it all, I just knew them”; and when
+they asked: “Weren’t they fearfully common?” I said: “Well, after all
+they didn’t exactly suggest the Vere de Veres, you know.” Poor Mr.
+Galloway was dreadfully upset.
+
+“Of course I didn’t think they were wealthy,” he told me, “but I thought
+they had enough to get along. The house was very nicely furnished and
+the piano was new. It never struck me that they hadn’t paid for a single
+thing. They never stinted themselves. What hurts me is the deceit. I
+used to see quite a lot of them and I thought they liked me. They always
+made one welcome. You’d hardly believe it, but the last time I saw them
+when they shook hands with me Mrs. Driffield asked me to come next day
+and Driffield said: ‘Muffins for tea to-morrow.’ And all the time they
+had everything packed upstairs and that very night they took the last
+train to London.”
+
+“What does Lord George say about it?”
+
+“To tell you the truth I haven’t gone out of my way to see him lately.
+It’s been a lesson to me. There’s a little proverb about evil
+communications which I’ve thought well to bear in mind.”
+
+I felt very much the same about Lord George, and I was a little nervous,
+too. If he took it into his head to tell people that at Christmas I had
+been going to see the Driffields almost every day, and it came to my
+uncle’s ears, I foresaw an unpleasant fuss. My uncle would accuse me of
+deceit and prevarication and disobedience and of not behaving like a
+gentleman, and I did not at the moment see what answer I could make. I
+knew him well enough to be aware that he would not let the matter drop,
+and that I should be reminded of my transgression for years. I was just
+as glad not to see Lord George. But one day I ran into him face to face
+in the High Street.
+
+“Hulloa, youngster,” he cried, addressing me in a way I particularly
+resented. “Back for the holidays, I suppose.”
+
+“You suppose quite correctly,” I answered with what I thought withering
+sarcasm.
+
+Unfortunately he only bellowed with laughter.
+
+“You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself if you don’t look out,” he answered
+heartily. “Well, it looks as if there was no more whist for you and me
+just yet. Now you see what comes of living beyond your means. What I
+always say to my boys is, if you’ve got a pound and you spend nineteen
+and six you’re a rich man, but if you spend twenty shillings and
+sixpence you’re a pauper. Look after the pence, young fellow, and the
+pounds’ll look after themselves.”
+
+But though he spoke after this fashion there was in his voice no note of
+disapproval, but a bubble of laughter as though in his heart he were
+tittering at these admirable maxims.
+
+“They say you helped them to bunk,” I remarked.
+
+“Me?” His face assumed a look of extreme surprise, but his eyes
+glittered with sly mirth. “Why, when they came and told me the
+Driffields had shot the moon you could have knocked me down with a
+feather. They owed me four pounds seventeen and six for coal. We’ve all
+been let in, even poor old Galloway who never got his muffins for tea.”
+
+I had never thought Lord George more blatant. I should have liked to say
+something final and crushing, but as I could not think of anything I
+just said that I must be getting along and with a curt nod left him.
+
+
+
+
+                                   XI
+
+
+MUSING thus over the past, while I waited for Alroy Kear, I chuckled
+when I considered this shabby incident of Edward Driffield’s obscurity
+in the light of the immense respectability of his later years. I
+wondered whether it was because, in my boyhood, he was as a writer held
+in such small esteem by the people about me that I had never been able
+to see in him the astonishing merit that the best critical opinion
+eventually ascribed to him. He was for long thought to write very bad
+English, and indeed he gave you the impression of writing with the stub
+of a blunt pencil; his style was laboured, an uneasy mixture of the
+classical and the slangy, and his dialogue was such as could never have
+issued from the mouth of a human being. Toward the end of his career,
+when he dictated his books, his style, acquiring a conversational ease,
+became flowing and limpid; and then the critics, going back to the
+novels of his maturity, found that their English had a nervous, racy
+vigour that eminently suited the matter. His prime belonged to a period
+when the purple patch was in vogue and there are descriptive passages in
+his works that have found their way into all the anthologies of English
+prose. His pieces on the sea, and spring in the Kentish woods, and
+sunset on the lower reaches of the Thames are famous. It should be a
+mortification to me that I cannot read them without discomfort.
+
+When I was a young man, though his books sold but little and one or two
+were banned by the libraries, it was very much a mark of culture to
+admire them. He was thought boldly realistic. He was a very good stick
+to beat the Philistines with. Somebody’s lucky inspiration discovered
+that his sailors and peasants were Shakespearean, and when the advanced
+got together they uttered shrill cries of ecstasy over the dry and spicy
+humour of his yokels. This was a commodity that Edward Driffield had no
+difficulty in supplying. My own heart sank when he led me into the
+forecastle of a sailing ship or the taproom of a public house and I knew
+I was in for half a dozen pages in dialect of facetious comment on life,
+ethics, and immortality. But, I admit, I have always thought the
+Shakespearean clowns tedious and their innumerable progeny
+insupportable.
+
+Driffield’s strength lay evidently in his depiction of the class he knew
+best, farmers and farm labourers, shopkeepers and bartenders, skippers
+of sailing ships, mates, cooks, and able seamen. When he introduces
+characters belonging to a higher station in life even his warmest
+admirers, one would have thought, must experience a certain malaise; his
+fine gentlemen are so incredibly fine, his high-born ladies are so good,
+so pure, so noble that you are not surprised that they can only express
+themselves with polysyllabic dignity. His women difficultly come to
+life. But here again I must add that this is only my own opinion; the
+world at large and the most eminent critics have agreed that they are
+very winsome types of English womanhood, spirited, gallant, high-souled,
+and they have been often compared with the heroines of Shakespeare. We
+know of course that women are habitually constipated, but to represent
+them in fiction as being altogether devoid of a back passage seems to me
+really an excess of chivalry. I am surprised that they care to see
+themselves thus limned.
+
+The critics can force the world to pay attention to a very indifferent
+writer, and the world may lose its head over one who has no merit at
+all, but the result in neither case is lasting; and I cannot help
+thinking that no writer can hold the public for as long as Edward
+Driffield without considerable gifts. The elect sneer at popularity;
+they are inclined even to assert that it is a proof of mediocrity; but
+they forget that posterity makes its choice not from among the unknown
+writers of a period, but from among the known. It may be that some great
+masterpiece which deserves immortality has fallen still-born from the
+press, but posterity will never hear of it; it may be that posterity
+will scrap all the best sellers of our day, but it is among them that it
+must choose. At all events Edward Driffield is in the running. His
+novels happen to bore me; I find them long; the melodramatic incidents
+with which he sought to stir the sluggish reader’s interest leave me
+cold; but he certainly had sincerity. There is in his best books the
+stir of life, and in none of them can you fail to be aware of the
+author’s enigmatic personality. In his earlier days he was praised or
+blamed for his realism; according to the idiosyncrasy of his critics he
+was extolled for his truth or censured for his coarseness. But realism
+has ceased to excite remark, and the library reader will take in his
+stride obstacles at which a generation back he would have violently
+shied. The cultured reader of these pages will remember the leading
+article in the Literary Supplement of the _Times_ which appeared at the
+moment of Driffield’s death. Taking the novels of Edward Driffield as
+his text, the author wrote what was very well described as a hymn to
+beauty. No one who read it could fail to be impressed by those swelling
+periods, which reminded one of the noble prose of Jeremy Taylor, by that
+reverence and piety, by all those high sentiments, in short, expressed
+in a style that was ornate without excess and dulcet without effeminacy.
+It was itself a thing of beauty. If some suggested that Edward Driffield
+was by way of being a humourist and that a jest would here and there
+have lightened this eulogious article it must be replied that after all
+it was a funeral oration. And it is well known that Beauty does not look
+with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour. Roy Kear, when he was
+talking to me of Driffield, claimed that, whatever his faults, they were
+redeemed by the beauty that suffused his pages. Now I come to look back
+on our conversation, I think it was this remark that had most
+exasperated me.
+
+Thirty years ago in literary circles God was all the fashion. It was
+good form to believe and journalists used him to adorn a phrase or
+balance a sentence; then God went out (oddly enough with cricket and
+beer) and Pan came in. In a hundred novels his cloven hoof left its
+imprint on the sward; poets saw him lurking in the twilight on London
+commons, and literary ladies in Surrey and New England, nymphs of an
+industrial age, mysteriously surrendered their virginity to his rough
+embrace. Spiritually they were never the same again. But Pan went out
+and now beauty has taken his place. People find it in a phrase, or a
+turbot, a dog, a day, a picture, an action, a dress. Young women in
+cohorts, each of whom has written so promising and competent a novel,
+prattle of it in every manner from allusive to arch, from intense to
+charming; and the young men, more or less recently down from Oxford, but
+still trailing its clouds of glory, who tell us in the weekly papers
+what we should think of art, life, and the universe, fling the word with
+a pretty negligence about their close-packed pages. It is sadly frayed.
+Gosh, they have worked it hard! The ideal has many names and beauty is
+but one of them. I wonder if this clamour is anything more than the cry
+of distress of those who cannot make themselves at home in our heroic
+world of machines, and I wonder if their passion for beauty, the Little
+Nell of this shamefaced day, is anything more than sentimentality. It
+may be that another generation, accommodating itself more adequately to
+the stress of life, will look for inspiration not in a flight from
+reality, but in an eager acceptance of it.
+
+I do not know if others are like myself, but I am conscious that I
+cannot contemplate beauty long. For me no poet made a falser statement
+than Keats when he wrote the first line of _Endymion_. When the thing of
+beauty has given me the magic of its sensation my mind quickly wanders;
+I listen with incredulity to the persons who tell me that they can look
+with rapture for hours at a view or a picture. Beauty is an ecstasy; it
+is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It
+is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all: that is
+why the criticism of art, except in so far as it is unconcerned with
+beauty and therefore with art, is tiresome. All the critic can tell you
+with regard to Titian’s Entombment of Christ, perhaps of all the
+pictures in the world that which has most pure beauty, is to go and look
+at it. What else he has to say is history, or biography, or what not.
+But people add other qualities to beauty—sublimity, human interest,
+tenderness, love—because beauty does not long content them. Beauty is
+perfect, and perfection (such is human nature) holds our attention but
+for a little while. The mathematician who after seeing Phèdre asked:
+“_Qu’est-ce que ça prouve?_” was not such a fool as he has been
+generally made out. No one has ever been able to explain why the Doric
+temple of Pæstum is more beautiful than a glass of cold beer except by
+bringing in considerations that have nothing to do with beauty. Beauty
+is a blind alley. It is a mountain peak which once reached leads
+nowhere. That is why in the end we find more to entrance us in El Greco
+than in Titian, in the incomplete achievement of Shakespeare than in the
+consummate success of Racine. Too much has been written about beauty.
+That is why I have written a little more. Beauty is that which satisfies
+the æsthetic instinct. But who wants to be satisfied? It is only to the
+dullard that enough is as good as a feast. Let us face it: beauty is a
+bit of a bore.
+
+But of course what the critics wrote about Edward Driffield was
+eye-wash. His outstanding merit was not the realism that gave vigour to
+his work, nor the beauty that informed it, nor his graphic portraits of
+seafaring men, nor his poetic descriptions of salty marshes, of storm
+and calm and of nestling hamlets; it was his longevity. Reverence for
+old age is one of the most admirable traits of the human race and I
+think it may safely be stated that in no other country than ours is this
+trait more marked. The awe and love with which other nations regard old
+age is often platonic; but ours is practical. Who but the English would
+fill Covent Garden to listen to an aged prima donna without a voice? Who
+but the English would pay to see a dancer so decrepit that he can hardly
+put one foot before the other and say to one another admiringly in the
+intervals: “By George, sir, d’you know he’s a long way past sixty?” But
+compared with politicians and writers these are but striplings, and I
+often think that a _jeune premier_ must be of a singularly amiable
+disposition if it does not make him bitter to consider that when at the
+age of seventy he must end his career the public man and the author are
+only at their prime. A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman
+at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to
+be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe
+to govern a country. This is not so strange when you reflect that from
+the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are
+wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this
+was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture;
+and besides, no one can have moved in the society of politicians without
+discovering that (if one may judge by results) it requires little mental
+ability to rule a nation. But why writers should be more esteemed the
+older they grow, has long perplexed me. At one time I thought that the
+praise accorded to authors when they had ceased for twenty years to
+write anything of interest was largely due to the fact that the younger
+men, having no longer to fear their competition, felt it safe to extol
+their merit; and it is well known that to praise someone whose rivalry
+you do not dread is often a very good way of putting a spoke in the
+wheel of someone whose rivalry you do. But this is to take a low view of
+human nature and I would not for the world lay myself open to a charge
+of cheap cynicism. After mature consideration I have come to the
+conclusion that the real reason for the universal applause that comforts
+the declining years of the author who exceeds the common span of man is
+that intelligent people after the age of thirty read nothing at all. As
+they grow older the books they read in their youth are lit with its
+glamour and with every year that passes they ascribe greater merit to
+the author that wrote them. Of course he must go on; he must keep in the
+public eye. It is no good his thinking that it is enough to write one or
+two masterpieces; he must provide a pedestal for them of forty or fifty
+works of no particular consequence. This needs time. His production must
+be such that if he cannot captivate a reader by his charm he can stun
+him by his weight.
+
+If, as I think, longevity is genius, few in our time have enjoyed it in
+a more conspicuous degree than Edward Driffield. When he was a young
+fellow in the sixties (the cultured having had their way with him and
+passed him by) his position in the world of letters was only
+respectable; the best judges praised him, but with moderation; the
+younger men were inclined to be frivolous at his expense. It was agreed
+that he had talent, but it never occurred to anyone that he was one of
+the glories of English literature. He celebrated his seventieth
+birthday; an uneasiness passed over the world of letters, like a
+ruffling of the waters when on an Eastern sea a typhoon lurks in the
+distance, and it grew evident that there had lived among us all these
+years a great novelist and none of us had suspected it. There was a rush
+for Driffield’s book in the various libraries and a hundred busy pens,
+in Bloomsbury, in Chelsea, and in other places where men of letters
+congregate, wrote appreciations, studies, essays, and works, short and
+chatty or long and intense, on his novels. These were reprinted, in
+complete editions, in select editions, at a shilling and three and six
+and five shillings and a guinea. His style was analyzed, his philosophy
+was examined, his technique was dissected. At seventy-five everyone
+agreed that Edward Driffield had genius. At eighty he was the Grand Old
+Man of English Letters. This position he held till his death.
+
+Now we look about and think sadly that there is no one to take his
+place. A few septuagenarians are sitting up and taking notice, and they
+evidently feel that they could comfortably fill the vacant niche. But it
+is obvious that they lack something.
+
+Though these recollections have taken so long to narrate they took but a
+little while to pass through my head. They came to me higgledy-piggledy,
+an incident and then a scrap of conversation that belonged to a previous
+time, and I have set them down in order for the convenience of the
+reader and because I have a neat mind. One thing that surprised me was
+that even at that far distance I could remember distinctly what people
+looked like and even the gist of what they said, but only with vagueness
+what they wore. I knew of course that the dress, especially of women,
+was quite different forty years ago from what it was now, but if I
+recalled it at all it was not from life but from pictures and
+photographs that I had seen much later.
+
+I was still occupied with my idle fancies when I heard a taxi stop at
+the door, the bell ring, and in a moment Alroy Kear’s booming voice
+telling the butler that he had an appointment with me. He came in, big,
+bluff, and hearty; his vitality shattered with a single gesture the
+frail construction I had been building out of the vanished past. He
+brought in with him, like a blustering wind in March, the aggressive and
+inescapable present.
+
+“I was just asking myself,” I said, “who could possibly succeed Edward
+Driffield as the Grand Old Man of English Letters and you arrive to
+answer my question.”
+
+He broke into a jovial laugh, but into his eyes came a quick look of
+suspicion.
+
+“I don’t think there’s anybody,” he said.
+
+“How about yourself?”
+
+“Oh, my dear boy, I’m not fifty yet. Give me another twenty-five years.”
+He laughed, but his eyes held mine keenly. “I never know when you’re
+pulling my leg.” He looked down suddenly. “Of course one can’t help
+thinking about the future sometimes. All the people who are at the top
+of the tree now are anything from fifteen to twenty years older than me.
+They can’t last for ever, and when they’re gone who is there? Of course
+there’s Aldous; he’s a good deal younger than me, but he’s not very
+strong and I don’t believe he takes great care of himself. Barring
+accidents, by which I mean barring some genius who suddenly springs up
+and sweeps the board, I don’t quite see how in another twenty or
+twenty-five years I can help having the field pretty well to myself.
+It’s just a question of pegging away and living on longer than the
+others.”
+
+Roy sank his virile bulk into one of my landlady’s armchairs and I
+offered him a whisky and soda.
+
+“No, I never drink spirits before six o’clock,” he said. He looked about
+him. “Jolly, these digs are.”
+
+“I know. What have you come to see me about?”
+
+“I thought I’d better have a little chat with you about Mrs. Driffield’s
+invitation. It was rather difficult to explain over the telephone. The
+truth of the matter is that I’ve arranged to write Driffield’s life.”
+
+“Oh! Why didn’t you tell me the other day?”
+
+I felt friendly disposed toward Roy. I was happy to think that I had not
+misjudged him when I suspected that it was not merely for the pleasure
+of my company that he had asked me to luncheon.
+
+“I hadn’t entirely made up my mind. Mrs. Driffield is very keen on my
+doing it. She’s going to help me in every way she can. She’s giving me
+all the material she has. She’s been collecting it for a good many
+years. It’s not an easy thing to do and of course I can’t afford not to
+do it well. But if I can make a pretty good job of it, it can’t fail to
+do me a lot of good. People have so much more respect for a novelist if
+he writes something serious now and then. Those critical works of mine
+were an awful sweat, and they sold nothing, but I don’t regret them for
+a moment. They’ve given me a position I could never have got without
+them.”
+
+“I think it’s a very good plan. You’ve known Driffield more intimately
+than most people for the last twenty years.”
+
+“I think I have. But of course he was over sixty when I first made his
+acquaintance. I wrote and told him how much I admired his books and he
+asked me to go and see him. But I know nothing about the early part of
+his life. Mrs. Driffield used to try to get him to talk about those days
+and she made very copious notes of all he said, and then there are
+diaries that he kept now and then, and of course a lot of the stuff in
+the novels is obviously autobiographical. But there are immense lacunæ.
+I’ll tell you the sort of book I want to write, a sort of intimate life,
+with a lot of those little details that make people feel warm inside,
+you know, and then woven in with this a really exhaustive criticism of
+his literary work, not ponderous, of course, but although sympathetic,
+searching and . . . subtle. Naturally it wants doing, but Mrs. Driffield
+seems to think I can do it.”
+
+“I’m sure you can,” I put in.
+
+“I don’t see why not,” said Roy. “I am a critic, and I’m a novelist.
+It’s obvious that I have certain literary qualifications. But I can’t do
+anything unless everyone who can is willing to help me.”
+
+I began to see where I came in. I tried to make my face look quite
+blank. Roy leaned forward.
+
+“I asked you the other day if you were going to write anything about
+Driffield yourself and you said you weren’t. Can I take that as
+definite?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“Then have you got any objection to giving me your material?”
+
+“My dear boy, I haven’t got any.”
+
+“Oh, that’s nonsense,” said Roy good-humouredly, with the tone of a
+doctor who is trying to persuade a child to have its throat examined.
+“When he was living at Blackstable you must have seen a lot of him.”
+
+“I was only a boy then.”
+
+“But you must have been conscious of the unusual experience. After all,
+no one could be for half an hour in Edward Driffield’s society without
+being impressed by his extraordinary personality. It must have been
+obvious even to a boy of sixteen, and you were probably more observant
+and sensitive than the average boy of that age.”
+
+“I wonder if his personality would have seemed extraordinary without the
+reputation to back it up. Do you imagine that if you went down to a spa
+in the west of England as Mr. Atkins, a chartered accountant taking the
+waters for his liver, you would impress the people you met there as a
+man of immense character?”
+
+“I imagine they’d soon realize that I was not quite the common or garden
+chartered accountant,” said Roy, with a smile that took from his remark
+any appearance of self-esteem.
+
+“Well, all I can tell you is that what chiefly bothered me about
+Driffield in those days was that the knickerbocker suit he wore was
+dreadfully loud. We used to bicycle a lot together and it always made me
+feel a trifle uncomfortable to be seen with him.”
+
+“It sounds comic now. What did he talk about?”
+
+“I don’t know; nothing very much. He was rather keen on architecture,
+and he talked about farming, and if a pub looked nice he generally
+suggested stopping for five minutes and having a glass of bitter, and
+then he would talk to the landlord about the crops and the price of coal
+and things like that.”
+
+I rambled on, though I could see by the look of Roy’s face that he was
+disappointed with me; he listened, but he was a trifle bored, and it
+struck me that when he was bored he looked peevish. But though I
+couldn’t remember that Driffield had ever said anything significant
+during those long rides of ours, I had a very acute recollection of the
+_feel_ of them. Blackstable was peculiar in this, that though it was on
+the sea, with a long shingly beach and marshland at the back, you had
+only to go about half a mile inland to come into the most rural country
+in Kent. Winding roads that ran between the great fat green fields and
+clumps of huge elms, substantial and with a homely stateliness like good
+old Kentish farmers’ wives, high-coloured and robust, who had grown
+portly on good butter and home-made bread and cream and fresh eggs. And
+sometimes the road was only a lane, with thick hawthorn hedges, and the
+green elms overhung it on either side so that when you looked up there
+was only a strip of blue sky between. And as you rode along in the warm,
+keen air you had a sensation that the world was standing still and life
+would last for ever. Although you were pedalling with such energy you
+had a delicious feeling of laziness. You were quite happy when no one
+spoke, and if one of the party from sheer high spirits suddenly put on
+speed and shot ahead it was a joke that everyone laughed at and for a
+few minutes you pedalled as hard as you could. And we chaffed one
+another innocently and giggled at our own humour. Now and then one would
+pass cottages with little gardens in front of them and in the gardens
+were hollyhocks and tiger lilies; and a little way from the road were
+farmhouses, with their spacious barns and oasthouses; and one would pass
+through hopfields with the ripening hops hanging in garlands. The public
+houses were friendly and informal, hardly more important than cottages,
+and on the porches often honeysuckle would be growing. The names they
+bore were usual and familiar: the Jolly Sailor, the Merry Ploughman, the
+Crown and Anchor, the Red Lion.
+
+But of course all that could matter nothing to Roy, and he interrupted
+me.
+
+“Did he never talk of literature?” he asked.
+
+“I don’t think so. He wasn’t that sort of writer. I suppose he thought
+about his writing, but he never mentioned it. He used to lend the curate
+books. In the winter, one Christmas holidays, I used to have tea at his
+house nearly every day and sometimes the curate and he would talk about
+books, but we used to shut them up.”
+
+“Don’t you remember anything he said?”
+
+“Only one thing. I remember it because I hadn’t ever read the things he
+was talking about and what he said made me do so. He said that when
+Shakespeare retired to Stratford-on-Avon and became respectable, if he
+ever thought of his plays at all, probably the two that he remembered
+with most interest were _Measure for Measure_ and _Troilus and
+Cressida_.”
+
+“I don’t think that’s very illuminating. Didn’t he say anything about
+anyone more modern than Shakespeare?”
+
+“Well, not then, that I can remember; but when I was lunching with the
+Driffields a few years ago I overheard him saying that Henry James had
+turned his back on one of the great events of the world’s history, the
+rise of the United States, in order to report tittle-tattle at tea
+parties in English country houses. Driffield called it _il gran
+rifiuto_. I was surprised at hearing the old man use an Italian phrase
+and amused because a great big bouncing duchess who was there was the
+only person who knew what the devil he was talking about. He said: ‘Poor
+Henry, he’s spending eternity wandering round and round a stately park
+and the fence is just too high for him to peep over and they’re having
+tea just too far for him to hear what the countess is saying.’”
