But the duchess joining in the conversation at the head of that 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 joined 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?’
‘Crashing. 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.
5
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 tyres 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. 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, 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 blonde 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 wonderfully, 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 goodhumoured 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 efforts, 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 tomorrow? 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 Drifflelds.
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 Drifflelds, 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 county.
‘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 four
teen miles tomorrow, 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 ran 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.’