“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.