+
+Roy listened to my little anecdote with attention. He shook his head
+reflectively.
+
+“I don’t think I could use that. I’d have the Henry James gang down on
+me like a thousand of bricks. . . . But what used you to do during those
+evenings?”
+
+“Well, we played whist while Driffield read books for review, and he
+used to sing.”
+
+“That’s interesting,” said Roy, leaning forward eagerly. “Do you
+remember what he sang?”
+
+“Perfectly. ‘All Through Stickin’ to a Soljer’ and ‘Come Where the Booze
+Is Cheaper’ were his favourites.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+I could see that Roy was disappointed.
+
+“Did you expect him to sing Schumann?” I asked.
+
+“I don’t know why not. It would have been rather a good point. But I
+think I should have expected him to sing sea chanteys or old English
+country airs, you know, the sort of thing they used to sing at
+fairings—blind fiddlers and the village swains dancing with the girls
+on the threshing floor and all that sort of thing. I might have made
+something rather beautiful out of that, but I can’t _see_ Edward
+Driffield singing music hall songs. After all, when you’re drawing a
+man’s portrait you must get the values right; you only confuse the
+impression if you put in stuff that’s all out of tone.”
+
+“You know that shortly after this he shot the moon. He let everybody
+in.”
+
+Roy was silent for fully a minute and he looked down at the carpet
+reflectively.
+
+“Yes, I knew there’d been some unpleasantness. Mrs. Driffield mentioned
+it. I understand everything was paid up later before he finally bought
+Ferne Court and settled down in the district. I don’t think it’s
+necessary to dwell on an incident that is not really of any importance
+in the history of his development. After all, it happened nearly forty
+years ago. You know, there were some very curious sides to the old man.
+One would have thought that after a rather sordid little scandal like
+that the neighbourhood of Blackstable would be the last place he’d
+choose to spend the rest of his life in when he’d become celebrated,
+especially when it was the scene of his rather humble origins; but he
+didn’t seem to mind a bit. He seemed to think the whole thing rather a
+good joke. He was quite capable of telling people who came to lunch
+about it and it was very embarrassing for Mrs. Driffield. I should like
+you to know Amy better. She’s a very remarkable woman. Of course the old
+man had written all his great books before he ever set eyes on her, but
+I don’t think anyone can deny that it was she who created the rather
+imposing and dignified figure that the world saw for the last
+twenty-five years of his life. She’s been very frank with me. She didn’t
+have such an easy job of it. Old Driffield had some very queer ways and
+she had to use a good deal of tact to get him to behave decently. He was
+very obstinate in some things and I think a woman of less character
+would have been discouraged. For instance, he had a habit that poor Amy
+had a lot of trouble to break him of: after he’d finished his meat and
+vegetables he’d take a piece of bread and wipe the plate clean with it
+and eat it.”
+
+“Do you know what that means?” I said. “It means that for long he had so
+little to eat that he couldn’t afford to waste any food he could get.”
+
+“Well, that may be, but it’s not a very pretty habit for a distinguished
+man of letters. And then, he didn’t exactly tipple, but he was rather
+fond of going down to the Bear and Key at Blackstable and having a few
+beers in the public bar. Of course there was no harm in it, but it did
+make him rather conspicuous, especially in summer when the place was
+full of trippers. He didn’t mind who he talked to. He didn’t seem able
+to realize that he had a position to keep up. You can’t deny it was
+rather awkward after they’d been having a lot of interesting people to
+lunch—people like Edmund Gosse, for instance, and Lord Curzon—that he
+should go down to a public house and tell the plumber and the baker and
+the sanitary inspector what he thought about them. But of course that
+could be explained away. One could say that he was after local colour
+and was interested in types. But he had some habits that really were
+rather difficult to cope with. Do you know that it was with the greatest
+difficulty that Amy Driffield could ever get him to take a bath?”
+
+“He was born at a time when people thought it unhealthy to take too many
+baths. I don’t suppose he ever lived in a house that had a bathroom till
+he was fifty.”
+
+“Well, he said he never had had a bath more than once a week and he
+didn’t see why he should change his habits at his time of life. Then Amy
+said that he must change his under linen every day, but he objected to
+that too. He said he’d always been used to wearing his vest and drawers
+for a week and it was nonsense, it only wore them out to have them
+washed so often. Mrs. Driffield did everything she could to tempt him to
+have a bath every day, with bath salts and perfumes, you know, but
+nothing would induce him to, and as he grew older he wouldn’t even have
+one once a week. She tells me that for the last three years of his life
+he never had a bath at all. Of course, all this is between ourselves;
+I’m merely telling it to show you that in writing his life I shall have
+to use a good deal of tact. I don’t see how one can deny that he was
+just a wee bit unscrupulous in money matters and he had a kink in him
+that made him take a strange pleasure in the society of his inferiors
+and some of his personal habits were rather disagreeable, but I don’t
+think that side of him was the most significant. I don’t want to say
+anything that’s untrue, but I do think there’s a certain amount that’s
+better left unsaid.”
+
+“Don’t you think it would be more interesting if you went the whole hog
+and drew him warts and all?”
+
+“Oh, I couldn’t. Amy Driffield would never speak to me again. She only
+asked me to do the life because she felt she could trust my discretion.
+I must behave like a gentleman.”
+
+“It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.”
+
+“I don’t see why. And besides, you know what the critics are. If you
+tell the truth they only say you’re cynical and it does an author no
+good to get a reputation for cynicism. Of course I don’t deny that if I
+were thoroughly unscrupulous I could make a sensation. It would be
+rather amusing to show the man with his passion for beauty and his
+careless treatment of his obligations, his fine style and his personal
+hatred for soap and water, his idealism and his tippling in disreputable
+pubs; but honestly, would it pay? They’d only say I was imitating Lytton
+Strachey. No, I think I shall do much better to be allusive and charming
+and rather subtle, you know the sort of thing, and tender. I think one
+ought always to _see_ a book before one starts it. Well, I see this
+rather like a portrait of Van Dyck, with a good deal of atmosphere, you
+know, and a certain gravity, and with a sort of aristocratic
+distinction. Do you know what I mean? About eighty thousand words.”
+
+He was absorbed for a moment in the ecstasy of æsthetic contemplation.
+In his mind’s eye he saw a book, in royal octavo, slim and light in the
+hand, printed with large margins on handsome paper in a type that was
+both clear and comely, and I think he saw a binding in smooth black
+cloth with a decoration in gold and gilt lettering. But being human,
+Alroy Kear could not, as I suggested a few pages back, hold the ecstasy
+that beauty yields for more than a little while. He gave me a candid
+smile.
+
+“But how the devil am I to get over the first Mrs. Driffield?”
+
+“The skeleton in the cupboard,” I murmured.
+
+“She is damned awkward to deal with. She was married to Driffield for a
+good many years. Amy has very decided views on the subject, but I don’t
+see how I can possibly meet them. You see, her attitude is that Rose
+Driffield exerted a most pernicious influence on her husband, and that
+she did everything possible to ruin him morally, physically, and
+financially; she was beneath him in every way, at least intellectually
+and spiritually, and it was only because he was a man of immense force
+and vitality that he survived. It was of course a very unfortunate
+marriage. It’s true that she’s been dead for ages and it seems a pity to
+rake up old scandals and wash a lot of dirty linen in public; but the
+fact remains that all Driffield’s greatest books were written when he
+was living with her. Much as I admire the later books, and no one is
+more conscious of their genuine beauty than I am, and they have a
+restraint and a sort of classical sobriety which are admirable, I must
+admit that they haven’t the tang and the vigour and the smell and bustle
+of life of the early ones. It does seem to me that you can’t altogether
+ignore the influence his first wife had on his work.”
+
+“What are you going to do about it?” I asked.
+
+“Well, I can’t see why all that part of his life shouldn’t be treated
+with the greatest possible reserve and delicacy, so as not to offend the
+most exacting susceptibility, and yet with a sort of manly frankness, if
+you understand what I mean, that would be rather moving.”
+
+“It sounds a very tall order.”
+
+“As I see it, there’s no need to dot the i’s or to cross the t’s. It can
+only be a question of getting just the right touch. I wouldn’t state
+more than I could help, but I would suggest what was essential for the
+reader to realize. You know, however gross a subject is you can soften
+its unpleasantness if you treat it with dignity. But I can do nothing
+unless I am in complete possession of the facts.”
+
+“Obviously you can’t cook them unless you have them.”
+
+Roy had been expressing himself with a fluent ease that revealed the
+successful lecturer. I wished (a) that I could express myself with so
+much force and aptness, never at a loss for a word, rolling off the
+sentences without a moment’s hesitation; and (b) that I did not feel so
+miserably incompetent with my one small insignificant person to
+represent the large and appreciative audience that Roy was instinctively
+addressing. But now he paused. A genial look came over his face, which
+his enthusiasm had reddened and the heat of the day caused to perspire,
+and the eyes that had held me with a dominating brilliance softened and
+smiled.
+
+“This is where you come in, old boy,” he said pleasantly.
+
+I have always found it a very good plan in life to say nothing when I
+had nothing to say and when I do not know how to answer a remark to hold
+my tongue. I remained silent and looked back at Roy amiably.
+
+“You know more about his life at Blackstable than anybody else.”
+
+“I don’t know about that. There must be a number of people at
+Blackstable who saw as much of him in the old days as I did.”
+
+“That may be, but after all they’re presumably not people of any
+importance, and I don’t think they matter very much.”
+
+“Oh, I see. You mean that I’m the only person who might blow the gaff.”
+
+“Roughly, that is what I do mean, if you feel that you must put it in a
+facetious way.”
+
+I saw that Roy was not inclined to be amused. I was not annoyed, for I
+am quite used to people not being amused at my jokes. I often think that
+the purest type of the artist is the humorist who laughs alone at his
+own jests.
+
+“And you saw a good deal of him later on in London, I believe.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“That is when he had an apartment somewhere in Lower Belgravia.”
+
+“Well, lodgings in Pimlico.”
+
+Roy smiled drily.
+
+“We won’t quarrel about the exact designation of the quarter of London
+in which he lived. You were very intimate with him then.”
+
+“Fairly.”
+
+“How long did that last?”
+
+“About a couple of years.”
+
+“How old were you then?”
+
+“Twenty.”
+
+“Now look here, I want you to do me a great favour. It won’t take you
+very long and it will be of quite inestimable value to me. I want you to
+jot down as fully as you can all your recollections of Driffield, and
+all you remember about his wife and his relations with her and so on,
+both at Blackstable and in London.”
+
+“Oh, my dear fellow, that’s asking a great deal. I’ve got a lot of work
+to do just now.”
+
+“It needn’t take you very long. You can write it quite roughly, I mean.
+You needn’t bother about style, you know, or anything like that. I’ll
+put the style in. All I want are the facts. After all, you know them and
+nobody else does. I don’t want to be pompous or anything like that, but
+Driffield was a great man and you owe it to his memory and to English
+literature to tell everything you know. I shouldn’t have asked you, but
+you told me the other day that you weren’t going to write anything about
+him yourself. It would be rather like a dog in a manger to keep to
+yourself a whole lot of material that you have no intention of using.”
+
+Thus Roy appealed at once to my sense of duty, my indolence, my
+generosity, and my rectitude.
+
+“But why does Mrs. Driffield want me to go down and stay at Ferne
+Court?” I asked.
+
+“Well, we talked it over. It’s a very jolly house to stay in. She does
+one very well, and it ought to be divine in the country just now. She
+thought it would be very nice and quiet for you if you felt inclined to
+write your recollections there; of course, I said I couldn’t promise
+that, but naturally being so near Blackstable would remind you of all
+sorts of things that you might otherwise forget. And then, living in his
+house, among his books and things, it would make the past seem much more
+real. We could all talk about him, and you know how in the heat of
+conversation things come back. Amy’s very quick and clever. She’s been
+in the habit of making notes of Driffield’s talk for years, and after
+all it’s quite likely that you’ll say things on the spur of the moment
+that you wouldn’t think of writing and she can just jot them down
+afterward. And we can play tennis and bathe.”
+
+“I’m not very fond of staying with people,” I said. “I hate getting up
+for a nine-o’clock breakfast to eat things I have no mind to. I don’t
+like going for walks, and I’m not interested in other people’s
+chickens.”
+
+“She’s a lonely woman now. It would be a kindness to her and it would be
+a kindness to me too.”
+
+I reflected.
+
+“I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll go down to Blackstable, but I’ll go
+down on my own. I’ll put up at the Bear and Key and I’ll come over and
+see Mrs. Driffield while you’re there. You can both talk your heads off
+about Edward Driffield, but I shall be able to get away when I’m fed up
+with you.”
+
+Roy laughed good-naturedly.
+
+“All right. That’ll do. And will you jot down anything you can remember
+that you think will be useful to me?”
+
+“I’ll try.”
+
+“When will you come? I’m going down on Friday.”
+
+“I’ll come with you if you’ll promise not to talk to me in the train.”
+
+“All right. The five-ten’s the best one. Shall I come and fetch you?”
+
+“I’m capable of getting to Victoria by myself. I’ll meet you on the
+platform.”
+
+I don’t know if Roy was afraid of my changing my mind, but he got up at
+once, shook my hand heartily, and left. He begged me on no account to
+forget my tennis racket and bathing suit.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+
+MY PROMISE to Roy sent my thoughts back to my first years in London.
+Having nothing much to do that afternoon, it occurred to me to stroll
+along and have a cup of tea with my old landlady. Mrs. Hudson’s name had
+been given to me by the secretary of the medical school at St. Luke’s
+when, a callow youth just arrived in town, I was looking for lodgings.
+She had a house in Vincent Square. I lived there for five years, in two
+rooms on the ground floor, and over me on the drawing room floor lived a
+master at Westminster School. I paid a pound a week for my rooms and he
+paid twenty-five shillings. Mrs. Hudson was a little, active, bustling
+woman, with a sallow face, a large aquiline nose, and the brightest, the
+most vivacious, black eyes that I ever saw. She had a great deal of very
+dark hair, in the afternoons and all day on Sunday arranged in a fringe
+on the forehead with a bun at the nape of the neck as you may see in old
+photographs of the Jersey Lily. She had a heart of gold (though I did
+not know it then, for when you are young you take the kindness people
+show you as your right) and she was an excellent cook. No one could make
+a better _omelette soufflée_ than she. Every morning she was up betimes
+to get the fire lit in her gentlemen’s sitting room so that they needn’t
+eat their breakfasts simply perishing with the cold, my word it’s bitter
+this morning; and if she didn’t hear you having your bath, a flat tin
+bath that slipped under the bed, the water put in the night before to
+take the chill off, she’d say: “There now, there’s my dining room floor
+not up yet, ’e’ll be late for his lecture again,” and she would come
+tripping upstairs and thump on the door and you would hear her shrill
+voice: “If you don’t get up at once you won’t ’ave time to ’ave
+breakfast, an’ I’ve got a lovely ’addick for you.” She worked all day
+long and she sang at her work and she was gay and happy and smiling. Her
+husband was much older than she. He had been a butler in very good
+families, and wore side-whiskers and a perfect manner; he was verger at
+a neighbouring church, highly respected, and he waited at table and
+cleaned the boots and helped with the washing-up. Mrs. Hudson’s only
+relaxation was to come up after she had served the dinners (I had mine
+at half-past six and the schoolmaster at seven) and have a little chat
+with her gentlemen. I wish to goodness I had had the sense (like Amy
+Driffield with her celebrated husband) to take notes of her
+conversation, for Mrs. Hudson was a mistress of Cockney humour. She had
+a gift of repartee that never failed her, she had a racy style and an
+apt and varied vocabulary, she was never at a loss for the comic
+metaphor or the vivid phrase. She was a pattern of propriety and she
+would never have women in her house, you never knew what they were up to
+(“It’s men, men, men all the time with them, and afternoon tea and thin
+bread and butter, and openin’ the door and ringin’ for ’ot water and I
+don’t know what all”); but in conversation she did not hesitate to use
+what was called in those days the blue bag. One could have said of her
+what she said of Marie Lloyd: “What I like about ’er is that she gives
+you a good laugh. She goes pretty near the knuckle sometimes, but she
+never jumps over the fence.” Mrs. Hudson enjoyed her own humour and I
+think she talked more willingly to her lodgers because her husband was a
+serious man (“It’s as it should be,” she said, “’im bein’ a verger and
+attendin’ weddings and funerals and what all”) and wasn’t much of a one
+for a joke. “Wot I says to ’Udson is, laugh while you’ve got the chance,
+you won’t laugh much when you’re dead and buried.”
+
+Mrs. Hudson’s humour was cumulative and the story of her feud with Miss
+Butcher who let lodgings at number fourteen was a great comic saga that
+went on year in and year out.
+
+“She’s a disagreeable old cat, but I give you my word I’d miss ’er if
+the Lord took ’er one fine day. Though what ’e’d do with ’er when ’e got
+’er I can’t think. Many’s the good laugh she’s give me in ’er time.”
+
+Mrs. Hudson had very bad teeth and the question whether she should have
+them taken out and have false ones was discussed by her for two or three
+years with an unimaginable variety of comic invention.
+
+“But as I said to ’Udson on’y last night, when he said, ‘Oh, come on,
+’ave ’em out and ’ave done with it’, I shouldn’t ’ave anythin’ to talk
+about.”
+
+I had not seen Mrs. Hudson for two or three years. My last visit had
+been in answer to a little letter in which she asked me to come and
+drink a nice strong cup of tea with her and announced: “Hudson died
+three months ago next Saturday, aged seventy-nine, and George and Hester
+send their respectful compliments.” George was the issue of her marriage
+with Hudson. He was now a man approaching middle age who worked at
+Woolwich Arsenal, and his mother had been repeating for twenty years
+that George would be bringing a wife home one of these days. Hester was
+the maid-of-all-work she had engaged toward the end of my stay with her,
+and Mrs. Hudson still spoke of her as “that dratted girl of mine.”
+Though Mrs. Hudson must have been well over thirty when I first took her
+rooms, and that was five and thirty years ago, I had no feeling as I
+walked leisurely through the Green Park that I should not find her
+alive. She was as definitely part of the recollections of my youth as
+the pelicans that stood at the edge of the ornamental water.
+
+I walked down the area steps and the door was opened to me by Hester, a
+woman getting on for fifty now and stoutish, but still bearing on her
+shyly grinning face the irresponsibility of the dratted girl. Mrs.
+Hudson was darning George’s socks when I was shown into the front room
+of the basement and she took off her spectacles to look at me.
+
+“Well, if that isn’t Mr. Ashenden! Who ever thought of seeing you? Is
+the water boiling, ’Ester? You will ’ave a nice cup of tea, won’t you?”
+
+Mrs. Hudson was a little heavier than when I first knew her and her
+movements were more deliberate, but there was scarcely a white hair on
+her head, and her eyes, as black and shining as buttons, sparkled with
+fun. I sat down in a shabby little armchair covered with maroon leather.
+
+“How are you getting on, Mrs. Hudson?” I asked.
+
+“Oh, I’ve got nothin’ much to complain of except that I’m not so young
+as I used to was,” she answered. “I can’t do so much as I could when you
+was ’ere. I don’t give my gentlemen dinner now, only breakfast.”
+
+“Are all your rooms let?”
+
+“Yes, I’m thankful to say.”
+
+Owing to the rise of prices Mrs. Hudson was able to get more for her
+rooms than in my day, and I think in her modest way she was quite well
+off. But of course people wanted a lot nowadays.
+
+“You wouldn’t believe it, first I ’ad to put in a bathroom, and then I
+’ad to put in the electric light, and then nothin’ would satisfy them
+but I must ’ave a telephone. What they’ll want next I can’t think.”
+
+“Mr. George says it’s pretty near time Mrs. ’Udson thought of retiring,”
+said Hester, who was laying the tea.
+
+“You mind your own business, my girl,” said Mrs. Hudson tartly. “When I
+retire it’ll be to the cemetery. Fancy me livin’ all alone with George
+and ’Ester without nobody to talk to.”
+
+“Mr. George says she ought to take a little ’ouse in the country an’
+take care of ’erself,” said Hester, unperturbed by the reproof.
+
+“Don’t talk to me about the country. The doctor said I was to go there
+for six weeks last summer. It nearly killed me, I give you my word. The
+noise of it. All them birds singin’ all the time, and the cocks crowin’
+and the cows mooin’. I couldn’t stick it. When you’ve lived all the
+years I ’ave in peace and quietness you can’t get used to all that
+racket goin’ on all the time.”
+
+A few doors away was the Vauxhall Bridge Road and down it trams were
+clanging, ringing their bells as they went, motor buses were lumbering
+along, taxis were tooting their horns. If Mrs. Hudson heard it, it was
+London she heard, and it soothed her as a mother’s crooning soothes a
+restless child.
+
+I looked round the cosy, shabby, homely little parlour in which Mrs.
+Hudson had lived so long. I wondered if there was anything I could do
+for her. I noticed that she had a gramophone. It was the only thing I
+could think of.
+
+“Is there anything you want, Mrs. Hudson?” I asked.
+
+She fixed her beady eyes on me reflectively.
+
+“I don’t know as there is, now you come to speak of it, except me ’ealth
+and strength for another twenty years so as I can go on workin’.”
+
+I do not think I am a sentimentalist, but her reply, unexpected but so
+characteristic, made a sudden lump come to my throat.
+
+When it was time for me to go I asked if I could see the rooms I had
+lived in for five years.
+
+“Run upstairs, ’Ester, and see if Mr. Graham’s in. If he ain’t, I’m sure
+’e wouldn’t mind you ’avin’ a look at them.”
+
+Hester scurried up, and in a moment, slightly breathless, came down
+again to say that Mr. Graham was out. Mrs. Hudson came with me. The bed
+was the same narrow iron bed that I had slept in and dreamed in and
+there was the same chest of drawers and the same washing stand. But the
+sitting room had the grim heartiness of the athlete; on the walls were
+photographs of cricket elevens and rowing men in shorts; golf clubs
+stood in the corner and pipes and tobacco jars, ornamented with the arms
+of a college, were littered on the chimney-piece. In my day we believed
+in art for art’s sake and this I exemplified by draping the
+chimney-piece with a Moorish rug, putting up curtains of art serge and a
+bilious green, and hanging on the walls autotypes of pictures by
+Perugino, Van Dyck and Hobbema.
+
+“Very artistic you was, wasn’t you?” Mrs. Hudson remarked, not without
+irony.
+
+“Very,” I murmured.
+
+I could not help feeling a pang as I thought of all the years that had
+passed since I inhabited that room, and of all that had happened to me.
+It was at that same table that I had eaten my hearty breakfast and my
+frugal dinner, read my medical books and written my first novel. It was
+in that same armchair that I had read for the first time Wordsworth and
+Stendhal, the Elizabethan dramatists and the Russian novelists, Gibbon,
+Boswell, Voltaire, and Rousseau. I wondered who had used them since.
+Medical students, articled clerks, young fellows making their way in the
+city, and elderly men retired from the colonies or thrown unexpectedly
+upon the world by the break up of an old home. The room made me, as Mrs.
+Hudson would have put it, go queer all over. All the hopes that had been
+cherished there, the bright visions of the future, the flaming passion
+of youth; the regrets, the disillusion, the weariness, the resignation;
+so much had been felt in that room, by so many, the whole gamut of human
+emotion, that it seemed strangely to have acquired a troubling and
+enigmatic personality of its own. I have no notion why, but it made me
+think of a woman at a crossroad with a finger on her lips, looking back
+and with her other hand beckoning. What I obscurely (and rather
+shamefacedly) felt, communicated itself to Mrs. Hudson, for she gave a
+laugh and with a characteristic gesture rubbed her prominent nose.
+
+“My word, people are funny,” she said. “When I think of all the
+gentlemen I’ve ’ad here, I give you my word you wouldn’t believe it if I
+told you some of the things I know about them. One of them’s funnier
+than the other. Sometimes I lie abed thinkin’ of them, and _laugh_.
+Well, it would be a bad world if you didn’t get a good laugh now and
+then, but, lor’, lodgers really are the limit.”
+
+
+
+
+                                  XIII
+
+
+I LIVED with Mrs. Hudson for nearly two years before I met the
+Driffields again. My life was very regular. I spent all day at the
+hospital and about six walked back to Vincent Square. I bought the
+_Star_ at Lambeth Bridge and read it till my dinner was served. Then I
+read seriously for an hour or two, works to improve my mind, for I was a
+strenuous, earnest, and industrious youth, and after that wrote novels
+and plays till bedtime. I do not know for what reason it was that one
+day toward the end of June, happening to leave the hospital early, I
+thought I would walk down the Vauxhall Bridge Road. I liked it for its
+noisy bustle. It had a sordid vivacity that was pleasantly exciting and
+you felt that at any moment an adventure might there befall you. I
+strolled along in a daydream and was surprised suddenly to hear my name.
+I stopped and looked, and there to my astonishment stood Mrs. Driffield.
+She was smiling at me.
+
+“Don’t you know me?” she cried.
+
+“Yes. Mrs. Driffield.”
+
+And though I was grown up I was conscious that I was blushing as
+furiously as when I was sixteen. I was embarrassed. With my lamentably
+Victorian notions of honesty I had been much shocked by the Driffields’
+behaviour in running away from Blackstable without paying their bills.
+It seemed to me very shabby. I felt deeply the shame I thought they must
+feel and I was astounded that Mrs. Driffield should speak to someone who
+knew of the discreditable incident. If I had seen her coming I should
+have looked away, my delicacy presuming that she would wish to avoid the
+mortification of being seen by me; but she held out her hand and shook
+mine with obvious pleasure.
+
+“I am glad to see a Blackstable face,” she said. “You know we left there
+in a hurry.”
+
+She laughed and I laughed too; but her laugh was mirthful and childlike,
+while mine, I felt, was strained.
+
+“I hear there _was_ a to-do when they found out we’d skipped. I thought
+Ted would never stop laughing when he heard about it. What did your
+uncle say?”
+
+I was quick to get the right tone. I wasn’t going to let her think that
+I couldn’t see a joke as well as anyone.
+
+“Oh, you know what he is. He’s very old-fashioned.”
+
+“Yes, that’s what’s wrong with Blackstable. They want waking up.” She
+gave me a friendly look. “You’ve grown a lot since I saw you last. Why,
+you’re growing a moustache.”
+
+“Yes,” I said, giving it as much of a twirl as its size allowed me.
+“I’ve had that for ages.”
+
+“How time does fly, doesn’t it? You were just a boy four years ago and
+now you’re a man.”
+
+“I ought to be,” I replied somewhat haughtily. “I’m nearly twenty-one.”
+
+I was looking at Mrs. Driffield. She wore a very small hat with feathers
+in it, and a pale gray dress with large leg-of-mutton sleeves and a long
+train. I thought she looked very smart. I had always thought that she
+had a nice face, but I noticed now, for the first time, that she was
+pretty. Her eyes were bluer than I remembered and her skin was like
+ivory.
+
+“You know we live just round the corner,” she said.
+
+“So do I.”
+
+“We live in Limpus Road. We’ve been there almost ever since we left
+Blackstable.”
+
+“Well, I’ve been in Vincent Square for nearly two years.”
+
+“I knew you were in London. George Kemp told me so, and I often wondered
+where you were. Why don’t you walk back with me now? Ted will be so
+pleased to see you.”
+
+“I don’t mind,” I said.
+
+As we walked along she told me that Driffield was now literary editor of
+a weekly paper; his last book had done much better than any of his
+others and he was expecting to get quite a bit as an advance on
+royalties for the next one. She seemed to know most of the Blackstable
+news, and I remembered how it had been suspected that Lord George had
+helped the Driffields in their flight. I guessed that he wrote to them
+now and then. I noticed as we walked along that sometimes the men who
+passed us stared at Mrs. Driffield. It occurred to me presently that
+they must think her pretty too. I began to walk with a certain swagger.
+
+Limpus Road was a long wide straight street that ran parallel with the
+Vauxhall Bridge Road. The houses were all alike, of stucco, dingily
+painted, solid, and with substantial porticos. I suppose they had been
+built to be inhabited by men of standing in the city of London, but the
+street had gone down in the world or had never attracted the right sort
+of tenant; and its decayed respectability had an air at once furtive and
+shabbily dissipated, that made you think of persons who had seen better
+days and now, genteelly fuddled, talked of the social distinction of
+their youth. The Driffields lived in a house painted a dull red, and
+Mrs. Driffield letting me into a narrow dark hall, opened a door and
+said:
+
+“Go in. I’ll tell Ted you’re here.”
+
+She walked down the hall and I entered the sitting room. The Driffields
+had the basement and the ground floor of the house, which they rented
+from the lady who lived in the upper part. The room into which I went
+looked as if it had been furnished with the scourings of auction sales.
+There were heavy velvet curtains with great fringes, all loops and
+festoons, and a gilt suite, upholstered in yellow damask, heavily
+buttoned; and there was a great pouffe in the middle of the room. There
+were gilt cabinets in which were masses of little articles, pieces of
+china, ivory figures, wood carvings, bits of Indian brass; and on the
+walls hung large oil paintings of highland glens and stags and gillies.
+In a moment Mrs. Driffield brought her husband and he greeted me warmly.
+He wore a shabby alpaca coat and gray trousers; he had shaved his beard
+and wore now a moustache and a small imperial. I noticed for the first
+time how short he was; but he looked more distinguished than he used to.
+There was something a trifle foreign in his appearance and I thought
+this was much more what I should expect an author to look like.
+
+“Well, what do you think of our new abode?” he asked. “It looks rich,
+doesn’t it? I think it inspires confidence.”
+
+He looked round him with satisfaction.
+
+“And Ted’s got his den at the back where he can write, and we’ve got a
+dining room in the basement,” said Mrs. Driffield. “Miss Cowley was
+companion for many years to a lady of title and when she died she left
+her all her furniture. You can see everything’s good, can’t you? You can
+see it came out of a gentleman’s house.”
+
+“Rosie fell in love with the place the moment we saw it,” said
+Driffield.
+
+“You did too, Ted.”
+
+“We’ve lived in sordid circumstances so long; it’s a change to be
+surrounded by luxury. Madame de Pompadour and all that sort of thing.”
+
+When I left them it was with a very cordial invitation to come again. It
+appeared that they were at home every Saturday afternoon and all sorts
+of people whom I would like to meet were in the habit of dropping in.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XIV
+
+
+I WENT. I enjoyed myself. I went again. When the autumn came and I
+returned to London for the winter session at St. Luke’s I got into the
+habit of going every Saturday. It was my introduction into the world of
+art and letters; I kept it a profound secret that in the privacy of my
+lodgings I was busily writing; I was excited to meet people who were
+writing also and I listened entranced to their conversation. All sorts
+of persons came to these parties: at that time week-ends were rare, golf
+was still a subject for ridicule, and few had much to do on Saturday
+afternoons. I do not think anyone came who was of any great importance;
+at all events, of all the painters, writers, and musicians I met at the
+Driffields’ I cannot remember one whose reputation has endured; but the
+effect was cultured and animated. You found young actors who were
+looking for parts and middle-aged singers who deplored the fact that the
+English were not a musical race, composers who played their compositions
+on the Driffields’ cottage piano and complained in a whispered aside
+that they sounded nothing except on a concert grand, poets who on
+pressure consented to read a little thing that they had just written,
+and painters who were looking for commissions. Now and then a person of
+title added a certain glamour; seldom, however, for in those days the
+aristocracy had not yet become bohemian and if a person of quality
+cultivated the society of artists it was generally because a notorious
+divorce or a little difficulty over cards had made life in his own
+station (or hers) a bit awkward. We have changed all that. One of the
+greatest benefits that compulsory education has conferred upon the world
+is the wide diffusion among the nobility and gentry of the practice of
+writing. Horace Walpole once wrote a _Catalogue of Royal and Noble
+Authors_; such a work now would have the dimensions of an encyclopædia.
+A title, even a courtesy one, can make a well known author of almost
+anyone and it may be safely asserted that there is no better passport to
+the world of letters than rank.
+
+I have indeed sometimes thought that now that the House of Lords must
+inevitably in a short while be abolished, it would be a very good plan
+if the profession of literature were by law confined to its members and
+their wives and children. It would be a graceful compensation that the
+British people might offer the peers in return for the surrender of
+their hereditary privileges. It would be a means of support for those
+(too many) whom devotion to the public cause in keeping chorus girls and
+race horses and playing _chemin de fer_ has impoverished, and a pleasant
+occupation for the rest who by the process of natural selection have in
+the course of time become unfit to do anything but govern the British
+Empire. But this is an age of specialization and if my plan is adopted
+it is obvious that it cannot but be to the greater glory of English
+literature that its various provinces should be apportioned among the
+various ranks of the nobility. I would suggest, therefore, that the
+humbler branches of literature should be practised by the lower orders
+of the peerage and that the barons and viscounts should devote
+themselves exclusively to journalism and the drama. Fiction might be the
+privileged demesne of the earls. They have already shown their aptitude
+for this difficult art and their numbers are so great that they would
+very competently supply the demand. To the marquises might safely be
+left the production of that part of literature which is known (I have
+never quite seen why) as _belles lettres_. It is perhaps not very
+profitable from a pecuniary standpoint, but it has a distinction that
+very well suits the holders of this romantic title.
+
+The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the
+sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty.
+The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes; he makes
+the best of us look like a piece of cheese. It is evident then that the
+writing of poetry should be left to the dukes, and I should like to see
+their rights protected by the most severe pains and penalties, for it is
+intolerable that the noblest of arts should be practised by any but the
+noblest of men. And since here, too, specialization must prevail, I
+foresee that the dukes (like the successors of Alexander) will divide
+the realm of poetry between them, each confining himself to that aspect
+with which hereditary influence and natural bent have rendered him
+competent to deal: thus I see the dukes of Manchester writing poems of a
+didactic and moral character, the dukes of Westminster composing
+stirring odes on Duty and the Responsibilities of Empire; whereas I
+imagine that the dukes of Devonshire would be more likely to write love
+lyrics and elegies in the Propertian manner, while it is almost
+inevitable that the dukes of Marlborough should pipe in an idyllic
+strain on such subjects as domestic bliss, conscription, and content
+with modest station.
+
+But if you say that this is somewhat formidable and remind me that the
+muse does not only stalk with majestic tread, but on occasion trips on a
+light fantastic toe; if, recalling the wise person who said that he did
+not care who made a nation’s laws so long as he wrote its songs, you ask
+me (thinking rightly that it would ill become the dukes to do so) who
+shall twang those measures on the lyre that the diverse and inconstant
+soul of man occasionally hankers after—I answer (obviously enough, I
+should have thought) the duchesses. I recognize that the day is past
+when the amorous peasants of the Romagna sang to their sweethearts the
+verses of Torquato Tasso and Mrs. Humphry Ward crooned over young
+Arnold’s cradle the choruses of Œdipus in Colonus. The age demands
+something more up-to-date. I suggest, therefore, that the more domestic
+duchesses should write our hymns and our nursery rhymes; while the
+skittish ones, those who incline to mingle vine leaves with the
+strawberry, should write the lyrics for musical comedies, humorous verse
+for the comic papers, and mottoes for Christmas cards and crackers. Thus
+would they retain in the hearts of the British public that place which
+they have held hitherto only on account of their exalted station.
+
+It was at these parties on Saturday afternoon that I discovered very
+much to my surprise that Edward Driffield was a distinguished person. He
+had written something like twenty books, and though he had never made
+more than a pittance out of them his reputation was considerable. The
+best judges admired them and the friends who came to his house were
+agreed that one of these days he would be recognized. They rated the
+public because it would not see that here was a great writer, and since
+the easiest way to exalt one man is to kick another in the pants, they
+reviled freely all the novelists whose contemporary fame obscured his.
+If, indeed, I had known as much of literary circles as I learned later I
+should have guessed by the not infrequent visits of Mrs. Barton Trafford
+that the time was approaching when Edward Driffield, like a runner in a
+long-distance race breaking away suddenly from the little knot of
+plodding athletes, must forge ahead. I admit that when first I was
+introduced to this lady her name meant nothing to me. Driffield
+presented me as a young neighbour of his in the country and told her
+that I was a medical student. She gave me a mellifluous smile, murmured
+in a soft voice something about Tom Sawyer, and, accepting the bread and
+butter I offered her, went on talking with her host. But I noticed that
+her arrival had made an impression and the conversation, which had been
+noisy and hilarious, was hushed. When in an undertone I asked who she
+was, I found that my ignorance was amazing; I was told that she had
+“made” So and So and So and So. After half an hour she rose, shook hands
+very graciously with such of the people as she was acquainted with, and
+with a sort of lithe sweetness sidled out of the room. Driffield
+accompanied her to the door and put her in a hansom.
+
+Mrs. Barton Trafford was then a woman of about fifty; she was small and
+slight, but with rather large features, which made her head look a
+little too big for her body; she had crisp white hair which she wore
+like the Venus of Milo, and she was supposed in her youth to have been
+very comely. She dressed discreetly in black silk, and wore round her
+neck jangling chains of beads and shells. She was said to have been
+unhappily married in early life, but now for many years had been
+congenially united to Barton Trafford, a clerk in the Home Office and a
+well known authority on prehistoric man. She gave you the curious
+impression of having no bones in her body and you felt that if you
+pinched her shin (which of course my respect for her sex as well as
+something of quiet dignity in her appearance would have never allowed me
+to do) your fingers would meet. When you took her hand it was like
+taking a fillet of sole. Her face, notwithstanding its large features,
+had something fluid about it. When she sat it was as though she had no
+backbone and were stuffed, like an expensive cushion, with swansdown.
+
+Everything was soft about her, her voice, her smile, her laugh; her
+eyes, which were small and pale, had the softness of flowers; her manner
+was as soft as the summer rain. It was this extraordinary, and charming,
+characteristic that made her the wonderful friend she was. It was this
+that had gained her the celebrity that she now enjoyed. The whole world
+was aware of her friendship with the great novelist whose death a few
+years back had come as such a shock to the English-speaking peoples.
+Everyone had read the innumerable letters which he had written to her
+and which she was induced to publish shortly after his demise. Every
+page revealed his admiration for her beauty and his respect for her
+judgment; he could never say often enough how much he owed to her
+encouragement, her ready sympathy, her tact, her taste; and if certain
+of his expressions of passion were such as some persons might think
+would not be read by Mr. Barton Trafford with unmixed feelings, that
+only added to the human interest of the work. But Mr. Barton Trafford
+was above the prejudices of vulgar men (his misfortune, if such it was,
+was one that the greatest personages in history have endured with
+philosophy) and, abandoning his studies of aurignacian flints and
+neolithic ax heads he consented to write a Life of the deceased novelist
+in which he showed quite definitely how great a part of the writer’s
+genius was due to his wife’s influence.
+
+But Mrs. Barton Trafford’s interest in literature, her passion for art,
+were not dead because the friend for whom she had done so much had
+become part, with her far from negligible assistance, of posterity. She
+was a great reader. Little that was noteworthy escaped her attention and
+she was quick to establish personal relations with any young writer who
+showed promise. Her fame, especially since the Life, was now such that
+she was sure that no one would hesitate to accept the sympathy she was
+prepared to offer. It was inevitable that Mrs. Barton Trafford’s genius
+for friendship should in due course find an outlet. When she read
+something that struck her, Mr. Barton Trafford, himself no mean critic,
+wrote a warm letter of appreciation to the author and asked him to
+luncheon. After luncheon, having to get back to the Home Office, he left
+him to have a chat with Mrs. Barton Trafford. Many were called. They all
+had _something_, but that was not enough. Mrs. Barton Trafford had a
+_flair_, and she trusted her _flair_; her _flair_ bade her wait.
+
+She was so cautious indeed that with Jasper Gibbons she almost missed
+the bus. The records of the past tell us of writers who grew famous in a
+night, but in our more prudent day this is unheard of. The critics want
+to see which way the cat will jump, and the public has been sold a pup
+too often to take unnecessary chances. But in the case of Jasper Gibbons
+it is almost the exact truth that he did thus jump into celebrity. Now
+that he is so completely forgotten and the critics who praised him would
+willingly eat their words if they were not carefully guarded in the
+files of innumerable newspaper offices, the sensation he made with his
+first volume of poems is almost unbelievable. The most important papers
+gave to reviews of them as much space as they would have to the report
+of a prize fight; the most influential critics fell over one another in
+their eagerness to welcome him. They likened him to Milton (for the
+sonority of his blank verse), to Keats (for the opulence of his sensuous
+imagery), and to Shelley (for his airy fantasy); and, using him as a
+stick to beat idols of whom they were weary, they gave in his name many
+a resounding whack on the emaciated buttocks of Lord Tennyson and a few
+good husky smacks on the bald pate of Robert Browning. The public fell
+like the walls of Jericho. Edition after edition was sold, and you saw
+Jasper Gibbons’s handsome volume in the boudoirs of countesses in
+Mayfair, in vicarage drawing rooms from Land’s End to John o’ Groats,
+and in the parlours of many an honest but cultured merchant in Glasgow,
+Aberdeen, and Belfast. When it became known that Queen Victoria had
+accepted a specially bound copy of the book from the hands of the loyal
+publisher, and had given him (not the poet, the publisher) a copy of
+_Leaves from a Journal in the Highlands_ in exchange, the national
+enthusiasm knew no bounds.
+
+And all this happened as it were in the twinkling of an eye. Seven
+cities in Greece disputed the honour of having given birth to Homer, and
+though Jasper Gibbons’s birthplace (Walsall) was well known, twice seven
+critics claimed the honour of having discovered him; eminent judges of
+literature who for twenty years had written eulogies of one another’s
+works in the weekly papers quarrelled so bitterly over this matter that
+one cut the other dead in the Athenæum. Nor was the great world remiss
+in giving him its recognition. Jasper Gibbons was asked to luncheon and
+invited to tea by dowager duchesses, the wives of cabinet ministers, and
+the widows of bishops. It is said that Harrison Ainsworth was the first
+English man of letters to move in English society on terms of equality
+(and I have sometimes wondered that an enterprising publisher on this
+account has not thought of bringing out a complete edition of his
+works); but I believe that Jasper Gibbons was the first poet to have his
+name engraved at the bottom of an At Home card as a draw as enticing as
+an opera singer or a ventriloquist.
+
+It was out of the question then for Mrs. Barton Trafford to get in on
+the ground floor. She could only buy in the open market. I do not know
+what prodigious strategy she employed, what miracles of tact, what
+tenderness, what exquisite sympathy, what demure blandishments; I can
+only surmise and admire; she nobbled Jasper Gibbons. In a little while
+he was eating out of her soft hand. She was admirable. She had him to
+lunch to meet the right people; she gave At Homes where he recited his
+poems before the most distinguished persons in England; she introduced
+him to eminent actors who gave him commissions to write plays; she saw
+that his poems should only appear in the proper places; she dealt with
+the publishers and made contracts for him that would have staggered even
+a cabinet minister; she took care that he should accept only the
+invitations of which she approved; she even went so far as to separate
+him from the wife with whom he had lived happily for ten years, since
+she felt that a poet to be true to himself and his art must not be
+encumbered with domestic ties. When the crash came Mrs. Barton Trafford,
+had she chosen, might have said that she had done everything for him
+that it was humanly possible to do.
+
+For there was a crash. Jasper Gibbons brought out another volume of
+poetry; it was neither better nor worse than the first; it was very much
+like the first; it was treated with respect, but the critics made
+reservations; some of them even carped. The book was a disappointment.
+Its sale also. And unfortunately Jasper Gibbons was inclined to tipple.
+He had never been accustomed to having money to spend, he was quite
+unused to the lavish entertainments that were offered him, perhaps he
+missed his homely, common little wife; once or twice he came to dinner
+at Mrs. Barton Trafford’s in a condition that anyone less worldly, less
+simple-minded than she, would have described as blind to the world. She
+told her guests gently that the bard was not quite himself that evening.
+His third book was a failure. The critics tore him limb from limb, they
+knocked him down and stamped on him, and, to quote one of Edward
+Driffield’s favourite songs, then they lugged him round the room and
+then they jumped upon his face: they were quite naturally annoyed that
+they had mistaken a fluent versifier for a deathless poet and were
+determined that he should suffer for their error. Then Jasper Gibbons
+was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in Piccadilly and Mr. Barton
+Trafford had to go to Vine Street at midnight to bail him out.
+
+Mrs. Barton Trafford at this juncture was perfect. She did not repine.
+No harsh word escaped her lips. She might have been excused if she had
+felt a certain bitterness because this man for whom she had done so much
+had let her down. She remained tender, gentle, and sympathetic. She was
+the woman who understood. She dropped him, but not like a hot brick, or
+a hot potato. She dropped him with infinite gentleness, as softly as the
+tear that she doubtless shed when she made up her mind to do something
+so repugnant to her nature; she dropped him with so much tact, with such
+sensibility, that Jasper Gibbons perhaps hardly knew he was dropped. But
+there was no doubt about it. She would say nothing against him, indeed
+she would not discuss him at all, and when mention was made of him she
+merely smiled, a little sadly, and sighed. But her smile was the _coup
+de grâce_, and her sigh buried him deep.
+
+Mrs. Barton Trafford had a passion for literature too sincere to allow a
+setback of this character long to discourage her; and however great her
+disappointment she was a woman of too disinterested a nature to let the
+gifts of tact, sympathy, and understanding with which she was blessed by
+nature lie fallow. She continued to move in literary circles, going to
+tea parties here and there, to soirées, and to At Homes, charming always
+and gentle, listening intelligently, but watchful, critical, and
+determined (if I may put it crudely) next time to back a winner. It was
+then that she met Edward Driffield and formed a favourable opinion of
+his gifts. It is true that he was not young, but then he was unlikely
+like Jasper Gibbons to go to pieces. She offered him her friendship. He
+could not fail to be moved when, in that gentle way of hers, she told
+him that it was a scandal that his exquisite work remained known only in
+a narrow circle. He was pleased and flattered. It is always pleasant to
+be assured that you are a genius. She told him that Barton Trafford was
+reflecting on the possibility of writing an important article on him for
+the _Quarterly Review_. She asked him to luncheon to meet people who
+might be useful to him. She wanted him to know his intellectual equals.
+Sometimes she took him for a walk on the Chelsea Embankment and they
+talked of poets dead and gone and love and friendship, and had tea in an
+A.B.C. shop. When Mrs. Barton Trafford came to Limpus Street on Saturday
+afternoon she had the air of the queen bee preparing herself for the
+nuptial flight.
+
+Her manner with Mrs. Driffield was perfect. It was affable, but not
+condescending. She always thanked her very prettily for having allowed
+her to come and see her and complimented her on her appearance. If she
+praised Edward Driffield to her, telling her with a little envy in her
+tone what a privilege it was to enjoy the companionship of such a great
+man, it was certainly from pure kindness, and not because she knew that
+there is nothing that exasperates the wife of a literary man more than
+to have another woman tell her flattering things about him. She talked
+to Mrs. Driffield of the simple things her simple nature might be
+supposed to be interested in, of cooking and servants and Edward’s
+health and how careful she must be with him. Mrs. Barton Trafford
+treated her exactly as you would expect a woman of very good Scotch
+family, which she was, to treat an ex-barmaid with whom a distinguished
+man of letters had made an unfortunate marriage. She was cordial,
+playful, and gently determined to put her at her ease.
+
+It was strange that Rosie could not bear her; indeed, Mrs. Barton
+Trafford was the only person that I ever knew her dislike. In those days
+even barmaids did not habitually use the “bitches” and “bloodys” that
+are part and parcel of the current vocabulary of the best-brought-up
+young ladies, and I never heard Rosie use a word that would have shocked
+my Aunt Sophie. When anyone told a story that was a little near the
+knuckle she would blush to the roots of her hair. But she referred to
+Mrs. Barton Trafford as “that damned old cat.” It needed the most urgent
+persuasions of her more intimate friends to induce her to be civil to
+her.
+
+“Don’t be a fool, Rosie,” they said. They all called her Rosie and
+presently I, though very shyly, got in the habit of doing so too. “If
+she wants to she can make him. He must play up to her. She can work the
+trick if anyone can.”
+
+Though most of the Driffields’ visitors were occasional, appearing every
+other Saturday, say, or every third, there was a little band that, like
+myself, came almost every week. We were the stand-bys; we arrived early
+and stayed late. Of these the most faithful were Quentin Forde, Harry
+Retford, and Lionel Hillier.
+
+Quentin Forde was a stocky little man with a fine head of the type that
+was afterward for a time much admired in the moving pictures, a straight
+nose and handsome eyes, neatly cropped gray hair, and a black moustache;
+if he had been four or five inches taller he would have been the perfect
+type of the villain of melodrama. He was known to be very “well
+connected,” and he was affluent; his only occupation was to cultivate
+the arts. He went to all the first nights and all the private views. He
+had the amateur’s severity, and cherished for the productions of his
+contemporaries a polite but sweeping contempt. I discovered that he did
+not come to the Driffields’ because Edward was a genius, but because
+Rosie was beautiful.
+
+Now that I look back I cannot get over my surprise that I should have
+had to be told what was surely so obvious. When I first knew her it
+never occurred to me to ask myself whether she was pretty or plain, and
+when, seeing her again after five years, I noticed for the first time
+that she was very pretty, I was interested but did not trouble to think
+much about it. I took it as part of the natural order of things, just as
+I took the sun setting over the North Sea or the towers of Tercanbury
+Cathedral. I was quite startled when I heard people speak of Rosie’s
+beauty, and when they complimented Edward on her looks and his eyes
+rested on her for a moment, mine followed his. Lionel Hillier was a
+painter and he asked her to sit for him. When he talked of the picture
+he wanted to paint and told me what he saw in her, I listened to him
+stupidly. I was puzzled and confused. Harry Retford knew one of the
+fashionable photographers of the period and, arranging special terms, he
+took Rosie to be photographed. A Saturday or two later the proofs were
+there and we all looked at them. I had never seen Rosie in evening
+dress. She was wearing a dress of white satin, with a long train and
+puffy sleeves, and it was cut low; her hair was more elaborately done
+than usual. She looked very different from the strapping young woman I
+had first met in Joy Lane in a boater and a starched shirt. But Lionel
+Hillier tossed the photographs aside impatiently.
+
+“Rotten,” he said. “What can a photograph give of Rosie? The thing about
+her is her colour.” He turned to her. “Rosie, don’t you know that your
+colour is _the_ great miracle of the age?”
+
+She looked at him without answering, but her full red lips broke into
+their childlike, mischievous smile.
+
+“If I can only get a suggestion of it I’m made for life,” he said. “All
+the rich stockbrokers’ wives will come on their bended knees and beg me
+to paint them like you.”
+
+Presently I learned that Rosie was sitting to him, but when, never
+having been in a painter’s studio and looking upon it as the gateway of
+romance, I asked if I might not come one day and see how the picture was
+getting on, Hillier said that he did not want anyone to see it yet. He
+was a man of five and thirty and of a flamboyant appearance. He looked
+like a portrait of Van Dyck in which the distinction had been replaced
+by good humour. He was slightly above the middle height, slim; and he
+had a fine mane of black hair and flowing moustaches and a pointed
+beard. He favoured broad-brimmed sombreros and Spanish capes. He had
+lived a long time in Paris and talked admiringly of painters, Monet,
+Sisley, Renoir, of whom we had never heard, and with contempt of Sir
+Frederick Leighton and Mr. Alma-Tadema and Mr. G. F. Watts, whom in our
+heart of hearts we very much admired. I have often wondered what became
+of him. He spent a few years in London trying to make his way, failed, I
+suppose, and then drifted to Florence. I was told that he had a drawing
+school there, but when, years later, chancing to be in that city, I
+asked about him, I could find no one who had ever heard of him. I think
+he must have had some talent, for I have even now a very vivid
+recollection of the portrait he painted of Rosie Driffield. I wonder
+what has happened to it. Has it been destroyed or is it hidden away, its
+face to the wall, in the attic of a junk shop in Chelsea? I should like
+to think that it has at least found a place on the walls of some
+provincial gallery.
+
+When I was at last allowed to come and see it, I put my foot in it fine
+and proper. Hillier’s studio was in the Fulham Road, one of a group at
+the back of a row of shops, and you went in through a dark and smelly
+passage. It was a Sunday afternoon in March, a fine blue day, and I
+walked from Vincent Square through deserted streets. Hillier lived in
+his studio; there was a large divan on which he slept, and a tiny little
+room at the back where he cooked his breakfast, washed his brushes, and,
+I suppose, himself.
+
+When I arrived Rosie still wore the dress in which she had been sitting
+and they were having a cup of tea. Hillier opened the door for me, and
+still holding my hand led me up to the large canvas.
+
+“There she is,” he said.
+
+He had painted Rosie full length, just a little less than life-size, in
+an evening dress of white silk. It was not at all like the academy
+portraits I was accustomed to. I did not know what to say, so I said the
+first thing that came into my head.
+
+“When will it be finished?”
+
+“It is finished,” he answered.
+
+I blushed furiously. I felt a perfect fool. I had not then acquired the
+technique that I flatter myself now enables me to deal competently with
+the works of modern artists. If this were the place I could write a very
+neat little guide to enable the amateur of pictures to deal to the
+satisfaction of their painters with the most diverse manifestations of
+the creative instinct. There is the intense “By God” that acknowledges
+the power of the ruthless realist, the “It’s so awfully sincere” that
+covers your embarrassment when you are shown the coloured photograph of
+an alderman’s widow, the low whistle that exhibits your admiration for
+the post-impressionist, the “Terribly amusing” that expresses what you
+feel about the cubist, the “Oh!” of one who is overcome, the “Ah!” of
+him whose breath is taken away.
+
+“It’s awfully like,” was all that then I could lamely say.
+
+“It’s not chocolate-boxy enough for you,” said Hillier.
+
+“I think it’s awfully good,” I answered quickly, defending myself. “Are
+you going to send it to the Academy?”
+
+“Good God, no! I might send it to the Grosvenor.”
+
+I looked from the painting to Rosie and from Rosie to the painting.
+
+“Get into the pose, Rosie,” said Hillier, “and let him see you.”
+
+She got up on to the model stand. I stared at her and I stared at the
+picture. I had such a funny little feeling in my heart. It was as though
+someone softly plunged a sharp knife into it, but it was not an
+unpleasant sensation at all, painful but strangely agreeable; and then
+suddenly I felt quite weak at the knees. But now I do not know if I
+remember Rosie in the flesh or in the picture. For when I think of her
+it is not in the shirt and boater that I first saw her in, nor in any of
+the other dresses I saw her in then or later, but in the white silk that
+Hillier painted, with a black velvet bow in her hair, and in the pose he
+had made her take.
+
+I never exactly knew Rosie’s age, but reckoning the years out as well as
+I can, I think she must have been thirty-five. She did not look anything
+like it. Her face was quite unlined and her skin as smooth as a child’s.
+I do not think she had very good features. They certainly had none of
+the aristocratic distinction of the great ladies whose photographs were
+then sold in all the shops; they were rather blunt. Her short nose was a
+little thick, her eyes were smallish, her mouth was large; but her eyes
+had the blue of cornflowers, and they smiled with her lips, very red and
+sensual, and her smile was the gayest, the most friendly, the sweetest
+thing I ever saw. She had by nature a heavy, sullen look, but when she
+smiled this sullenness became on a sudden infinitely attractive. She had
+no colour in her face; it was of a very pale brown except under the eyes
+where it was faintly blue. Her hair was pale gold and it was done in the
+fashion of the day high on the head with an elaborate fringe.
+
+“She’s the very devil to paint,” said Hillier, looking at her and at his
+picture. “You see, she’s all gold, her face and her hair, and yet she
+doesn’t give you a golden effect, she gives you a silvery effect.”
+
+I knew what he meant. She glowed, but palely, like the moon rather than
+the sun, or if it was like the sun it was like the sun in the white mist
+of dawn. Hillier had placed her in the middle of his canvas and she
+stood, with her arms by her sides, the palms of her hands toward you and
+her head a little thrown back, in an attitude that gave value to the
+pearly beauty of her neck and bosom. She stood like an actress taking a
+call, confused by unexpected applause, but there was something so
+virginal about her, so exquisitely springlike, that the comparison was
+absurd. This artless creature had never known grease paint or
+footlights. She stood like a maiden apt for love offering herself
+guilelessly, because she was fulfilling the purposes of Nature, to the
+embraces of a lover. She belonged to a generation that did not fear a
+certain opulence of line, she was slender, but her breasts were ample
+and her hips well marked. When, later, Mrs. Barton Trafford saw the
+picture she said it reminded her of a sacrificial heifer.
+
+
+
+
+                                   XV
+
+
+EDWARD DRIFFIELD worked at night, and Rosie, having nothing to do, was
+glad to go out with one or other of her friends. She liked luxury and
+Quentin Forde was well-to-do. He would fetch her in a cab and take her
+to dine at Kettner’s or the Savoy, and she would put on her grandest
+clothes for him; and Harry Retford, though he never had a bob, behaved
+as if he had, and took her about in hansoms too and gave her dinner at
+Romano’s or in one or other of the little restaurants that were becoming
+modish in Soho. He was an actor and a clever one, but he was difficult
+to suit and so was often out of work. He was about thirty, a man with a
+pleasantly ugly face and a clipped way of speaking that made what he
+said sound funny. Rosie liked his devil-may-care attitude toward life,
+the swagger with which he wore clothes made by the best tailor in London
+and unpaid for, the recklessness with which he would put a fiver he
+hadn’t got on a horse, and the generosity with which he flung his money
+about when a lucky win put him in funds. He was gay, charming, vain,
+boastful, and unscrupulous. Rosie told me that once he had pawned his
+watch to take her out to dinner and then borrowed a couple of pounds
+from the actor manager who had given them seats for the play in order to
+take him out to supper with them afterward.
+
+But she was just as well pleased to go with Lionel Hillier to his studio
+and eat a chop that he and she cooked between them and spend the evening
+talking, and it was only very rarely that she would dine with me at all.
+I used to fetch her after I had had my dinner in Vincent Square and she
+hers with Driffield, and we would get on a bus and go to a music hall.
+We went here and there, to the Pavilion or the Tivoli, sometimes to the
+Metropolitan if there was a particular turn we wanted to see; but our
+favourite was the Canterbury. It was cheap and the show was good. We
+ordered a couple of beers and I smoked my pipe. Rosie looked round with
+delight at the great dark smoky house, crowded to the ceiling with the
+inhabitants of South London.
+
+“I like the Canterbury,” she said. “It’s so homey.”
+
+I discovered that she was a great reader. She liked history, but only
+history of a certain kind, the lives of queens and of mistresses of
+royal personages; and she would tell me with a childlike wonder of the
+strange things she read. She had a wide acquaintance with the six
+consorts of King Henry VIII and there was little she did not know about
+Mrs. Fitzherbert and Lady Hamilton. Her appetite was prodigious and she
+ranged from Lucrezia Borgia to the wives of Philip of Spain; then there
+was the long list of the royal mistresses of France. She knew them all,
+and all about them, from Agnes Sorel down to Madame du Barry.
+
+“I like to read about real things,” she said. “I don’t much care about
+novels.”
+
+She liked to gossip about Blackstable and I thought it was on account of
+my connection with it that she liked to come out with me. She seemed to
+know all that was going on there.
+
+“I go down every other week or so to see my mother,” she said. “Just for
+the night, you know.”
+
+“To Blackstable?”
+
+I was surprised.
+
+“No, not to Blackstable,” Rosie smiled. “I don’t know that I’d care to
+go there just yet. To Haversham. Mother comes over to meet me. I stay at
+the hotel where I used to work.”
+
+She was never a great talker. Often when, the night being fine, we
+decided to walk back from the music hall at which we had been spending
+the evening, she never opened her mouth. But her silence was intimate
+and comfortable. It did not exclude you from thoughts that engaged her
+apart from you; it included you in a pervasive well-being.
+
+I was talking about her once to Lionel Hillier and I said to him that I
+could not understand how she had turned from the fresh pleasant-looking
+young woman I had first known at Blackstable into the lovely creature
+whose beauty now practically everyone acknowledged. (There were people
+who made reservations. “Of course she has a very good figure,” they
+said, “but it’s not the sort of face I very much admire personally.” And
+others said: “Oh, yes, of course, a very pretty woman; but it’s a pity
+she hasn’t a little more distinction.”)
+
+“I can explain that to you in half a jiffy,” said Lionel Hillier. “She
+was only a fresh, buxom wench when you first met her. _I_ made her
+beauty.”
+
+I forget what my answer was, but I know it was ribald.
+
+“All right. That just shows you don’t know anything about beauty. No one
+ever thought very much of Rosie till I saw her like the sun shining
+silver. It wasn’t till I painted it that anyone knew that her hair was
+the most lovely thing in the world.”
+
+“Did you make her neck and her breasts and her carriage and her bones?”
+I asked.
+
+“Yes, damn you, that’s just what I did do.”
+
+When Hillier talked of Rosie in front of her she listened to him with a
+smiling gravity. A little flush came into her pale cheeks. I think that
+at first when he spoke to her of her beauty she believed he was just
+making game of her; but when she found out that he wasn’t, when he
+painted her silvery gold, it had no particular effect on her. She was a
+trifle amused, pleased of course, and a little surprised, but it did not
+turn her head. She thought him a little mad. I often wondered whether
+there was anything between them. I could not forget all I had heard of
+Rosie at Blackstable and what I had seen in the vicarage garden; I
+wondered about Quentin Forde, too, and Harry Retford. I used to watch
+them with her. She was not exactly familiar with them, comradely rather;
+she used to make her appointments with them quite openly in anybody’s
+hearing; and when she looked at them it was with that mischievous,
+childlike smile which I had now discovered held such a mysterious
+beauty. Sometimes when we were sitting side by side in a music hall I
+looked at her face; I do not think I was in love with her, I merely
+enjoyed the sensation of sitting quietly beside her and looking at the
+pale gold of her hair and the pale gold of her skin. Of course Lionel
+Hillier was right; the strange thing was that this gold did give one a
+strange moonlight feeling. She had the serenity of a summer evening when
+the light fades slowly from the unclouded sky. There was nothing dull in
+her immense placidity; it was as living as the sea when under the August
+sun it lay calm and shining along the Kentish coast. She reminded me of
+a sonatina by an old Italian composer with its wistfulness in which
+there is yet an urbane flippancy and its light rippling gaiety in which
+echoes still the trembling of a sigh. Sometimes, feeling my eyes on her,
+she would turn round and for a moment or two look me full in the face.
+She did not speak. I did not know of what she was thinking.
+
+Once, I remember, I fetched her at Limpus Road, and the maid, telling me
+she was not ready, asked me to wait in the parlour. She came in. She was
+in black velvet, with a picture hat covered with ostrich feathers (we
+were going to the Pavilion and she had dressed up for it) and she looked
+so lovely that it took my breath away. I was staggered. The clothes of
+that day gave a woman dignity and there was something amazingly
+attractive in the way her virginal beauty (sometimes she looked like the
+exquisite statue of Psyche in the museum at Naples) contrasted with the
+stateliness of her gown. She had a trait that I think must be very rare:
+the skin under her eyes, faintly blue, was all dewy. Sometimes I could
+not persuade myself that it was natural, and once I asked her if she had
+rubbed vaseline under her eyes. That was just the effect it gave. She
+smiled, took a handkerchief and handed it to me.
+
+“Rub them and see,” she said.
+
+Then one night when we had walked home from the Canterbury, and I was
+leaving her at her door, when I held out my hand she laughed a little, a
+low chuckle it was, and leaned forward.
+
+“You old silly,” she said.
+
+She kissed me on the mouth. It was not a hurried peck, nor was it a kiss
+of passion. Her lips, those very full red lips of hers, rested on mine
+long enough for me to be conscious of their shape and their warmth and
+their softness. Then she withdrew them, but without hurry, in silence
+pushed open the door, slipped inside, and left me. I was so startled
+that I had not been able to say anything. I accepted her kiss stupidly.
+I remained inert. I turned away and walked back to my lodgings. I seemed
+to hear still in my ears Rosie’s laughter. It was not contemptuous or
+wounding, but frank and affectionate; it was as though she laughed
+because she was fond of me.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XVI
+
+
+I DID not go out with Rosie again for more than a week. She was going
+down to Haversham to spend a night with her mother. She had various
+engagements in London. Then she asked me if I would go to the Haymarket
+Theatre with her. The play was a success and free seats were not to be
+had so we made up our minds to go in the pit. We had a steak and a glass
+of beer at the Café Monico and then stood with the crowd. In those days
+there was no orderly queue and when the doors were opened there was a
+mad rush and scramble to get in. We were hot and breathless and somewhat
+battered when at last we pushed our way into our seats.
+
+We walked back through St. James’s Park. The night was so lovely that we
+sat down on a bench. In the starlight Rosie’s face and her fair hair
+glowed softly. She was suffused, as it were (I express it awkwardly, but
+I do not know how to describe the emotion she gave me) with a
+friendliness at once candid and tender. She was like a silvery flower of
+the night that only gave its perfume to the moonbeams. I slipped my arm
+round her waist and she turned her face to mine. This time it was I who
+kissed. She did not move; her soft red lips submitted to the pressure of
+mine with a calm, intense passivity as the water of a lake accepts the
+light of the moon. I don’t know how long we stayed there.
+
+“I’m awfully hungry,” she said suddenly.
+
+“So am I,” I laughed.
+
+“Couldn’t we go and have some fish and chips somewhere?”
+
+“Rather.”
+
+In those days I knew my way very well about Westminster, not yet a
+fashionable quarter for parliamentary and otherwise cultured persons,
+but slummy and down-at-heel; and after we had come out of the park,
+crossing Victoria Street, I led Rosie to a fried fish shop in Horseferry
+Row. It was late and the only other person there was the driver of a
+four-wheeler waiting outside. We ordered our fish and chips and a bottle
+of beer. A poor woman came in and bought two penn’orth of mixed and took
+it away with her in a piece of paper. We ate with appetite.
+
+Our way back to Rosie’s led through Vincent Square and as we passed my
+house I asked her:
+
+“Won’t you come in for a minute? You’ve never seen my rooms.”
+
+“What about your landlady? I don’t want to get you into trouble.”
+
+“Oh, she sleeps like a rock.”
+
+“I’ll come in for a little.”
+
+I slipped my key into the lock and because the passage was dark took
+Rosie’s hand to lead her in. I lit the gas in my sitting room. She took
+off her hat and vigorously scratched her head. Then she looked for a
+glass, but I was very artistic and had taken down the mirror that was
+over the chimney-piece and there was no means in the room for anyone to
+see what he looked like.
+
+“Come into my bedroom,” I said. “There’s a glass there.”
+
+I opened the door and lit the candle. Rosie followed me in and I held it
+up so that she should be able to see herself. I looked at her in the
+glass as she arranged her hair. She took two or three pins out, which
+she put in her mouth, and taking one of my brushes, brushed her hair up
+from the nape of the neck. She twisted it, patted it, and put back the
+pins, and as she was intent on this her eyes caught mine in the glass
+and she smiled at me. When she had replaced the last pin she turned and
+faced me; she did not say anything; she looked at me tranquilly, still
+with that little friendly smile in her blue eyes. I put down the candle.
+The room was very small and the dressing table was by the bed. She
+raised her hand and softly stroked my cheek.
+
+I wish now that I had not started to write this book in the first person
+singular. It is all very well when you can show yourself in an amiable
+or touching light; and nothing can be more effective than the modest
+heroic or pathetic humorous which in this mode is much cultivated; it is
+charming to write about yourself when you see on the reader’s eyelash
+the glittering tear and on his lips the tender smile; but it is not so
+nice when you have to exhibit yourself as a plain damned fool.
+
+A little while ago I read in the _Evening Standard_ an article by Mr.
+Evelyn Waugh in the course of which he remarked that to write novels in
+the first person was a contemptible practice. I wish he had explained
+why, but he merely threw out the statement with just the same
+take-it-or-leave-it casualness as Euclid used when he made his
+celebrated observation about parallel straight lines. I was much
+concerned and forthwith asked Alroy Kear (who reads everything, even the
+books he writes prefaces for) to recommend to me some works on the art
+of fiction. On his advice I read _The Craft of Fiction_ by Mr. Percy
+Lubbock, from which I learned that the only way to write novels was like
+Henry James; after that I read _Aspects of the Novel_ by Mr. E. M.
+Forster, from which I learned that the only way to write novels was like
+Mr. E. M. Forster; then I read _The Structure of the Novel_ by Mr. Edwin
+Muir, from which I learned nothing at all. In none of them could I
+discover anything to the point at issue. All the same I can find one
+reason why certain novelists, such as Defoe, Sterne, Thackeray, Dickens,
+Emily Brontë, and Proust, well known in their day but now doubtless
+forgotten, have used the method that Mr. Evelyn Waugh reprehends. As we
+grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and
+unreasonableness of human beings; this indeed is the only excuse that
+offers for the middle-aged or elderly writer, whose thoughts should more
+properly be turned to graver matters, occupying himself with the trivial
+concerns of imaginary people. For if the proper study of mankind is man
+it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent,
+substantial, and significant creatures of fiction than with the
+irrational and shadowy figures of real life. Sometimes the novelist
+feels himself like God and is prepared to tell you everything about his
+characters; sometimes, however, he does not; and then he tells you not
+everything that is to be known about them but the little he knows
+himself; and since as we grow older we feel ourselves less and less like
+God I should not be surprised to learn that with advancing years the
+novelist grows less and less inclined to describe more than his own
+experience has given him. The first person singular is a very useful
+device for this limited purpose.
+
+Rosie raised her hand and softly stroked my face. I do not know why I
+should have behaved as I then did; it was not at all how I had seen
+myself behaving on such an occasion. A sob broke from my tight throat. I
+do not know whether it was because I was shy and lonely (not lonely in
+the body, for I spent all day at the hospital with all kinds of people,
+but lonely in the spirit) or because my desire was so great, but I began
+to cry. I felt terribly ashamed of myself; I tried to control myself, I
+couldn’t; the tears welled up in my eyes and poured down my cheeks.
+Rosie saw them and gave a little gasp.
+
+“Oh, honey, what is it? What’s the matter? Don’t. Don’t!”
+
+She put her arms round my neck and began to cry too, and she kissed my
+lips and my eyes and my wet cheeks. She undid her bodice and lowered my
+head till it rested on her bosom. She stroked my smooth face. She rocked
+me back and forth as though I were a child in her arms. I kissed her
+breasts and I kissed the white column of her neck; and she slipped out
+of her bodice and out of her skirt and her petticoats and I held her for
+a moment by her corseted waist; then she undid it, holding her breath
+for an instant to enable her to do so, and stood before me in her shift.
+When I put my hands on her sides I could feel the ribbing of the skin
+from the pressure of the corsets.
+
+“Blow out the candle,” she whispered.
+
+It was she who awoke me when the dawn peering through the curtains
+revealed the shape of the bed and of the wardrobe against the darkness
+of the lingering night. She woke me by kissing me on the mouth and her
+hair falling over my face tickled me.
+
+“I must get up,” she said. “I don’t want your landlady to see me.”
+
+“There’s plenty of time.”
+
+Her breasts when she leaned over me were heavy on my chest. In a little
+while she got out of bed. I lit the candle. She turned to the glass and
+tied up her hair and then she looked for a moment at her naked body. Her
+waist was naturally small; though so well developed she was very
+slender; her breasts were straight and firm and they stood out from the
+chest as though carved in marble. It was a body made for the act of
+love. In the light of the candle, struggling now with the increasing
+day, it was all silvery gold; and the only colour was the rosy pink of
+the hard nipples.
+
+We dressed in silence. She did not put on her corsets again, but rolled
+them up and I wrapped them in a piece of newspaper. We tiptoed along the
+passage and when I opened the door and we stepped out into the street
+the dawn ran to meet us like a cat leaping up the steps. The square was
+empty; already the sun was shining on the eastern windows. I felt as
+young as the day. We walked arm in arm till we came to the corner of
+Limpus Road.
+
+“Leave me here,” said Rosie. “One never knows.”
+
+I kissed her and I watched her walk away. She walked rather slowly, with
+the firm tread of the country woman who likes to feel the good earth
+under her feet, and held herself erect. I could not go back to bed. I
+strolled on till I came to the Embankment. The river had the bright hues
+of the early morning. A brown barge came down stream and passed under
+Vauxhall Bridge. In a dinghy two men were rowing close to the side. I
+was hungry.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XVII
+
+
+AFTER THAT for more than a year whenever Rosie came out with me she used
+on the way home to drop into my rooms, sometimes for an hour, sometimes
+till the breaking day warned us that the slaveys would soon be scrubbing
+the doorsteps. I have a recollection of warm sunny mornings when the
+tired air of London had a welcome freshness, and of our footfalls that
+seemed so noisy in the empty streets, and then of scurrying along
+huddled under an umbrella, silent but gay, when the winter brought cold
+and rain. The policeman on point duty gave us a stare as we passed,
+sometimes of suspicion; but sometimes also there was a twinkle of
+comprehension in his eyes. Now and then we would see a homeless creature
+huddled up asleep in a portico and Rosie gave my arm a friendly little
+pressure when (chiefly for show and because I wanted to make a good
+impression on her, for my shillings were scarce) I placed a piece of
+silver on a shapeless lap or in a skinny fist. Rosie made me very happy.
+I had a great affection for her. She was easy and comfortable. She had a
+placidity of temper that communicated itself to the people she was with;
+you shared her pleasure in the passing moment.
+
+Before I became her lover I had often asked myself if she was the
+mistress of the others, Forde, Harry Retford, and Hillier, and afterward
+I questioned her. She kissed me.
+
+“Don’t be so silly. I like them, you know that. I like to go out with
+them, but that’s all.”
+
+I wanted to ask her if she had been the mistress of George Kemp, but I
+did not like to. Though I had never seen her in a temper, I had a notion
+that she had one and I vaguely felt that this was a question that might
+anger her. I did not want to give her the opportunity of saying things
+so wounding that I could not forgive her. I was young, only just over
+one and twenty, Quentin Forde and the others seemed old to me; it did
+not seem unnatural to me that to Rosie they were only friends. It gave
+me a little thrill of pride to think that I was her lover. When I used
+to look at her chatting and laughing with all and sundry at tea on
+Saturday afternoons, I glowed with self-satisfaction. I thought of the
+nights we passed together and I was inclined to laugh at the people who
+were so ignorant of my great secret. But sometimes I thought that Lionel
+Hillier looked at me in a quizzical way, as if he were enjoying a good
+joke at my expense, and I asked myself uneasily if Rosie had told him
+that she was having an affair with me. I wondered if there was anything
+in my manner that betrayed me. I told Rosie that I was afraid Hillier
+suspected something; she looked at me with those blue eyes of hers that
+always seemed ready to smile.
+
+“Don’t bother about it,” she said. “He’s got a nasty mind.”
+
+I had never been intimate with Quentin Forde. He looked upon me as a
+dull and insignificant young man (which of course I was) and though he
+had always been civil he had never taken any notice of me. I thought it
+could only be my fancy that now he began to be a little more frigid with
+me than before. But one day Harry Retford to my surprise asked me to
+dine with him and go to the play. I told Rosie.
+
+“Oh, of course you must go. He’ll give you an awfully good time. Good
+old Harry, he always makes me laugh.”
+
+So I dined with him. He made himself very pleasant and I was impressed
+to hear him talk of actors and actresses. He had a sarcastic humour and
+was very funny at the expense of Quentin Forde, whom he did not like; I
+tried to get him to talk of Rosie, but he had nothing to say of her. He
+seemed to be a gay dog. With leers and laughing innuendoes he gave me to
+understand that he was a devil with the girls. I could not but ask
+myself if he was standing me this dinner because he knew I was Rosie’s
+lover and so felt friendly disposed toward me. But if he knew, of course
+the others knew too. I hope I did not show it, but in my heart I
+certainly felt somewhat patronizing toward them.
+
+Then in winter, toward the end of January, someone new appeared at
+Limpus Road. This was a Dutch Jew named Jack Kuyper, a diamond merchant
+from Amsterdam, who was spending a few weeks in London on business. I do
+not know how he had come to know the Driffields and whether it was
+esteem for the author that brought him to the house, but it was
+certainly not that which caused him to come again. He was a tall, stout,
+dark man with a bald head and a big hooked nose, a man of fifty, but of
+a powerful appearance, sensual, determined, and jovial. He made no
+secret of his admiration for Rosie. He was rich apparently, for he sent
+her roses every day; she chid him for his extravagance, but was
+flattered. I could not bear him. He was blatant and loud. I hated his
+fluent conversation in perfect but foreign English; I hated the
+extravagant compliments he paid Rosie; I hated the heartiness with which
+he treated her friends. I found that Quentin Forde liked him as little
+as I; we almost became cordial with one another.
+
+“Mercifully he’s not staying long.” Quentin Forde pursed his lips and
+raised his black eyebrows; with his white hair and long sallow face he
+looked incredibly gentlemanly. “Women are always the same; they adore a
+bounder.”
+
+“He’s so frightfully vulgar,” I complained.
+
+“That is his charm,” said Quentin Forde.
+
+For the next two or three weeks I saw next to nothing of Rosie. Jack
+Kuyper took her out night after night, to this smart restaurant and
+that, to one play after another. I was vexed and hurt.
+
+“He doesn’t know anyone in London,” said Rosie, trying to soothe my
+ruffled feelings. “He wants to see everything he can while he’s here. It
+wouldn’t be very nice for him to go alone all the time. He’s only here
+for a fortnight more.”
+
+I did not see the object of this self-sacrifice on her part.
+
+“But don’t you think he’s awful?” I said.
+
+“No. I think he’s fun. He makes me laugh.”
+
+“Don’t you know that he’s absolutely gone on you?”
+
+“Well, it pleases him and it doesn’t do me any harm.”
+
+“He’s old and fat and horrible. It gives me the creeps to look at him.”
+
+“I don’t think he’s so bad,” said Rosie.
+
+“You couldn’t have anything to do with him,” I protested. “I mean, he’s
+such an awful cad.”
+
+Rosie scratched her head. It was an unpleasant habit of hers.
+
+“It’s funny how different foreigners are from English people,” she said.
+
+I was thankful when Jack Kuyper went back to Amsterdam. Rosie had
+promised to dine with me the day after and as a treat we arranged to
+dine in Soho. She fetched me in a hansom and we drove on.
+
+“Has your horrible old man gone?” I asked.
+
+“Yes,” she laughed.
+
+I put my arm round her waist. (I have elsewhere remarked how much more
+convenient the hansom was for this pleasant and indeed almost essential
+act in human intercourse than the taxi of the present day, so
+unwillingly refrain from labouring the point.) I put my arm round her
+waist and kissed her. Her lips were like spring flowers. We arrived. I
+hung my hat and my coat (it was very long and tight at the waist, with a
+velvet collar and velvet cuffs; very smart) on a peg and asked Rosie to
+give me her cape.
+
+“I’m going to keep it on,” she said.
+
+“You’ll be awfully hot. You’ll only catch cold when we go out.”
+
+“I don’t care. It’s the first time I’ve worn it. Don’t you think it’s
+lovely. And look: the muff matches.”
+
+I gave the cape a glance. It was of fur. I did not know it was sable.
+
+“It looks awfully rich. How did you get that?”
+
+“Jack Kuyper gave it to me. We went and bought it yesterday just before
+he went away.” She stroked the smooth fur; she was as happy with it as a
+child with a toy. “How much d’you think it cost?”
+
+“I haven’t an idea.”
+
+“Two hundred and sixty pounds. Do you know I’ve never had anything that
+cost so much in my life? I told him it was far too much, but he wouldn’t
+listen. He made me have it.”
+
+Rosie chuckled with glee and her eyes shone. But I felt my face go stiff
+and a shiver run down my spine.
+
+“Won’t Driffield think it’s rather funny, Kuyper giving you a fur cape
+that costs all that?” said I, trying to make my voice sound natural.
+
+Rosie’s eyes danced mischievously.
+
+“You know what Ted is, he never notices anything; if he says anything
+about it I shall tell him I gave twenty pounds for it in a pawnshop. He
+won’t know any better.” She rubbed her face against the collar. “It’s so
+soft. And everyone can see it cost money.”
+
+I tried to eat and in order not to show the bitterness in my heart I did
+my best to keep the conversation going on one topic or another. Rosie
+did not much mind what I said. She could only think of her new cape and
+every other minute her eyes returned to the muff that she insisted on
+holding on her lap. She looked at it with an affection in which there
+was something lazy, sensual, and self-complacent. I was angry with her.
+I thought her stupid and common.
+
+“You look like a cat that’s swallowed a canary,” I could not help
+snapping.
+
+She only giggled.
+
+“That’s what I feel like.”
+
+Two hundred and sixty pounds was an enormous sum to me. I did not know
+one _could_ pay so much for a cape. I lived on fourteen pounds a month
+and not at all badly either; and in case any reader is not a ready
+reckoner I will add that this is one hundred and sixty-eight pounds a
+year. I could not believe that anyone would make as expensive a present
+as that from pure friendship; what did it mean but that Jack Kuyper had
+been sleeping with Rosie, night after night, all the time he was in
+London, and now when he went away was paying her? How could she accept
+it? Didn’t she see how it degraded her? Didn’t she see how frightfully
+vulgar it was of him to give her a thing that cost so much? Apparently
+not, for she said to me:
+
+“It was nice of him, wasn’t it? But then Jews are always generous.”
+
+“I suppose he could afford it,” I said.
+
+“Oh, yes, he’s got lots of money. He said he wanted to give me something
+before he went away and asked me what I wanted. Well, I said, I could do
+with a cape and a muff to match, but I never thought he’d buy me
+anything like this. When we went into the shop I asked them to show me
+something in astrakhan, but he said: No, sable, and the best money can
+buy. And when we saw this he absolutely insisted on my having it.”
+
+I thought of her with her white body, her skin so milky, in the arms of
+that old fat gross man and his thick loose lips kissing hers. And then I
+knew that the suspicion that I had refused to believe was true; I knew
+that when she went out to dinner with Quentin Forde and Harry Retford
+and Lionel Hillier she went to bed with them just as she came to bed
+with me. I could not speak; I knew that if I did I should insult her. I
+do not think I was jealous so much as mortified. I felt that she had
+been making a damned fool of me. I used all my determination to prevent
+the bitter jibes from passing my lips.
+
+We went on to the theatre. I could not listen to the play. I could only
+feel against my arm the smoothness of the sable cape; I could only see
+her fingers for ever stroking the muff. I could have borne the thought
+of the others; it was Jack Kuyper who horrified me. How could she? It
+was abominable to be poor. I longed to have enough money to tell her
+that if she would send the fellow back his beastly furs I would give her
+better ones instead. At last she noticed that I did not speak.
+
+“You’re very silent to-night.”
+
+“Am I?”
+
+“Aren’t you well?”
+
+“Perfectly.”
+
+She gave me a sidelong look. I did not meet her eyes, but I knew they
+were smiling with that smile at once mischievous and childlike that I
+knew so well. She said nothing more. At the end of the play, since it
+was raining, we took a hansom and I gave the driver her address in
+Limpus Road. She did not speak till we got to Victoria Street, then she
+said:
+
+“Don’t you want me to come home with you?”
+
+“Just as you like.”
+
+She lifted up the trap and gave the driver my address. She took my hand
+and held it, but I remained inert. I looked straight out of the window
+with angry dignity. When we reached Vincent Square I handed her out of
+the cab and let her into the house without a word. I took off my hat and
+coat. She threw her cape and her muff on the sofa.
+
+“Why are you so sulky?” she asked, coming up to me.
+
+“I’m not sulky,” I answered, looking away.
+
+She took my face in her two hands.
+
+“How can you be so silly? Why should you be angry because Jack Kuyper
+gives me a fur cape? You can’t afford to give me one, can you?”
+
+“Of course I can’t.”
+
+“And Ted can’t either. You can’t expect me to refuse a fur cape that
+cost two hundred and sixty pounds. I’ve wanted a fur cape all my life.
+It means nothing to Jack.”
+
+“You don’t expect me to believe that he gave it you just out of
+friendship.”
+
+“He might have. Anyhow, he’s gone back to Amsterdam, and who knows when
+he’ll come back?”
+
+“He isn’t the only one, either.”
+
+I looked at Rosie now, with angry, hurt, resentful eyes; she smiled at
+me, and I wish I knew how to describe the sweet kindliness of her
+beautiful smile; her voice was exquisitely gentle.
+
+“Oh, my dear, why d’you bother your head about any others? What harm
+does it do you? Don’t I give you a good time? Aren’t you happy when
+you’re with me?”
+
+“Awfully.”
+
+“Well, then. It’s so silly to be fussy and jealous. Why not be happy
+with what you can get? Enjoy yourself while you have the chance, I say;
+we shall all be dead in a hundred years and what will anything matter
+then? Let’s have a good time while we can.”
+
+She put her arms round my neck and pressed her lips against mine. I
+forgot my wrath. I only thought of her beauty and her enveloping
+kindness.
+
+“You must take me as I am, you know,” she whispered.
+
+“All right,” I said.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XVIII
+
+
+DURING ALL this time I saw really very little of Driffield. His
+editorship occupied much of his day and in the evening he wrote. He was,
+of course, there every Saturday afternoon, amiable and ironically
+amusing; he appeared glad to see me and chatted with me for a little
+while pleasantly of indifferent things; but naturally most of his
+attention was given to guests older and more important than I. But I had
+a feeling that he was growing more aloof; he was no longer the jolly,
+rather vulgar companion that I had known at Blackstable. Perhaps it was
+only my increasing sensibility that discerned as it were an invisible
+barrier that existed between him and the people he chaffed and joked
+with. It was as though he lived a life of the imagination that made the
+life of every day a little shadowy. He was asked to speak now and then
+at public dinners. He joined a literary club. He began to know a good
+many people outside the narrow circle into which his writing had drawn
+him, and he was increasingly asked to luncheon and tea by the ladies who
+like to gather about them distinguished authors. Rosie was asked too,
+but seldom went; she said she didn’t care for parties, and after all
+they didn’t want her, they only wanted Ted. I think she was shy and felt
+out of it. It may be that hostesses had more than once let her see how
+tiresome they thought it that she must be included; and after inviting
+her because it was polite, ignored her because to be polite irked them.
+
+It was just about then that Edward Driffield published _The Cup of
+Life_. It is not my business to criticize his works, and of late as much
+has been written about them as must satisfy the appetite of any ordinary
+reader; but I will permit myself to say that _The Cup of Life_, though
+certainly not the most celebrated of his books, nor the most popular, is
+to my mind the most interesting. It has a cold ruthlessness that in all
+the sentimentality of English fiction strikes an original note. It is
+refreshing and astringent. It tastes of tart apples. It sets your teeth
+on edge, but it has a subtle, bitter-sweet savour that is very agreeable
+to the palate. Of all Driffield’s books it is the only one I should like
+to have written. The scene of the child’s death, terrible and
+heart-rending, but written without slop or sickliness, and the curious
+incident that follows it, cannot easily be forgotten by anyone who has
+read them.
+
+It was this part of the book that caused the sudden storm that burst on
+the wretched Driffield’s head. For a few days after publication it
+looked as though it would run its course like the rest of his novels,
+namely that it would have substantial reviews, laudatory on the whole
+but with reservations, and that the sales would be respectable, but
+modest. Rosie told me that he expected to make three hundred pounds out
+of it and was talking of renting a house on the river for the summer.
+The first two or three notices were noncommittal; then in one of the
+morning papers appeared a violent attack. There was a column of it. The
+book was described as gratuitously offensive, obscene, and the
+publishers were rated for putting it before the public. Harrowing
+pictures were drawn of the devastating effect it must have on the youth
+of England. It was described as an insult to womanhood. The reviewer
+protested against the possibility of such a work falling into the hands
+of young boys and innocent maidens. Other papers followed suit. The more
+foolish demanded that the book should be suppressed and some asked
+themselves gravely if this was not a case where the public prosecutor
+might with fitness intervene. Condemnation was universal; if here and
+there a courageous writer, accustomed to the more realistic tone of
+continental fiction, asserted that Edward Driffield had never written
+anything better, he was ignored. His honest opinion was ascribed to a
+base desire to play to the gallery. The libraries barred the book and
+the lessors of the railway bookstalls refused to stock it.
+
+All this was naturally very unpleasant for Edward Driffield, but he bore
+it with philosophic calm. He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“They say it isn’t true,” he smiled. “They can go to hell. It is true.”
+
+He was supported in this trial by the fidelity of his friends. To admire
+_The Cup of Life_ became a mark of æsthetic acumen: to be shocked by it
+was to confess yourself a philistine. Mrs. Barton Trafford had no
+hesitation in saying that it was a masterpiece, and though this wasn’t
+quite the moment for Barton’s article in the _Quarterly_, her faith in
+Edward Driffield’s future remained unshaken. It is strange (and
+instructive) to read now the book that created such a sensation; there
+is not a word that could bring a blush to the cheek of the most
+guileless, not an episode that could cause the novel reader of the
+present day to turn a hair.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XIX
+
+
+ABOUT SIX months later, when the excitement over _The Cup of Life_ had
+subsided and Driffield had already begun the novel which he published
+under the name of _By Their Fruits_, I, being then an impatient dresser
+and in my fourth year, in the course of my duties went one day into the
+main hall of the hospital to await the surgeon whom I was accompanying
+on his round of the wards. I glanced at the rack in which letters were
+placed, for sometimes people, not knowing my address in Vincent Square,
+wrote to me at the hospital. I was surprised to find a telegram for me.
+It ran as follows:
+
+    _Please come and see me at five o’clock this afternoon without
+    fail. Important._
+
+                                                   ISABEL TRAFFORD.
+
+I wondered what she wanted me for. I had met her perhaps a dozen times
+during the last two years, but she had never taken any notice of me, and
+I had never been to her house. I knew that men were scarce at teatime
+and a hostess, short of them at the last moment, might think that a
+young medical student was better than nothing; but the wording of the
+telegram hardly suggested a party.
+
+The surgeon for whom I dressed was prosy and verbose. It was not till
+past five that I was free and then it took me a good twenty minutes to
+get down to Chelsea. Mrs. Barton Trafford lived in a block of flats on
+the Embankment. It was nearly six when I rang at her door and asked if
+she was at home. But when I was ushered into her drawing room and began
+to explain why I was late she cut me short.
+
+“We supposed you couldn’t get away. It doesn’t matter.”
+
+Her husband was there.
+
+“I expect he’d like a cup of tea,” he said.
+
+“Oh, I think it’s rather late for tea, isn’t it?” She looked at me
+gently, her mild, rather fine eyes full of kindness. “You don’t want any
+tea, do you?”
+
+I was thirsty and hungry, for my lunch consisted of a scone and butter
+and a cup of coffee, but I did not like to say so. I refused tea.
+
+“Do you know Allgood Newton?” asked Mrs. Barton Trafford, with a gesture
+toward a man who had been sitting in a big armchair when I was shown in,
+and now got up. “I expect you’ve met him at Edward’s.”
+
+I had. He did not come often, but his name was familiar to me and I
+remembered him. He made me very nervous and I do not think I had ever
+spoken to him. Though now completely forgotten, in those days he was the
+best-known critic in England. He was a large, fat, blond man, with a
+fleshy white face, pale blue eyes, and graying fair hair. He generally
+wore a pale blue tie to bring out the colour of his eyes. He was very
+amiable to the authors he met at Driffield’s and said charming and
+flattering things to them, but when they were gone he was very amusing
+at their expense. He spoke in a low, even voice, with an apt choice of
+words: no one could with more point tell a malicious story about a
+friend.
+
+Allgood Newton shook hands with me and Mrs. Barton Trafford, with her
+ready sympathy, anxious to put me at my ease, took me by the hand and
+made me sit on the sofa beside her. The tea was still on the table and
+she took a jam sandwich and delicately nibbled it.
+
+“Have you seen the Driffields lately?” she asked me as though making
+conversation.
+
+“I was there last Saturday.”
+
+“You haven’t seen either of them since?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Mrs. Barton Trafford looked from Allgood Newton to her husband and back
+again as though mutely demanding their help.
+
+“Nothing will be gained by circumlocution, Isabel,” said Newton, a
+faintly malicious twinkle in his eye, in his fat precise way.
+
+Mrs. Barton Trafford turned to me.
+
+“Then you don’t know that Mrs. Driffield has run away from her husband.”
+
+“What!”
+
+I was flabbergasted. I could not believe my ears.
+
+“Perhaps it would be better if you told him the facts, Allgood,” said
+Mrs. Trafford.
+
+The critic leaned back in his chair and placed the tips of the fingers
+of one hand against the tips of the fingers of the other. He spoke with
+unction.
+
+“I had to see Edward Driffield last night about a literary article that
+I am doing for him and after dinner, since the night was fine, I thought
+I would walk round to his house. He was expecting me; and I knew besides
+that he never went out at night except for some function as important as
+the Lord Mayor’s banquet or the Academy dinner. Imagine my surprise
+then, nay, my utter and complete bewilderment, when as I approached I
+saw the door of his house open and Edward in person emerge. You know of
+course that Immanuel Kant was in the habit of taking his daily walk at a
+certain hour with such punctuality that the inhabitants of Königsberg
+were accustomed to set their watches by the event and when once he came
+out of his house an hour earlier than usual they turned pale, for they
+knew that this could only mean that some terrible thing had happened.
+They were right; Immanuel Kant had just received intelligence of the
+fall of the Bastille.”
+
+Allgood Newton paused for a moment to mark the effect of his anecdote.
+Mrs. Barton Trafford gave him her understanding smile.
+
+“I did not envisage so world-shaking a catastrophe as this when I saw
+Edward hurrying toward me, but it immediately occurred to me that
+something untoward was afoot. He carried neither cane nor gloves. He
+wore his working coat, a venerable garment in black alpaca, and a
+wide-awake hat. There was something wild in his mien and distraught in
+his bearing. I asked myself, knowing the vicissitudes of the conjugal
+state, whether a matrimonial difference had driven him headlong from the
+house or whether he was hastening to a letter box in order to post a
+letter. He sped like Hector flying, the noblest of the Greeks. He did
+not seem to see me and the suspicion flashed across my mind that he did
+not want to. I stopped him. ‘Edward,’ I said. He looked startled. For a
+moment I could have sworn he did not know who I was. ‘What avenging
+furies urge you with such hot haste through the rakish purlieus of
+Pimlico?’ I asked. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘Where are you going?’ I
+asked. ‘Nowhere,’ he replied.”
+
+At this rate I thought Allgood Newton would never finish his story and
+Mrs. Hudson would be vexed with me for turning up to dinner half an hour
+late.
+
+“I told him on what errand I had come, and proposed that we should
+return to his house where he could more conveniently discuss the
+question that perturbed me. ‘I’m too restless to go home,’ he said;
+‘let’s walk. You can talk to me as we go along.’ Assenting, I turned
+round and we began to walk; but his pace was so rapid that I had to beg
+him to moderate it. Even Dr. Johnson could not have carried on a
+conversation when he was walking down Fleet Street at the speed of an
+express train. Edward’s appearance was so peculiar and his manner so
+agitated that I thought it wise to lead him through the less frequented
+streets. I talked to him of my article. The subject that occupied me was
+more copious than had at first sight appeared, and I was doubtful
+whether after all I could do justice to it in the columns of a weekly
+journal. I put the matter before him fully and fairly and asked him his
+opinion. ‘Rosie has left me,’ he answered. For a moment I did not know
+what he was talking about, but in a trice it occurred to me that he was
+speaking of the buxom and not unprepossessing female from whose hands I
+had on occasion accepted a cup of tea. From his tone I divined that he
+expected condolence from me rather than felicitation.”
+
+Allgood Newton paused again and his blue eyes twinkled.
+
+“You’re wonderful, Allgood,” said Mrs. Barton Trafford.
+
+“Priceless,” said her husband.
+
+“Realizing that the occasion demanded sympathy, I said: ‘My dear
+fellow.’ He interrupted me. ‘I had a letter by the last post,’ he said.
+‘She’s run away with Lord George Kemp.’”
+
+I gasped, but said nothing. Mrs. Trafford gave me a quick look.
+
+“‘Who is Lord George Kemp?’ ‘He’s a Blackstable man,’ he replied. I had
+little time to think. I determined to be frank. ‘You’re well rid of
+her,’ I said. ‘Allgood!’ he cried. I stopped and put my hand on his arm.
+‘You must know that she was deceiving you with all your friends. Her
+behaviour was a public scandal. My dear Edward, let us face the fact:
+your wife was nothing but a common strumpet.’ He snatched his arm away
+from me and gave a sort of low roar, like an orang-utan in the forests
+of Borneo forcibly deprived of a cocoanut, and before I could stop him
+he broke away and fled. I was so startled that I could do nothing but
+listen to his cries and his hurrying footsteps.”
+
+“You shouldn’t have let him go,” said Mrs. Barton Trafford. “In the
+state he was he might have thrown himself in the Thames.”
+
+“The thought occurred to me, but I noticed that he did not run in the
+direction of the river, but plunged into the meaner streets of the
+neighbourhood in which we had been walking. And I reflected also that
+there is no example in literary history of an author committing suicide
+while engaged on the composition of a literary work. Whatever his
+tribulations, he is unwilling to leave to posterity an uncompleted
+opus.”
+
+I was astounded at what I heard and shocked and dismayed; but I was
+worried too because I could not make out why Mrs. Trafford had sent for
+me. She knew me much too little to think that the story could be of any
+particular interest to me; nor would she have troubled to let me hear it
+as a piece of news.
+
+“Poor Edward,” she said. “Of course no one can deny that it is a
+blessing in disguise, but I’m afraid he’ll take it very much to heart.
+Fortunately he’s done nothing rash.” She turned to me. “As soon as Mr.
+Newton told us about it I went round to Limpus Road. Edward was out, but
+the maid said he’d only just gone; that means that he must have gone
+home between the time he ran away from Allgood and this morning. You’ll
+wonder why I asked you to come and see me.”
+
+I did not answer. I waited for her to go on.
+
+“It was at Blackstable you first knew the Driffields, wasn’t it? You can
+tell us who is this Lord George Kemp. Edward said he was a Blackstable
+man.”
+
+“He’s middle-aged. He’s got a wife and two sons. They’re as old as I
+am.”
+
+“But I don’t understand who he can be. I can’t find him either in _Who’s
+Who_ or in Debrett.”
+
+I almost laughed.
+
+“Oh, he’s not really a lord. He’s the local coal merchant. They call him
+Lord George at Blackstable because he’s so grand. It’s just a joke.”
+
+“The quiddity of bucolic humour is often a trifle obscure to the
+uninitiated,” said Allgood Newton.
+
+“We must all help dear Edward in every way we can,” said Mrs. Barton
+Trafford. Her eyes rested on me thoughtfully. “If Kemp has run away with
+Rosie Driffield he must have left his wife.”
+
+“I suppose so,” I replied.
+
+“Will you do something very kind?”
+
+“If I can.”
+
+“Will you go down to Blackstable and find out exactly what has happened?
+I think we ought to get in touch with the wife.”
+
+I have never been very fond of interfering in other people’s affairs.
+
+“I don’t know how I could do that,” I answered.
+
+“Couldn’t you see her?”
+
+“No, I couldn’t.”
+
+If Mrs. Barton Trafford thought my reply blunt she did not show it. She
+smiled a little.
+
+“At all events that can be left over. The urgent thing is to go down and
+find out about Kemp. I shall try to see Edward this evening. I can’t
+bear the thought of his staying on in that odious house by himself.
+Barton and I have made up our minds to bring him here. We have a spare
+room and I’ll arrange it so that he can work there. Don’t you agree that
+that would be the best thing for him, Allgood?”
+
+“Absolutely.”
+
+“There’s no reason why he shouldn’t stay here indefinitely, at all
+events for a few weeks, and then he can come away with us in the summer.
+We’re going to Brittany. I’m sure he’d like that. It would be a thorough
+change for him.”
+
+“The immediate question,” said Barton Trafford, fixing on me an eye
+nearly as kindly as his wife’s, “is whether this young sawbones will go
+to Blackstable and find out what he can. We must know where we are. That
+is essential.”
+
+Barton Trafford excused his interest in archæology by a hearty manner
+and a jocose, even slangy way of speech.
+
+“He couldn’t refuse,” said his wife, giving me a soft, appealing glance.
+“You won’t refuse, will you? It’s so important and you’re the only
+person who can help us.”
+
+Of course she did not know that I was as anxious to find out what had
+happened as she; she could not tell what a bitter jealous pain stabbed
+my heart.
+
+“I couldn’t possibly get away from the hospital before Saturday,” I
+said.
+
+“That’ll do. It’s very good of you. All Edward’s friends will be
+grateful to you. When shall you return?”
+
+“I have to be back in London early on Monday morning.”
+
+“Then come and have tea with me in the afternoon. I shall await you with
+impatience. Thank God, that’s settled. Now I must try and get hold of
+Edward.”
+
+I understood that I was dismissed. Allgood Newton took his leave and
+came downstairs with me.
+
+“Our Isabel has _un petit air_ of Catherine of Aragon to-day that I find
+vastly becoming,” he murmured when the door was closed behind us. “This
+is a golden opportunity and I think we may safely trust our friend not
+to miss it. A charming woman with a heart of gold. _Venus toute entière
+à sa proie attachée._”
+
+I did not understand what he meant, for what I have already told the
+reader about Mrs. Barton Trafford I only learned much later, but I
+realized that he was saying something vaguely malicious about her, and
+probably amusing, so I sniggered.
+
+“I suppose your youth inclines you to what my good Dizzy named in an
+unlucky moment the gondola of London.”
+
+“I’m going to take a bus,” I answered.
+
+“Oh? Had you proposed to go by hansom I was going to ask you to be good
+enough to drop me on your way, but if you are going to use the homely
+conveyance which _I_ in my old-fashioned manner still prefer to call an
+omnibus, I shall hoist my unwieldy carcase into a four-wheeler.”
+
+He signalled to one and gave me two flabby fingers to shake.
+
+“I shall come on Monday to hear the result of what dear Henry would call
+your so exquisitely delicate mission.”
+
+
+
+
+                                   XX
+
+
+BUT IT was years before I saw Allgood Newton again, for when I got to
+Blackstable I found a letter from Mrs. Barton Trafford (who had taken
+the precaution to note my address) asking me, for reasons that she would
+explain when she saw me, not to come to her flat but to meet her at six
+o’clock in the first-class waiting room at Victoria Station. As soon
+then as I could get away from the hospital on Monday I made my way
+there, and after waiting for a while saw her come in. She came toward me
+with little tripping steps.
+
+“Well, have you anything to tell me? Let us find a quiet corner and sit
+down.”
+
+We sought a place and found it.
+
+“I must explain why I asked you to come here,” she said. “Edward is
+staying with me. At first he did not want to come, but I persuaded him.
+But he’s nervous and ill and irritable. I did not want to run the risk
+of his seeing you.”
+
+I told Mrs. Trafford the bare facts of my story and she listened
+attentively. Now and then she nodded her head. But I could not hope to
+make her understand the commotion I had found at Blackstable. The town
+was beside itself with excitement. Nothing so thrilling had happened
+there for years and no one could talk of anything else. Humpty-dumpty
+had had a great fall. Lord George Kemp had absconded. About a week
+before he had announced that he had to go up to London on business, and
+two days later a petition in bankruptcy was filed against him. It
+appeared that his building operations had not been successful, his
+attempt to make Blackstable into a frequented seaside resort meeting
+with no response, and he had been forced to raise money in every way he
+could. All kinds of rumours ran through the little town. Quite a number
+of small people who had entrusted their savings to him were faced with
+the loss of all they had. The details were vague, for neither my uncle
+nor my aunt knew anything of business matters, nor had I the knowledge
+to make what they told me comprehensible. But there was a mortgage on
+George Kemp’s house and a bill of sale on his furniture. His wife was
+left without a penny. His two sons, lads of twenty and twenty-one, were
+in the coal business, but that, too, was involved in the general ruin.
+George Kemp had gone off with all the cash he could lay hands on,
+something like fifteen hundred pounds, they said, though how they knew I
+cannot imagine; and it was reported that a warrant had been issued for
+his arrest. It was supposed that he had left the country; some said he
+had gone to Australia and some to Canada.
+
+“I hope they catch him,” said my uncle. “He ought to get penal servitude
+for life.”
+
+The indignation was universal. They could not forgive him because he had
+always been so noisy and boisterous, because he had chaffed them and
+stood them drinks and given them garden parties, because he had driven
+such a smart trap and worn his brown billycock hat at such a rakish
+angle. But it was on Sunday night after church in the vestry that the
+churchwarden told my uncle the worst. For the last two years he had been
+meeting Rosie Driffield at Haversham almost every week and they had been
+spending the night together at a public house. The licensee of this had
+put money into one of Lord George’s wildcat schemes, and on discovering
+that he had lost it blurted out the whole story. He could have borne it
+if Lord George had defrauded others, but that he should defraud him who
+had done him a good turn and whom he looked upon as a chum, that was the
+limit.
+
+“I expect they’ve run away together,” said my uncle.
+
+“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said the churchwarden.
+
+After supper, while the housemaid was clearing away, I went into the
+kitchen to talk to Mary-Ann. She had been at church and had heard the
+story too. I cannot believe that the congregation had listened very
+attentively to my uncle’s sermon.
+
+“The vicar says they’ve run away together,” I said. I had not breathed a
+word of what I knew.
+
+“Why, of course they ’ave,” said Mary-Ann. “He was the only man she ever
+really fancied. He only ’ad to lift ’is little finger and she’d leave
+anyone no matter who it was.”
+
+I lowered my eyes. I was suffering from bitter mortification; and I was
+angry with Rosie: I thought she had behaved very badly to me.
+
+“I suppose we shall never see her again,” I said. It gave me a pang to
+utter the words.
+
+“I don’t suppose we shall,” said Mary-Ann cheerfully.
+
+When I had told Mrs. Barton Trafford as much of this story as I thought
+she need know, she sighed, but whether from satisfaction or distress I
+had no notion.
+
+“Well, that’s the end of Rosie at all events,” she said. She got up and
+held out her hand. “Why will these literary men make these unfortunate
+marriages? It’s all very sad, very sad. Thank you so much for what
+you’ve done. We know where we are now. The great thing is that it
+shouldn’t interfere with Edward’s work.”
+
+Her remarks seemed a trifle disconnected to me. The fact was, I have no
+doubt, that she was giving me not the smallest thought. I led her out of
+Victoria Station and put her into a bus that went down the King’s Road,
+Chelsea; then I walked back to my lodgings.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXI
+
+
+I LOST touch with Driffield. I was too shy to seek him out; I was busy
+with my examinations, and when I had passed them I went abroad. I
+remember vaguely to have seen in the paper that he had divorced Rosie.
+Nothing more was heard of her. Small sums reached her mother
+occasionally, ten or twenty pounds, and they came in a registered letter
+with a New York postmark; but no address was given, no message enclosed,
+and they were presumed to come from Rosie only because no one else could
+possibly send Mrs. Gann money. Then in the fullness of years Rosie’s
+mother died, and it may be supposed that in some way the news reached
+her, for the letters ceased to come.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXII
+
+
+ALROY KEAR and I, as arranged, met on Friday at Victoria Station to
+catch the five ten to Blackstable. We made ourselves comfortable in
+opposite corners of a smoking compartment. From him I now learned
+roughly what had happened to Driffield after his wife ran away from him.
+Roy had in due course become very intimate with Mrs. Barton Trafford.
+Knowing him and remembering her, I realized that this was inevitable. I
+was not surprised to hear that he had travelled with her and Barton on
+the continent, sharing with them to the full their passion for Wagner,
+post-impressionist painting, and baroque architecture. He had lunched
+assiduously at the flat in Chelsea and when advancing years and failing
+health had imprisoned Mrs. Trafford to her drawing room, notwithstanding
+the many claims on his time he had gone regularly once a week to sit
+with her. He had a good heart. After her death he wrote an article about
+her in which with admirable emotion he did justice to her great gifts of
+sympathy and discrimination.
+
+It pleased me to think that his kindliness should receive its due and
+unexpected reward, for Mrs. Barton Trafford had told him much about
+Edward Driffield that could not fail to be of service to him in the work
+of love in which he was now engaged. Mrs. Barton Trafford, exercising a
+gentle violence, not only took Edward Driffield into her house when the
+flight of his faithless wife left him what Roy could only describe by
+the French word _désemparé_, but persuaded him to stay for nearly a
+year. She gave him the loving care, the unfailing kindness, and the
+intelligent understanding of a woman who combined feminine tact with
+masculine vigour, a heart of gold with an unerring eye for the main
+chance. It was in her flat that he finished _By Their Fruits_. She was
+justified in looking upon it as her book and the dedication to her is a
+proof that Driffield was not unmindful of his debt. She took him to
+Italy (with Barton of course, for Mrs. Trafford knew too well how
+malicious people were, to give occasion for scandal) and with a volume
+of Ruskin in her hand revealed to Edward Driffield the immortal beauties
+of that country. Then she found him rooms in the Temple and arranged
+little luncheons there, she acting very prettily the part of hostess,
+where he could receive the persons whom his increasing reputation
+attracted.
+
+It must be admitted that this increasing reputation was very largely due
+to her. His great celebrity came only during his last years when he had
+long ceased to write, but the foundations of it were undoubtedly laid by
+Mrs. Trafford’s untiring efforts. Not only did she inspire (and perhaps
+write not a little, for she had a dexterous pen) the article that Barton
+at last contributed to the _Quarterly_ in which the claim was first made
+that Driffield must be ranked with the masters of British fiction, but
+as each book came out she organized its reception. She went here and
+there, seeing editors and, more important still, proprietors of
+influential organs; she gave soirées to which everyone was invited who
+could be of use. She persuaded Edward Driffield to give readings at the
+houses of the very great for charitable purposes; she saw to it that his
+photographs should appear in the illustrated weeklies; she revised
+personally any interview he gave. For ten years she was an indefatigable
+press agent. She kept him steadily before the public.
+
+Mrs. Barton Trafford had a grand time, but she did not get above
+herself. It was useless indeed to ask him to a party without her; he
+refused. And when she and Barton and Driffield were invited anywhere to
+dinner they came together and went together. She never let him out of
+her sight. Hostesses might rave; they could take it or leave it. As a
+rule they took it. If Mrs. Barton Trafford happened to be a little out
+of temper it was through him she showed it, for while she remained
+charming, Edward Driffield would be uncommonly gruff. But she knew
+exactly how to draw him out and when the company was distinguished could
+make him brilliant. She was perfect with him. She never concealed from
+him her conviction that he was the greatest writer of his day; she not
+only referred to him invariably as the master, but, perhaps a little
+playfully and yet how flatteringly, addressed him always as such. To the
+end she retained something kittenish.
+
+Then a terrible thing happened. Driffield caught pneumonia and was
+extremely ill; for some time his life was despaired of. Mrs. Barton
+Trafford did everything that such a woman could do, and would willingly
+have nursed him herself, but she was frail, she was indeed over sixty,
+and he had to have professional nurses. When at last he pulled through,
+the doctors said that he must go into the country, and since he was
+still extremely weak insisted that a nurse should go with him. Mrs.
+Trafford wanted him to go to Bournemouth so that she could run down for
+week-ends and see that everything was well with him, but Driffield had a
+fancy for Cornwall, and the doctors agreed that the mild airs of
+Penzance would suit him. One would have thought that a woman of Isabel
+Trafford’s delicate intuition would have had some foreboding of ill. No.
+She let him go. She impressed on the nurse that she entrusted her with a
+grave responsibility; she placed in her hands, if not the future of
+English literature, at least the life and welfare of its most
+distinguished living representative. It was a priceless charge.
+
+Three weeks later Edward Driffield wrote and told her that he had
+married his nurse by special license.
+
+I imagine that never did Mrs. Barton Trafford exhibit more preëminently
+her greatness of soul than in the manner in which she met this
+situation. Did she cry, Judas, Judas? Did she tear her hair and fall on
+the floor and kick her heels in an attack of hysterics? Did she turn on
+the mild and learned Barton and call him a blithering old fool? Did she
+inveigh against the faithlessness of men and the wantonness of women or
+did she relieve her wounded feelings by shouting at the top of her voice
+a string of those obscenities with which the alienists tell us the
+chastest females are surprisingly acquainted? Not at all. She wrote a
+charming letter of congratulation to Driffield and she wrote to his
+bride telling her that she was glad to think that now she would have two
+loving friends instead of one. She begged them both to come and stay
+with her on their return to London. She told everyone she met that the
+marriage had made her very, very happy, for Edward Driffield would soon
+be an old man and must have someone to take care of him; who could do
+this better than a hospital nurse? She never had anything but praise for
+the new Mrs. Driffield; she was not exactly pretty, she said, but she
+had a very nice face; of course she wasn’t quite, quite a lady, but
+Edward would only have been uncomfortable with anyone too grand. She was
+just the sort of wife for him. I think it may be not unjustly said that
+Mrs. Barton Trafford fairly ran over with the milk of human kindness,
+but all the same I have an inkling that if ever the milk of human
+kindness was charged with vitriol, here was a case in point.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXIII
+
+
+WHEN WE arrived at Blackstable, Roy and I, a car, neither ostentatiously
+grand nor obviously cheap, was waiting for him and the chauffeur had a
+note for me asking me to lunch with Mrs. Driffield next day. I got into
+a taxi and went to the Bear and Key. I had learned from Roy that there
+was a new Marine Hotel on the front, but I did not propose for the
+luxuries of civilization to abandon a resort of my youth. Change met me
+at the railway station, which was not in its old place, but up a new
+road, and of course it was strange to be driven down the High Street in
+a car. But the Bear and Key was unaltered. It received me with its old
+churlish indifference: there was no one at the entrance, the driver put
+my bag down and drove away; I called, no one answered; I went into the
+bar and found a young lady with shingled hair reading a book by Mr.
+Compton Mackenzie. I asked her if I could have a room. She gave me a
+slightly offended look and said she thought so, but as that seemed to
+exhaust her interest in the matter I asked politely whether there was
+anyone who could show it to me. She got up and, opening a door, in a
+shrill voice called: “Katie.”
+
+“What is it?” I heard.
+
+“There’s a gent wants a room.”
+
+In a little while appeared an ancient and haggard female in a very dirty
+print dress, with an untidy mop of gray hair, and showed me, two flights
+up, a very small grubby room.
+
+“Can’t you do something better than that for me?” I asked.
+
+“It’s the room commercials generally ’ave,” she answered with a sniff.
+
+“Haven’t you got any others?”
+
+“Not single.”
+
+“Then give me a double room.”
+
+“I’ll go and ask Mrs. Brentford.”
+
+I accompanied her down to the first floor and she knocked at a door. She
+was told to come in, and when she opened it I caught sight of a stout
+woman with gray hair elaborately marcelled. She was reading a book.
+Apparently everyone at the Bear and Key was interested in literature.
+She gave me an indifferent look when Katie said I wasn’t satisfied with
+number seven.
+
+“Show him number five,” she said.
+
+I began to feel that I had been a trifle rash in declining so haughtily
+Mrs. Driffield’s invitation to stay with her and then putting aside in
+my sentimental way Roy’s wise suggestion that I should stay at the
+Marine Hotel. Katie took me upstairs again and ushered me into a largish
+room looking on the High Street. Most of its space was occupied by a
+double bed. The windows had certainly not been opened for a month.
+
+I said that would do and asked about dinner.
+
+“You can ’ave what you like,” said Katie. “We ’aven’t got nothing in,
+but I’ll run round and get it.”
+
+Knowing English inns, I ordered a fried sole and a grilled chop. Then I
+went for a stroll. I walked down to the beach and found that they had
+built an esplanade and there was a row of bungalows and villas where I
+remembered only windswept fields. But they were seedy and bedraggled and
+I guessed that even after all these years Lord George’s dream of turning
+Blackstable into a popular seaside resort had not come true. A retired
+military man, a pair of elderly ladies walked along the crumbling
+asphalt. It was incredibly dreary. A chill wind was blowing and a light
+drizzle swept over from the sea.
+
+I went back into town and here, in the space between the Bear and Key
+and the Duke of Kent, were little knots of men standing about
+notwithstanding the inclement weather; and their eyes had the same pale
+blue, their high cheek bones the same ruddy colour as that of their
+fathers before them. It was strange to see that some of the sailors in
+blue jerseys still wore little gold rings in their ears; and not only
+old ones but boys scarcely out of their teens. I sauntered down the
+street and there was the bank refronted, but the stationery shop where I
+had bought paper and wax to make rubbings with an obscure writer whom I
+had met by chance was unchanged; there were two or three cinemas and
+their garish posters suddenly gave the prim street a dissipated air so
+that it looked like a respectable elderly woman who had taken a drop too
+much.
+
+It was cold and cheerless in the commercial room where I ate my dinner
+alone at a large table laid for six. I was served by the slatternly
+Katie. I asked if I could have a fire.
+
+“Not in June,” she said. “We don’t ’ave fires after April.”
+
+“I’ll pay for it,” I protested.
+
+“Not in June. In October, yes, but not in June.”
+
+When I had finished I went into the bar to have a glass of port.
+
+“Very quiet,” I said to the shingled barmaid.
+
+“Yes, it is quiet,” she answered.
+
+“I should have thought on a Friday night you’d have quite a lot of
+people in here.”
+
+“Well, one would think that, wouldn’t one?”
+
+Then a stout red-faced man with a close-cropped head of gray hair came
+in from the back and I guessed that this was my host.
+
+“Are you Mr. Brentford?” I asked him.
+
+“Yes, that’s me.”
+
+“I knew your father. Will you have a glass of port?”
+
+I told him my name, in the days of his boyhood better known than any
+other at Blackstable, but somewhat to my mortification I saw that it
+aroused no echo in his memory. He consented, however, to let me stand
+him a glass of port.
+
+“Down here on business?” he asked me. “We get quite a few commercial
+gents at one time and another. We always like to do what we can for
+them.”
+
+I told him that I had come down to see Mrs. Driffield and left him to
+guess on what errand.
+
+“I used to see a lot of the old man,” said Mr. Brentford. “He used to be
+very partial to dropping in here and having his glass of bitter. Mind
+you, I don’t say he ever got tiddly, but he used to like to sit in the
+bar and talk. My word, he’d talk by the hour and he never cared who he
+talked to. Mrs. Driffield didn’t half like his coming here. He’d slip
+away, out of the house, without saying a word to anybody, and come
+toddling down. You know it’s a bit of a walk for a man of that age. Of
+course when they missed him Mrs. Driffield knew where he was, and she
+used to telephone and ask if he was here. Then she’d drive over in the
+car and go in and see my wife. ‘You go in and fetch him, Mrs.
+Brentford,’ she’d say; ‘I don’t like to go in the bar meself, not with
+all those men hanging about’; so Mrs. Brentford would come in and she’d
+say, ‘Now Mr. Driffield, Mrs. Driffield’s come for you in the car, so
+you’d better finish your beer and let her take you home.’ He used to ask
+Mrs. Brentford not to say he was here when Mrs. Driffield rang up, but
+of course we couldn’t do that. He was an old man and all that and we
+didn’t want to take the responsibility. He was born in this parish, you
+know, and his first wife, she was a Blackstable girl. She’s been dead
+these many years. I never knew her. He was a funny old fellow. No side,
+you know; they tell me they thought a rare lot of him in London and when
+he died the papers were full of him; but you’d never have known it to
+talk to him. He might have been just nobody like you and me. Of course
+we always tried to make him comfortable; we tried to get him to sit in
+one of them easy chairs, but no, he must sit up at the bar; he said he
+liked to feel his feet on a rail. My belief is he was happier here than
+anywhere. He always said he liked a bar parlour. He said you saw life
+there and he said he’d always loved life. Quite a character he was.
+Reminded me of my father, except that my old governor never read a book
+in his life and he drank a bottle of French brandy a day and he was
+seventy-eight when he died and his last illness was his first. I quite
+missed old Driffield when he popped off. I was only saying to Mrs.
+Brentford the other day, I’d like to read one of his books some time.
+They tell me he wrote several about these parts.”
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXIV
+
+
+NEXT MORNING it was cold and raw, but it was not raining, and I walked
+down the High Street toward the vicarage. I recognized the names over
+the shops, the Kentish names that have been borne for centuries—the
+Ganns, the Kemps, the Cobbs, the Igguldens—but I saw no one that I
+knew. I felt like a ghost walking down that street where I had once
+known nearly everyone, if not to speak to, at least by sight. Suddenly a
+very shabby little car passed me, stopped, and backed, and I saw someone
+looking at me curiously. A tall, heavy elderly man got out and came
+toward me.
+
+“Aren’t you Willie Ashenden?” he asked.
+
+Then I recognized him. He was the doctor’s son, and I had been at school
+with him; we had passed from form to form together, and I knew that he
+had succeeded his father in his practice.
+
+“Hullo, how are you?” he asked. “I’ve just been along to the vicarage to
+see my grandson. It’s a preparatory school now, you know, and I put him
+there at the beginning of this term.”
+
+He was shabbily dressed and unkempt, but he had a fine head and I saw
+that in youth he must have had unusual beauty. It was funny that I had
+never noticed it.
+
+“Are you a grandfather?” I asked.
+
+“Three times over,” he laughed.
+
+It gave me a shock. He had drawn breath, walked the earth and presently
+grown to man’s estate, married, had children and they in turn had had
+children; I judged from the look of him that he had lived, with
+incessant toil, in penury. He had the peculiar manner of the country
+doctor, bluff, hearty, and unctuous. His life was over. I had plans in
+my head for books and plays, I was full of schemes for the future; I
+felt that a long stretch of activity and fun still lay before me; and
+yet, I supposed, to others I must seem the elderly man that he seemed to
+me. I was so shaken that I had not the presence of mind to ask about his
+brothers whom as a child I had played with, or about the old friends who
+had been my companions; after a few foolish remarks I left him. I walked
+on to the vicarage, a roomy, rambling house too far out of the way for
+the modern incumbent who took his duties more seriously than did my
+uncle and too large for the present cost of living. It stood in a big
+garden and was surrounded by green fields. There was a great square
+notice board that announced that it was a preparatory school for the
+sons of gentlemen and gave the name and the degrees of the head master.
+I looked over the paling; the garden was squalid and untidy and the pond
+in which I used to fish for roach was choked up. The glebe fields had
+been cut up into building lots. There were rows of little brick houses
+with bumpy ill-made roads. I walked along Joy Lane and there were houses
+here too, bungalows facing the sea; and the old turnpike house was a
+trim tea shop.
+
+I wandered about here and there. There seemed innumerable streets of
+little houses of yellow brick, but I do not know who lived in them for I
+saw no one about. I went down to the harbour. It was deserted. There was
+but one tramp lying a little way out from the pier. Two or three
+sailormen were sitting outside a warehouse and they stared at me as I
+passed. The bottom had fallen out of the coal trade and colliers came to
+Blackstable no longer.
+
+Then it was time for me to go to Ferne Court and I went back to the Bear
+and Key. The landlord had told me that he had a Daimler for hire and I
+had arranged that it should take me to my luncheon. It stood at the door
+when I came up, a brougham, but the oldest, most dilapidated car of its
+make that I had ever seen; it panted along with squeaks and thumps and
+rattlings, with sudden angry jerks, so that I wondered if I should ever
+reach my destination. But the extraordinary, the amazing thing about it
+was that it smelled exactly like the old landau which my uncle used to
+hire every Sunday morning to go to church in. This was a rank odour of
+stables and of stale straw that lay at the bottom of the carriage; and I
+wondered in vain why, after all these years, the motor car should have
+it too. But nothing can bring back the past like a perfume or a stench,
+and, oblivious to the country I was trundling through, I saw myself once
+more a little boy on the front seat with the communion plate beside me
+and, facing me, my aunt, smelling slightly of clean linen and eau de
+cologne, in her black silk cloak and her little bonnet with a feather,
+and my uncle in his cassock, a broad band of ribbed silk round his ample
+waist and a gold cross hanging over his stomach from the gold chain
+round his neck.
+
+“Now, Willie, mind you behave nicely to-day. You’re not to turn round,
+and sit up properly in your seat. The Lord’s House isn’t the place to
+loll in and you must remember that you should set an example to other
+little boys who haven’t had your advantages.”
+
+When I arrived at Ferne Court Mrs. Driffield and Roy were walking round
+the garden and they came up to me as I got out of the car.
+
+“I was showing Roy my flowers,” said Mrs. Driffield, as she shook hands
+with me. And then with a sigh: “They’re all I have now.”
+
+She looked no older than when last I saw her six years before. She wore
+her weeds with quiet distinction. At her neck was a collar of white
+crêpe and at her wrists cuffs of the same. Roy, I noticed, wore with his
+neat blue suit a black tie; I supposed it was a sign of respect for the
+illustrious dead.
+
+“I’ll just show you my herbaceous borders,” said Mrs. Driffield, “and
+then we’ll go in to lunch.”
+
+We walked round and Roy was very knowledgeable. He knew what all the
+flowers were called, and the Latin names tripped off his tongue like
+cigarettes out of a cigarette-making machine. He told Mrs. Driffield
+where she ought to get certain varieties that she absolutely must have
+and how perfectly lovely were certain others.
+
+“Shall we go in through Edward’s study?” suggested Mrs. Driffield. “I
+keep it exactly as it was when he was here. I haven’t changed a thing.
+You’d be surprised how many people come over to see the house, and of
+course above all they want to see the room he worked in.”
+
+We went in through an open window. There was a bowl of roses on the desk
+and on a little round table by the side of the armchair a copy of the
+_Spectator_. In the ash trays were the master’s pipes and there was ink
+in the inkstand. The scene was perfectly set. I do not know why the room
+seemed so strangely dead; it had already the mustiness of a museum. Mrs.
+Driffield went to the bookshelves and with a little smile, half playful,
+half sad, passed a rapid hand across the back of half a dozen volumes
+bound in blue.
+
+“You know that Edward admired your work so much,” said Mrs. Driffield.
+“He reread your books quite often.”
+
+“I’m very glad to think that,” I said politely.
+
+I knew very well that they had not been there on my last visit and in a
+casual way I took one of them out and ran my fingers along the top to
+see whether there was dust on it. There was not. Then I took another
+book down, one of Charlotte Brontë’s, and making a little plausible
+conversation tried the same experiment. No, there was no dust there
+either. All I learned was that Mrs. Driffield was an excellent
+housekeeper and had a conscientious maid.
+
+We went in to luncheon, a hearty British meal of roast beef and
+Yorkshire pudding, and we talked of the work on which Roy was engaged.
+
+“I want to spare dear Roy all the labour I can,” said Mrs. Driffield,
+“and I’ve been gathering together as much of the material as I could
+myself. Of course it’s been rather painful, but it’s been very
+interesting, too. I came across a lot of old photographs that I must
+show you.”
+
+After luncheon we went into the drawing room and I noticed again with
+what perfect tact Mrs. Driffield had arranged it. It suited the widow of
+a distinguished man of letters almost more than it had suited the wife.
+Those chintzes, those bowls of pot-pourri, those Dresden china
+figures—there was about them a faint air of regret; they seemed to
+reflect pensively upon a past of distinction. I could have wished on
+this chilly day that there were a fire in the grate, but the English are
+a hardy as well as a conservative race; and it is not difficult for them
+to maintain their principles at the cost of the discomfort of others. I
+doubted whether Mrs. Driffield would have conceived the possibility of
+lighting a fire before the first of October. She asked me whether I had
+lately seen the lady who had brought me to lunch with the Driffields,
+and I surmised from her faint acerbity that since the death of her
+eminent husband the great and fashionable had shown a distinct tendency
+to take no further notice of her. We were just settling down to talk
+about the defunct; Roy and Mrs. Driffield were putting artful questions
+to incite me to disclose my recollections and I was gathering my wits
+about me so that I should not in an unguarded moment let slip anything
+that I had made up my mind to keep to myself; when suddenly the trim
+parlour-maid brought in two cards on a small salver.
+
+“Two gentlemen in a car, mum, and they say, could they look at the house
+and garden?”
+
+“What a bore!” cried Mrs. Driffield, but with astonishing alacrity.
+“Isn’t it funny I should have been speaking just now about the people
+who want to see the house? I never have a moment’s peace.”
+
+“Well, why don’t you say you’re sorry you can’t see them?” said Roy,
+with what I thought a certain cattiness.
+
+“Oh, I couldn’t do that. Edward wouldn’t have liked me to.” She looked
+at the cards. “I haven’t got my glasses on me.”
+
+She handed them to me, and on one I read “Henry Beard MacDougal,
+University of Virginia”; and in pencil was written: “Assistant professor
+in English Literature.” The other was “Jean-Paul Underhill” and there
+was at the bottom an address in New York.
+
+“Americans,” said Mrs. Driffield. “Say I shall be very pleased if
+they’ll come in.”
+
+Presently the maid ushered the strangers in. They were both tall young
+men and broad-shouldered, with heavy, clean-shaven, swarthy faces, and
+handsome eyes; they both wore horn-rimmed spectacles and they both had
+thick black hair combed straight back from their foreheads. They both
+wore English suits that were evidently brand new; they were both
+slightly embarrassed, but verbose and extremely civil. They explained
+that they were making a literary tour of England and, being admirers of
+Edward Driffield, had taken the liberty of stopping off on their way to
+Rye to visit Henry James’s house in the hope that they would be
+permitted to see a spot sanctified by so many associations. The
+reference to Rye did not go down very well with Mrs. Driffield.
+
+“I believe they have some very good links there,” she said.
+
+She introduced the Americans to Roy and me. I was filled with admiration
+for the way in which Roy rose to the occasion. It appeared that he had
+lectured before the University of Virginia and had stayed with a
+distinguished member of the faculty. It had been an unforgettable
+experience. He did not know whether he had been more impressed by the
+lavish hospitality with which those charming Virginians had entertained
+him or by their intelligent interest in art and literature. He asked how
+So and So was, and So and So; he had made lifelong friends there, and it
+looked as though everyone he had met was good and kind and clever. Soon
+the young professor was telling Roy how much he liked his books, and Roy
+was modestly telling him what in this one and the other his aim had been
+and how conscious he was that he had come far short of achieving it.
+Mrs. Driffield listened with smiling sympathy, but I had a feeling that
+her smile was growing a trifle strained. It may be that Roy had too, for
+he suddenly broke off.
+
+“But you don’t want me to bore you with my stuff,” he said in his loud
+hearty way. “I’m only here because Mrs. Driffield has entrusted to me
+the great honour of writing Edward Driffield’s Life.”
+
+This of course interested the visitors very much.
+
+“It’s some job, believe me,” said Roy, playfully American. “Fortunately
+I have the assistance of Mrs. Driffield, who was not only a perfect
+wife, but an admirable amanuensis and secretary; the materials she has
+placed at my disposal are so amazingly full that really little remains
+for me to do but take advantage of her industry and her—her
+affectionate zeal.”
+
+Mrs. Driffield looked down demurely at the carpet and the two young
+Americans turned on her their large dark eyes in which you could read
+their sympathy, their interest, and their respect. After a little more
+conversation—partly literary but also about golf, for the visitors
+admitted that they hoped to get a round or two at Rye, and here again
+Roy was on the spot, for he told them to look out for such and such a
+bunker and when they came to London hoped they would play with him at
+Sunningdale; after this, I say, Mrs. Driffield got up and offered to
+show them Edward’s study and bedroom, and of course the garden. Roy rose
+to his feet, evidently bent on accompanying them, but Mrs. Driffield
+gave him a little smile; it was pleasant but firm.
+
+“Don’t you bother to come, Roy,” she said. “I’ll take them round. You
+stay here and talk to Mr. Ashenden.”
+
+“Oh, all right. Of course.”
+
+The strangers bade us farewell and Roy and I settled down again in the
+chintz armchairs.
+
+“Jolly room this is,” said Roy.
+
+“Very.”
+
+“Amy had to work hard to get it. You know the old man bought this house
+two or three years before they were married. She tried to make him sell
+it, but he wouldn’t. He was very obstinate in some ways. You see, it
+belonged to a certain Miss Wolfe, whose bailiff his father was, and he
+said that when he was a little boy his one idea was to own it himself
+and now he’d got it he was going to keep it. One would have thought the
+last thing he’d want to do was to live in a place where everyone knew
+all about his origins and everything. Once poor Amy very nearly engaged
+a housemaid before she discovered she was Edward’s great-niece. When Amy
+came here the house was furnished from attic to cellar in the best
+Tottenham Court Road manner; you know the sort of thing, Turkey carpets
+and mahogany sideboards, and a plush-covered suite in the drawing room,
+and modern marquetry. It was his idea of how a gentleman’s house should
+be furnished. Amy says it was simply awful. He wouldn’t let her change a
+thing and she had to go to work with the greatest care; she says she
+simply couldn’t have lived in it and she was determined to have things
+right, so she had to change things one by one so that he didn’t pay any
+attention. She told me the hardest job she had was with his writing
+desk. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed the one there is in his study
+now. It’s a very good period piece; I wouldn’t mind having it myself.
+Well, he had a horrible American roll-top desk. He’d had it for years
+and he’d written a dozen books on it and he simply wouldn’t part with
+it, he had no feeling for things like that; he just happened to be
+attached to it because he’d had it so long. You must get Amy to tell you
+the story how she managed to get rid of it in the end. It’s really
+priceless. She’s a remarkable woman, you know; she generally gets her
+own way.”
+
+“I’ve noticed it,” I said.
+
+It had not taken her long to dispose of Roy when he showed signs of
+wishing to go over the house with the visitors. He gave me a quick look
+and laughed. Roy was not stupid.
+
+“You don’t know America as well as I do,” he said. “They always prefer a
+live mouse to a dead lion. That’s one of the reasons why I like
+America.”
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXV
+
+
+WHEN MRS. DRIFFIELD, having sent the pilgrims on their way, came back
+she bore under her arm a portfolio.
+
+“What very nice young men!” she said. “I wish young men in England took
+such a keen interest in literature. I gave them that photo of Edward
+when he was dead and they asked me for one of mine, and I signed it for
+them.” Then very graciously: “You made a great impression on them, Roy.
+They said it was a real privilege to meet you.”
+
+“I’ve lectured in America so much,” said Roy, with modesty.
+
+“Oh, but they’ve read your books. They say that what they like about
+them is that they’re so virile.”
+
+The portfolio contained a number of old photographs, groups of
+schoolboys among whom I recognized an urchin with untidy hair as
+Driffield only because his widow pointed him out, Rugby fifteens with
+Driffield a little older, and then one of a young sailor in a jersey and
+a reefer jacket, Driffield when he ran away to sea.
+
+“Here’s one taken when he was first married,” said Mrs. Driffield.
+
+He wore a beard and black-and-white check trousers; in his buttonhole
+was a large white rose backed by maidenhair and on the table beside him
+a chimney-pot hat.
+
+“And here is the bride,” said Mrs. Driffield, trying not to smile.
+
+Poor Rosie, seen by a country photographer over forty years ago, was
+grotesque. She was standing very stiffly against a background of
+baronial hall, holding a large bouquet; her dress was elaborately
+draped, pinched at the waist, and she wore a bustle. Her fringe came
+down to her eyes. On her head was a wreath of orange blossoms, perched
+high on a mass of hair, and from it was thrown back a long veil. Only I
+knew how lovely she must have looked.
+
+“She looks fearfully common,” said Roy.
+
+“She was,” murmured Mrs. Driffield.
+
+We looked at more photographs of Edward, photographs that had been taken
+of him when he began to be known, photographs when he wore only a
+moustache and others, all the later ones, when he was clean-shaven. You
+saw his face grown thinner and more lined. The stubborn commonplace of
+the early portraits melted gradually into a weary refinement. You saw
+the change in him wrought by experience, thought, and achieved ambition.
+I looked again at the photograph of the young sailorman and fancied that
+I saw in it already a trace of that aloofness that seemed to me so
+marked in the older ones and that I had had years before the vague
+sensation of in the man himself. The face you saw was a mask and the
+actions he performed without significance. I had an impression that the
+real man, to his death unknown and lonely, was a wraith that went a
+silent way unseen between the writer of his books and the fellow who led
+his life, and smiled with ironical detachment at the two puppets that
+the world took for Edward Driffield. I am conscious that in what I have
+written of him I have not presented a living man, standing on his feet,
+rounded, with comprehensible motives and logical activities; I have not
+tried to: I am glad to leave that to the abler pen of Alroy Kear.
+
+I came across the photographs that Harry Retford, the actor, had taken
+of Rosie, and then a photograph of the picture that Lionel Hillier had
+painted of her. It gave me a pang. That was how I best remembered her.
+Notwithstanding the old-fashioned gown, she was alive there and
+tremulous with the passion that filled her. She seemed to offer herself
+to the assault of love.
+
+“She gives you the impression of a hefty wench,” said Roy.
+
+“If you like the milkmaid type,” answered Mrs. Driffield. “I’ve always
+thought she looked rather like a white nigger.”
+
+That was what Mrs. Barton Trafford had been fond of calling her, and
+with Rosie’s thick lips and broad nose there was indeed a hateful truth
+in the criticism. But they did not know how silvery golden her hair was,
+nor how golden silver her skin; they did not know her enchanting smile.
+
+“She wasn’t a bit like a white nigger,” I said. “She was virginal like
+the dawn. She was like Hebe. She was like a white rose.”
+
+Mrs. Driffield smiled and exchanged a meaning glance with Roy.
+
+“Mrs. Barton Trafford told me a great deal about her. I don’t wish to
+seem spiteful, but I’m afraid I don’t think that she can have been a
+very nice woman.”
+
+“That’s where you make a mistake,” I replied. “She was a very nice
+woman. I never saw her in a bad temper. You only had to say you wanted
+something for her to give it to you. I never heard her say a
+disagreeable thing about anyone. She had a heart of gold.”
+
+“She was a terrible slattern. Her house was always in a mess; you didn’t
+like to sit down in a chair because it was so dusty and you dared not
+look in the corners. And it was the same with her person. She could
+never put a skirt on straight and you’d see about two inches of
+petticoat hanging down on one side.”
+
+“She didn’t bother about things like that. They didn’t make her any the
+less beautiful. And she was as good as she was beautiful.”
+
+Roy burst out laughing and Mrs. Driffield put her hand up to her mouth
+to hide her smile.
+
+“Oh, come, Mr. Ashenden, that’s really going too far. After all, let’s
+face it, she was a nymphomaniac.”
+
+“I think that’s a very silly word,” I said.
+
+“Well, then, let me say that she can hardly have been a very good woman
+to treat poor Edward as she did. Of course it was a blessing in
+disguise. If she hadn’t run away from him he might have had to bear that
+burden for the rest of his life, and with such a handicap he could never
+have reached the position he did. But the fact remains that she was
+notoriously unfaithful to him. From what I hear she was absolutely
+promiscuous.”
+
+“You don’t understand,” I said. “She was a very simple woman. Her
+instincts were healthy and ingenuous. She loved to make people happy.
+She loved love.”
+
+“Do you call that love?”
+
+“Well, then, the act of love. She was naturally affectionate. When she
+liked anyone it was quite natural for her to go to bed with him. She
+never thought twice about it. It was not vice; it wasn’t lasciviousness;
+it was her nature. She gave herself as naturally as the sun gives heat
+or the flowers their perfume. It was a pleasure to her and she liked to
+give pleasure to others. It had no effect on her character; she remained
+sincere, unspoiled, and artless.”
+
+Mrs. Driffield looked as though she had taken a dose of castor oil and
+had just been trying to get the taste of it out of her mouth by sucking
+a lemon.
+
+“I don’t understand,” she said. “But then I’m bound to admit that I
+never understood what Edward saw in her.”
+
+“Did he know that she was carrying on with all sorts of people?” asked
+Roy.
+
+“I’m sure he didn’t,” she replied quickly.
+
+“You think him a bigger fool than I do, Mrs. Driffield,” I said.
+
+“Then why did he put up with it?”
+
+“I think I can tell you. You see, she wasn’t a woman who ever inspired
+love. Only affection. It was absurd to be jealous over her. She was like
+a clear deep pool in a forest glade into which it’s heavenly to plunge,
+but it is neither less cool nor less crystalline because a tramp and a
+gipsy and a gamekeeper have plunged into it before you.”
+
+Roy laughed again and this time Mrs. Driffield without concealment
+smiled thinly.
+
+“It’s comic to hear you so lyrical,” said Roy.
+
+I stifled a sigh. I have noticed that when I am most serious people are
+apt to laugh at me, and indeed when after a lapse of time I have read
+passages that I wrote from the fullness of my heart I have been tempted
+to laugh at myself. It must be that there is something naturally absurd
+in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine,
+unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant
+planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an
+eternal mind.
+
+I saw that Mrs. Driffield wished to ask me something. It caused her a
+certain embarrassment.
+
+“Do you think he’d have taken her back if she’d been willing to come?”
+
+“You knew him better than I. I should say no. I think that when he had
+exhausted an emotion he took no further interest in the person who had
+aroused it. I should say that he had a peculiar combination of strong
+feeling and extreme callousness.”
+
+“I don’t know how you can say that,” cried Roy. “He was the kindest man
+I ever met.”
+
+Mrs. Driffield looked at me steadily and then dropped her eyes.
+
+“I wonder what happened to her when she went to America,” he asked.
+
+“I believe she married Kemp,” said Mrs. Driffield. “I heard they had
+taken another name. Of course they couldn’t show their faces over here
+again.”
+
+“When did she die?”
+
+“Oh, about ten years ago.”
+
+“How did you hear?” I asked.
+
+“From Harold Kemp, the son; he’s in some sort of business at Maidstone.
+I never told Edward. She’d been dead to him for many years and I saw no
+reason to remind him of the past. It always helps you if you put
+yourself in other people’s shoes and I said to myself that if I were he
+I shouldn’t want to be reminded of an unfortunate episode of my youth.
+Don’t you think I was right?”
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXVI
+
+
+MRS. DRIFFIELD very kindly offered to send me back to Blackstable in her
+car, but I preferred to walk. I promised to dine at Ferne Court next day
+and meanwhile to write down what I could remember of the two periods
+during which I had been in the habit of seeing Edward Driffield. As I
+walked along the winding road, meeting no one by the way, I mused upon
+what I should say. Do they not tell us that style is the art of
+omission? If that is so I should certainly write a very pretty piece,
+and it seemed almost a pity that Roy should use it only as material. I
+chuckled when I reflected what a bombshell I could throw if I chose.
+There was one person who could tell them all they wanted to know about
+Edward Driffield and his first marriage; but this fact I proposed to
+keep to myself. They thought Rosie was dead; they erred; Rosie was very
+much alive.
+
+Being in New York for the production of a play and my arrival having
+been advertised to all and sundry by my manager’s energetic press
+representative, I received one day a letter addressed in a handwriting I
+knew but could not place. It was large and round, firm but uneducated.
+It was so familiar to me that I was exasperated not to remember whose it
+was. It would have been more sensible to open the letter at once, but
+instead I looked at the envelope and racked my brain. There are
+handwritings I cannot see without a little shiver of dismay and some
+letters that look so tiresome that I cannot bring myself to open them
+for a week. When at last I tore open the envelope what I read gave me a
+strange feeling. It began abruptly:
+
+    _I have just seen that you are in New York and would like to see
+    you again. I am not living in New York any more, but Yonkers is
+    quite close and if you have a car you can easily do it in half
+    an hour. I expect you are very busy so leave it to you to make a
+    date. Although it is many years since we last met I hope you
+    have not forgotten your old friend_
+
+                               ROSE IGGULDEN (_formerly Driffield_)
+
+I looked at the address; it was the Albemarle, evidently a hotel or an
+apartment house, then there was the name of a street, and Yonkers. A
+shiver passed through me as though someone had walked over my grave.
+During the years that had passed I had sometimes thought of Rosie, but
+of late I had said to myself that she must surely be dead. I was puzzled
+for a moment by the name. Why Iggulden and not Kemp? Then it occurred to
+me that they had taken this name, a Kentish one too, when they fled from
+England. My first impulse was to make an excuse not to see her; I am
+always shy of seeing again people I have not seen for a long time; but
+then I was seized with curiosity. I wanted to see what she was like and
+to hear what had happened to her. I was going down to Dobbs Ferry for
+the week-end, to reach which I had to pass through Yonkers, and so
+answered that I would come at about four on the following Saturday.
+
+The Albemarle was a huge block of apartments, comparatively new, and it
+looked as though it were inhabited by persons in easy circumstances. My
+name was telephoned up by a Negro porter in uniform and I was taken up
+in the elevator by another. I felt uncommonly nervous. The door was
+opened for me by a coloured maid.
+
+“Come right in,” she said. “Mrs. Iggulden’s expecting you.”
+
+I was ushered into a living room that served also as dining room, for at
+one end of it was a square table of heavily carved oak, a dresser, and
+four chairs of the kind that the manufacturers in Grand Rapids would
+certainly describe as Jacobean. But the other end was furnished with a
+Louis XV suite, gilt and upholstered in pale blue damask; there were a
+great many small tables, richly carved and gilt, on which stood Sèvres
+vases with ormolu decorations and nude bronze ladies with draperies
+flowing as though in a howling gale that artfully concealed those parts
+of their bodies that decency required; and each one held at the end of a
+playfully outstretched arm an electric lamp. The gramophone was the
+grandest thing I had ever seen out of a shop window, all gilt and shaped
+like a sedan chair and painted with Watteau courtiers and their ladies.
+
+After I had waited for about five minutes a door was opened and Rosie
+came briskly in. She gave me both her hands.
+
+“Well, this is a surprise,” she said. “I hate to think how many years it
+is since we met. Excuse me one moment.” She went to the door and called:
+“Jessie, you can bring the tea in. Mind the water’s boiling properly.”
+Then, coming back: “The trouble I’ve had to teach that girl to make tea
+properly, you’d never believe.”
+
+Rosie was at least seventy. She was wearing a very smart sleeveless
+frock of green chiffon, heavily _diamanté_, cut square at the neck and
+very short; it fitted like a bursting glove. By her shape I gathered
+that she wore rubber corsets. Her nails were blood-coloured and her
+eyebrows plucked. She was stout, and she had a double chin; the skin of
+her bosom, although she had powdered it freely, was red, and her face
+was red too. But she looked well and healthy and full of beans. Her hair
+was still abundant, but it was quite white, shingled and permanently
+waved. As a young woman she had had soft, naturally waving hair and
+these stiff undulations, as though she had just come out of a
+hairdresser’s, seemed more than anything else to change her. The only
+thing that remained was her smile, which had still its old childlike and
+mischievous sweetness. Her teeth had never been very good, irregular and
+of bad shape; but these now were replaced by a set of perfect evenness
+and snowy brilliance; they were obviously the best money could buy.
+
+The coloured maid brought in an elaborate tea with _pâté_ sandwiches and
+cookies and candy and little knives and forks and tiny napkins. It was
+all very neat and smart.
+
+“That’s one thing I’ve never been able to do without—my tea,” said
+Rosie, helping herself to a hot buttered scone. “It’s my best meal,
+really, though I know I shouldn’t eat it. My doctor keeps on saying to
+me: ‘Mrs. Iggulden, you can’t expect to get your weight down if you will
+eat half a dozen cookies at tea.’” She gave me a smile, and I had a
+sudden inkling that, notwithstanding the marcelled hair and the powder
+and the fat, Rosie was the same as ever. “But what I say is: A little of
+what you fancy does you good.”
+
+I had always found her easy to talk to. Soon we were chatting away as
+though it were only a few weeks since we had last seen one another.
+
+“Were you surprised to get my letter? I put Driffield so as you should
+know who it was from. We took the name of Iggulden when we came to
+America. George had a little unpleasantness when he left Blackstable,
+perhaps you heard about it, and he thought in a new country he’d better
+start with a new name, if you understand what I mean.”
+
+I nodded vaguely.
+
+“Poor George, he died ten years ago, you know.”
+
+“I’m sorry to hear that.”
+
+“Oh, well, he was getting on in years. He was past seventy though you’d
+never have guessed it to look at him. It was a great blow to me. No
+woman could want a better husband than what he made me. Never a cross
+word from the day we married till the day he died. And I’m pleased to
+say he left me very well provided for.”
+
+“I’m glad to know that.”
+
+“Yes, he did very well over here. He went into the building trade, he
+always had a fancy for it, and he got in with Tammany. He always said
+the greatest mistake he ever made was not coming over here twenty years
+before. He liked the country from the first day he set foot in it. He
+had plenty of go and that’s what you want here. He was just the sort to
+get on.”
+
+“Have you never been back to England?”
+
+“No, I’ve never wanted to. George used to talk about it sometimes, just
+for a trip, you know, but we never got down to it, and now he’s gone I
+haven’t got the inclination. I expect London would seem very dead and
+alive to me after New York. We used to live in New York, you know. I
+only came here after his death.”
+
+“What made you choose Yonkers?”
+
+“Well, I always fancied it. I used to say to George, when we retire
+we’ll go and live at Yonkers. It’s like a little bit of England to me;
+you know, Maidstone or Guildford or some place like that.”
+
+I smiled, but I understood what she meant. Notwithstanding its trams and
+its tootling cars, its cinemas and electric signs, Yonkers, with its
+winding main street, has a faint air of an English market town gone
+jazz.
+
+“Of course I sometimes wonder what’s happened to all the folks at
+Blackstable. I suppose they’re most of them dead by now and I expect
+they think I am too.”
+
+“I haven’t been there for thirty years.”
+
+I did not know then that the rumour of Rosie’s death had reached
+Blackstable. I dare say that someone had brought back the news that
+George Kemp was dead and thus a mistake had arisen.
+
+“I suppose nobody knows here that you were Edward Driffield’s first
+wife?”
+
+“Oh, no; why, if they had I should have had the reporters buzzing around
+my apartment like a swarm of bees. You know sometimes I’ve hardly been
+able to help laughing when I’ve been out somewhere playing bridge and
+they’ve started talking about Ted’s books. They like him no end in
+America. I never thought so much of them myself.”
+
+“You never were a great novel reader, were you?”
+
+“I used to like history better, but I don’t seem to have much time for
+reading now. Sunday’s my great day. I think the Sunday papers over here
+are lovely. You don’t have anything like them in England. Then of course
+I play a lot of bridge; I’m crazy about contract.”
+
+I remembered that when as a young boy I had first met Rosie her uncanny
+skill at whist had impressed me. I felt that I knew the sort of bridge
+player she was, quick, bold, and accurate: a good partner and a
+dangerous opponent.
+
+“You’d have been surprised at the fuss they made over here when Ted
+died. I knew they thought a lot of him, but I never knew he was such a
+big bug as all that. The papers were full of him, and they had pictures
+of him and Ferne Court; he always said he meant to live in that house
+some day. Whatever made him marry that hospital nurse? I always thought
+he’d marry Mrs. Barton Trafford. They never had any children, did they?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Ted would have liked to have some. It was a great blow to him that I
+couldn’t have any more after the first.”
+
+“I didn’t know you’d ever had a child,” I said with surprise.
+
+“Oh, yes. That’s why Ted married me. But I had a very bad time when it
+came and the doctors said I couldn’t have another. If she’d lived, poor
+little thing, I don’t suppose I’d ever have run away with George. She
+was six when she died. A dear little thing she was and as pretty as a
+picture.”
+
+“You never mentioned her.”
+
+“No, I couldn’t bear to speak about her. She got meningitis and we took
+her to the hospital. They put her in a private room and they let us stay
+with her. I shall never forget what she went through, screaming,
+screaming all the time, and nobody able to do anything.”
+
+Rosie’s voice broke.
+
+“Was it that death Driffield described in _The Cup of Life_?”
+
+“Yes, that’s it. I always thought it so funny of Ted. He couldn’t bear
+to speak of it, any more than I could, but he wrote it all down; he
+didn’t leave out a thing; even little things I hadn’t noticed at the
+time he put in and then I remembered them. You’d think he was just
+heartless, but he wasn’t, he was upset just as much as I was. When we
+used to go home at night he’d cry like a child. Funny chap, wasn’t he?”
+
+It was _The Cup of Life_ that had raised such a storm of protest; and it
+was the child’s death and the episode that followed it that had
+especially brought down on Driffield’s head such virulent abuse. I
+remembered the description very well. It was harrowing. There was
+nothing sentimental in it; it did not excite the reader’s tears, but his
+anger rather that such cruel suffering should be inflicted on a little
+child. You felt that God at the Judgment Day would have to account for
+such things as this. It was a very powerful piece of writing. But if
+this incident was taken from life was the one that followed it also? It
+was this that had shocked the public of the ’nineties and this that the
+critics had condemned as not only indecent but incredible. In _The Cup
+of Life_ the husband and wife (I forget their names now) had come back
+from the hospital after the child’s death—they were poor people and
+they lived from hand to mouth in lodgings—and had their tea. It was
+latish: about seven o’clock. They were exhausted by the strain of a
+week’s ceaseless anxiety and shattered by their grief. They had nothing
+to say to one another. They sat in a miserable silence. The hours
+passed. Then on a sudden the wife got up and going into their bedroom
+put on her hat.
+
+“I’m going out,” she said.
+
+“All right.”
+
+They lived near Victoria Station. She walked along the Buckingham Palace
+Road and through the park. She came into Piccadilly and went slowly
+toward the Circus. A man caught her eye, paused and turned round.
+
+“Good-evening,” he said.
+
+“Good-evening.”
+
+She stopped and smiled.
+
+“Will you come and have a drink?” he asked.
+
+“I don’t mind if I do.”
+
+They went into a tavern in one of the side streets of Piccadilly, where
+harlots congregated and men came to pick them up, and they drank a glass
+of beer. She chatted with the stranger and laughed with him. She told
+him a cock-and-bull story about herself. Presently he asked if he could
+go home with her; no, she said, he couldn’t do that, but they could go
+to a hotel. They got into a cab and drove to Bloomsbury and there they
+took a room for the night. And next morning she took a bus to Trafalgar
+Square and walked through the park; when she got home her husband was
+just sitting down to breakfast. After breakfast they went back to the
+hospital to see about the child’s funeral.
+
+“Will you tell me something, Rosie?” I asked. “What happened in the book
+after the child’s death—did that happen too?”
+
+She looked at me for a moment doubtfully; then her lips broke into her
+still beautiful smile.
+
+“Well, it’s all so many years ago, what odds does it make? I don’t mind
+telling you. He didn’t get it quite right. You see, it was only
+guesswork on his part. I was surprised that he knew as much as he did; I
+never told him anything.”
+
+Rosie took a cigarette and pensively tapped its end on the table, but
+she did not light it.
+
+“We came back from the hospital just like he said. We walked back; I
+felt I couldn’t sit still in a cab, and I felt all dead inside me. I’d
+cried so much I couldn’t cry any more, and I was tired. Ted tried to
+comfort me, but I said: ‘For God’s sake shut up.’ After that he didn’t
+say any more. We had rooms in the Vauxhall Bridge Road then, on the
+second floor, just a sitting room and a bedroom, that’s why we’d had to
+take the poor little thing to the hospital; we couldn’t nurse her in
+lodgings; besides, the landlady said she wouldn’t have it, and Ted said
+she’d be looked after better at the hospital. She wasn’t a bad sort, the
+landlady; she’d been a tart and Ted used to talk to her by the hour
+together. She came up when she heard us come in.
+
+“‘How’s the little girl to-night?’ she said.
+
+“‘She’s dead,’ said Ted.
+
+“I couldn’t say anything. Then she brought up the tea. I didn’t want
+anything, but Ted made me eat some ham. Then I sat at the window. I
+didn’t look round when the landlady came up to clear away, I didn’t want
+anyone to speak to me. Ted was reading a book; at least he was
+pretending to, but he didn’t turn the pages, and I saw the tears
+dropping on it. I kept on looking out of the window. It was the end of
+June, the twenty-eighth, and the days were long. It was just near the
+corner where we lived and I looked at the people going in and out of the
+public house and the trams going up and down. I thought the day would
+never come to an end; then all of a sudden I noticed that it was night.
+All the lamps were lit. There were an awful lot of people in the street.
+I felt so tired. My legs were like lead.
+
+“‘Why don’t you light the gas?’ I said to Ted.
+
+“‘Do you want it?’ he said.
+
+“‘It’s no good sitting in the dark,’ I said.
+
+“He lit the gas. He began smoking his pipe. I knew that would do him
+good. But I just sat and looked at the street. I don’t know what came
+over me. I felt that if I went on sitting in that room I’d go mad. I
+wanted to go somewhere where there were lights and people. I wanted to
+get away from Ted; no, not so much that, I wanted to get away from all
+that Ted was thinking and feeling. We only had two rooms. I went into
+the bedroom; the child’s cot was still there, but I wouldn’t look at it.
+I put on my hat and a veil and I changed my dress and then I went back
+to Ted.
+
+“‘I’m going out,’ I said.
+
+“Ted looked at me. I dare say he noticed I’d got my new dress on and
+perhaps something in the way I spoke made him see I didn’t want him.
+
+“‘All right,’ he said.
+
+“In the book he made me walk through the park, but I didn’t do that
+really. I went down to Victoria and I took a hansom to Charing Cross. It
+was only a shilling fare. Then I walked up the Strand. I’d made up my
+mind what I wanted to do before I came out. Do you remember Harry
+Retford? Well, he was acting at the Adelphi then, he had the second
+comedy part. Well, I went to the stage door, and sent up my name. I
+always liked Harry Retford. I expect he was a bit unscrupulous and he
+was rather funny over money matters, but he could make you laugh and
+with all his faults he was a rare good sort. You know he was killed in
+the Boer War, don’t you?”
+
+“I didn’t. I only knew he’d disappeared and one never saw his name on
+playbills; I thought perhaps he’d gone into business or something.”
+
+“No, he went out at once. He was killed at Ladysmith. After I’d been
+waiting a bit he came down and I said: ‘Harry, let’s go on the razzle
+to-night. What about a bit of supper at Romano’s?’ ‘Not ’alf,’ he said.
+‘You wait here and the minute the show’s over and I’ve got my make-up
+off I’ll come down.’ It made me feel better just to see him; he was
+playing a racing tout and it made me laugh just to look at him in his
+check suit and his billycock hat and his red nose. Well, I waited till
+the end of the show and then he came down and we walked along to
+Romano’s.
+
+“‘Are you hungry?’ he said to me.
+
+“‘Starving,’ I said; and I was.
+
+“‘Let’s have the best,’ he said, ‘and blow the expense. I told Bill
+Terris I was taking my best girl out to supper and I touched him for a
+couple of quid.’
+
+“‘Let’s have champagne,’ I said.
+
+“‘Three cheers for the widow!’ he said.
+
+“I don’t know if you ever went to Romano’s in the old days. It was fine.
+You used to see all the theatrical people and the racing men, and the
+girls from the Gaiety used to go there. It was _the_ place. And the
+Roman. Harry knew him and he came up to our table; he used to talk in
+funny broken English; I believe he put it on because he knew it made
+people laugh. And if someone he knew was down and out he’d always lend
+him a fiver.
+
+“‘How’s the kid?’ said Harry.
+
+“‘Better,’ I said.
+
+“I didn’t want to tell him the truth. You know how funny men are; they
+don’t understand some things. I knew Harry would think it dreadful of me
+to come out to supper when the poor child was lying dead in the
+hospital. He’d be awfully sorry and all that, but that’s not what I
+wanted; I wanted to laugh.”
+
+Rosie lit the cigarette that she had been playing with.
+
+“You know how when a woman is having a baby, sometimes the husband can’t
+stand it any more and he goes out and has another woman. And then when
+she finds out, and it’s funny how often she does, she kicks up no end of
+a fuss; she says, that the man should go and do it just then, when she’s
+going through hell, well, it’s the limit. I always tell her not to be
+silly. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her, and isn’t terribly upset, it
+doesn’t mean anything, it’s just nerves; if he weren’t so upset he
+wouldn’t think of it. I know, because that’s how I felt then.
+
+“When we’d finished our supper Harry said: ‘Well, what about it?’
+
+“‘What about what?’ I said.
+
+“There wasn’t any dancing in those days and there was nowhere we could
+go.
+
+“‘What about coming round to my flat and having a look at my photograph
+album?’ said Harry.
+
+“‘I don’t mind if I do,’ I said.
+
+“He had a little bit of a flat in the Charing Cross Road, just two rooms
+and a bath and a kitchenette, and we drove round there, and I stayed the
+night.
+
+“When I got back next morning the breakfast was already on the table and
+Ted had just started. I’d made up my mind that if he said anything I was
+going to fly out at him. I didn’t care what happened. I’d earned my
+living before, and I was ready to earn it again. For two pins I’d have
+packed my box and left him there and then. But he just looked up as I
+came in.
+
+“‘You’ve just come in time,’ he said. ‘I was going to eat your sausage.’
+
+“I sat down and poured him out his tea. And he went on reading the
+paper. After we’d finished breakfast we went to the hospital. He never
+asked me where I’d been. I didn’t know what he thought. He was terribly
+kind to me all that time. I was miserable, you know. Somehow I felt that
+I just couldn’t get over it, and there was nothing he didn’t do to make
+it easier for me.”
+
+“What did you think when you read the book?” I asked.
+
+“Well, it did give me a turn to see that he did know pretty well what
+had happened that night. What beat me was his writing it at all. You’d
+have thought it was the last thing he’d put in a book. You’re queer
+fish, you writers.”
+
+At that moment the telephone bell rang. Rosie took up the receiver and
+listened.
+
+“Why, Mr. Vanuzzi, how very nice of you to call me up! Oh, I’m pretty
+well, thank you. Well, pretty and well, if you like. When you’re my age
+you take all the compliments you can get.”
+
+She embarked upon a conversation which, I gathered from her tone, was of
+a facetious and even flirtatious character. I did not pay much
+attention, and since it seemed to prolong itself I began to meditate
+upon the writer’s life. It is full of tribulation. First he must endure
+poverty and the world’s indifference; then, having achieved a measure of
+success, he must submit with a good grace to its hazards. He depends
+upon a fickle public. He is at the mercy of journalists who want to
+interview him and photographers who want to take his picture, of editors
+who harry him for copy and tax gatherers who harry him for income tax,
+of persons of quality who ask him to lunch and secretaries of institutes
+who ask him to lecture, of women who want to marry him and women who
+want to divorce him, of youths who want his autograph, actors who want
+parts and strangers who want a loan, of gushing ladies who want advice
+on their matrimonial affairs and earnest young men who want advice on
+their compositions, of agents, publishers, managers, bores, admirers,
+critics, and his own conscience. But he has one compensation. Whenever
+he has anything on his mind, whether it be a harassing reflection, grief
+at the death of a friend, unrequited love, wounded pride, anger at the
+treachery of someone to whom he has shown kindness, in short any emotion
+or any perplexing thought, he has only to put it down in black and
+white, using it as the theme of a story or the decoration of an essay,
+to forget all about it. He is the only free man.
+
+Rosie put back the receiver and turned to me.
+
+“That was one of my beaux. I’m going to play bridge to-night and he rang
+up to say he’d call round for me in his car. Of course he’s a Wop, but
+he’s real nice. He used to run a big grocery store down town, in New
+York, but he’s retired now.”
+
+“Have you never thought of marrying again, Rosie?”
+
+“No.” She smiled. “Not that I haven’t had offers. I’m quite happy as I
+am. The way I look on it is this, I don’t want to marry an old man, and
+it would be silly at my age to marry a young one. I’ve had my time and
+I’m ready to call it a day.”
+
+“What made you run away with George Kemp?”
+
+“Well, I’d always liked him. I knew him long before I knew Ted, you
+know. Of course I never thought there was any chance of marrying him.
+For one thing he was married already and then he had his position to
+think of. And then when he came to me one day and said that everything
+had gone wrong and he was bust and there’d be a warrant out for his
+arrest in a few days and he was going to America and would I go with
+him, well, what could I do? I couldn’t let him go all that way by
+himself, with no money perhaps, and him having been always so grand and
+living in his own house and driving his own trap. It wasn’t as if I was
+afraid of work.”
+
+“I sometimes think he was the only man you ever cared for,” I suggested.
+
+“I dare say there’s some truth in that.”
+
+“I wonder what it was you saw in him.”
+
+Rosie’s eyes travelled to a picture on the wall that for some reason had
+escaped my notice. It was an enlarged photograph of Lord George in a
+carved gilt frame. It looked as if it might have been taken soon after
+his arrival in America; perhaps at the time of their marriage. It was a
+three-quarter length. It showed him in a long frock coat, tightly
+buttoned, and a tall silk hat cocked rakishly on one side of his head;
+there was a large rose in his buttonhole; under one arm he carried a
+silver-headed cane and smoke curled from a big cigar that he held in his
+right hand. He had a heavy moustache, waxed at the ends, a saucy look in
+his eye, and in his bearing an arrogant swagger. In his tie was a
+horseshoe in diamonds. He looked like a publican dressed up in his best
+to go to the Derby.
+
+“I’ll tell you,” said Rosie. “He was always such a perfect gentleman.”
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
+
+                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES
+
+Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
+spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
+
+Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
+occur.
+
+[The end of _Cakes and Ale_ by W. Somerset Maugham]
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78723 ***